Yes, the Obsidian Kanban plugin still works and is installable, but with an important caveat: it is now hosted under the obsidian-community organisation and is openly looking for new maintainers, with its most recent release, version 2.0.51, dating to May 2024. So it is not abandoned, and your existing boards will keep working, but its original author has stepped back and its long-term future depends on the community. If you are choosing a board tool today, that uncertainty is worth factoring in, and it is worth asking what you actually want a board for, because if the answer is mainly to decide what to work on, a ranking layer like ZPXE does that directly without a board at all. Here is how to evaluate it and what the real alternatives are.
Before naming alternatives, it helps to set the evaluation criteria, because “still maintained” is only one of several things that matter, and the loudest question is not always the most important one.
How to evaluate a plugin like this
Maintenance status is the headline concern, but a plugin’s health is a few things together. Consider active maintenance, since an unmaintained plugin can break with a future Obsidian update and never be fixed. Consider data portability, meaning whether your work survives if the plugin disappears. Consider whether the plugin does something you genuinely need or is habit. And consider mobile and performance, if those matter to your workflow.
| Criterion | What to check | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Maintenance | recent releases, active maintainers | an unmaintained plugin can break and stay broken |
| Data portability | is your work plain Markdown you keep? | decides whether you are stranded if it stops |
| Real need | do you use the feature or admire it? | unused plugins are risk with no benefit |
| Mobile and performance | does it work where you work? | a desktop-only plugin limits your workflow |
The Kanban plugin scores well on portability, which softens the maintenance worry considerably.
The good news: your boards are plain Markdown
The single most reassuring fact about the Kanban plugin is that its boards are stored as plain Markdown in your vault; the columns and cards are just structured text you own. This matters enormously for the maintenance question, because it means that even if the plugin were to stop working one day, your board content does not vanish. It remains readable text you can move to another tool or keep as a note. A plugin whose data is locked in a proprietary format is a real risk when it loses its maintainer; a plugin whose data is plain Markdown is a much smaller one. The Kanban plugin is firmly in the second category, which is why “seeking maintainers” is a caution rather than an alarm.
That portability is a direct benefit of Obsidian’s local-first, plain-text design, and it is the reason a maintenance notice on an Obsidian plugin is less scary than the same notice on a cloud app.
The alternatives, by what you want a board for
The best alternative depends on why you use a board, so match the replacement to the real job. With Obsidian’s 1,000-plus community plugins there is rarely only one option, but for board-style task work three cover almost everyone.
| If you use a board for | Alternative | Status |
|---|---|---|
| A board view of your tasks | TaskNotes (kanban view) | actively developed |
| Task management without a board | the Tasks plugin | mature default |
| Deciding what to do next | a ranking layer | reads your existing tasks |
If you want a board view of tasks specifically, TaskNotes offers kanban, calendar and agenda views over tasks stored as notes, and is actively developed, making it a natural modern option for board-style task management. If you want general task management without a board, the Tasks plugin covers dates, recurrence and queries and is the mature default. And if the board was really just your way of deciding what to work on next, dragging the important card to the top, then the honest alternative is not another board but a ranking layer: ZPXE reads your tasks and ranks today’s priorities on-device with a reason for each, which is the deciding a board was standing in for. The wider task-plugin landscape is mapped in Obsidian task management, and the Tasks-versus-TaskNotes choice in Obsidian Tasks vs TaskNotes.
What “seeking maintainers” actually means
It helps to read the maintenance notice accurately rather than as a death sentence, because “looking for new maintainers” sits between two extremes people wrongly collapse it into. It does not mean abandoned: the plugin installs, runs, and had a release as recently as May 2024, and it is hosted under the obsidian-community organisation rather than left to rot on a personal account. Nor does it mean fully supported: the original author has stepped back, so there is no guarantee that a bug introduced by a future Obsidian update will be fixed quickly, or at all, until someone new takes stewardship. The honest reading is “works now, future uncertain, exit safe”.
That middle state is genuinely common in open-source, and it is not a reason to flee a working tool. It is a reason to avoid deepening your dependency on it, and to keep your setup simple enough that switching later would be painless. Because the plugin’s data is plain Markdown, that switch is already painless, which is what makes staying a reasonable choice rather than a gamble. The risk of a seeking-maintainers plugin is proportional to how locked-in its data is, and here the lock-in is close to zero.
Should you keep using it?
For most people already using the Kanban plugin, the answer is yes, keep using it, with eyes open. It works today, your data is safe as plain Markdown, and there is no urgency to migrate. The sensible posture is to keep using it while it functions, avoid building anything so elaborate that a future break would be painful, and know your exit: because the boards are Markdown, moving to TaskNotes or plain task notes later is straightforward. What you should not do is start a major new dependency on it without acknowledging the maintenance question, or panic-migrate away from a plugin that is working fine and whose data you fully own.
Key takeaways: the Kanban plugin and its alternatives
The Obsidian Kanban plugin still works and is installable, but it is community-hosted and seeking maintainers, with its last release in May 2024, so treat it as usable-but-uncertain rather than either dead or fully supported. The saving grace is that its boards are plain Markdown you own, so even a future break would not lose your data, which turns the maintenance notice into a caution rather than an emergency. Match any replacement to why you use a board: TaskNotes for actively-developed board views of tasks, the Tasks plugin for board-free task management, or, if the board was really how you decided what to do next, a ranking layer that does that deciding directly. Keep using it if it works, own your exit, and choose by the real job.
Quick answers
Is the Obsidian Kanban plugin still maintained?
It still works and is installable, but it is now community-hosted and openly looking for new maintainers, with its most recent release, 2.0.51, dating to May 2024. So it is not abandoned or archived, and your boards keep working, but its original author has stepped back and its long-term support depends on the community picking it up. The reassuring part is that its boards are plain Markdown you own, so even if it eventually broke, your data would remain readable text rather than being lost.
Will I lose my boards if the Kanban plugin stops working?
No, because the Kanban plugin stores its boards as plain Markdown in your vault. The columns and cards are structured text you own, readable in any editor, so if the plugin ever stopped functioning, your board content would remain intact as a note. That is the key reason its seeking-maintainers status is a caution rather than an alarm: unlike a proprietary cloud tool, an Obsidian plugin whose data is Markdown cannot strand your work. Your exit is always available.
What are the alternatives to the Obsidian Kanban plugin?
It depends on what you use a board for. For board-style views of tasks, TaskNotes offers kanban, calendar and agenda views and is actively developed. For general task management without a board, the Tasks plugin handles dates, recurrence and queries. And if your board was really just how you decided what to work on next, the honest alternative is a ranking layer that decides for you, rather than another board you still have to sort by hand. Match the replacement to the real job.
Should I stop using the Kanban plugin now?
No, there is no urgency. It works today, your data is safe as plain Markdown, and migrating away from a functioning plugin whose data you own would be premature. The sensible approach is to keep using it while it functions, avoid building an elaborate dependency that a future break would make painful, and know that moving to an alternative later is straightforward because your boards are already portable text. Keep using it with eyes open rather than either panicking or ignoring the maintenance question.
Do I even need a Kanban board in Obsidian?
Often not, and it is worth asking. Many people use a board mainly to decide what to work on next, dragging the urgent card to the top, which is a manual way of doing something a ranking layer can do automatically. If your real need is deciding rather than visualising columns, a board is extra maintenance for a job a ranking tool does directly. Keep a board if you genuinely think in columns and stages; drop it if it was only ever a way to sort your priorities by hand.
