About JSON Canvas Viewer

JSON Canvas Viewer exists to answer one small but annoying question: “I have a .canvas file — how do I just look at it?” JSON Canvas is an open, JSON-based format created by Obsidian for its infinite-canvas boards. It is genuinely open and easy to parse, but until now the only comfortable way to view a .canvas file was to install Obsidian and import it into a vault. That is a lot of friction when a colleague simply shares a board, or when you stumble on one in a Git repository.

So we built a viewer that needs nothing but your browser. Drop a file in and the board is drawn immediately — text cards (with their Markdown), groups, colors, and the arrows between nodes. When you want a copy that anyone can open, export it to a high-resolution PNG or a scalable SVG.

Two principles guide the tool. First, privacy: your file is parsed and rendered entirely on your device and is never uploaded. A canvas often holds private notes, so this is not negotiable. Second, honesty: cards that embed an external note, image, or link store only a path inside the .canvas file, so we draw those as clearly-labelled placeholders rather than pretending we can recover content that simply is not there.

This is an independent project and is not affiliated with Obsidian. Feedback is welcome at [email protected].