Config to ignore/hide select files and folders

Feature archive
21

Absolutely agree :smiley:

23

+1 Almost a year has passed :frowning:

1 Like
24

Oh no :cry:

25

It’s a lot simpler to have a .obsignore hidden file in a top-level folder (and in any other folder) that specifies which files and folders thereon contained should be ignored. Inside there would be only relative paths to the .obsignore’s folder.

This is exactly how Syncthing is handling it.

What I would add to Syncthing’s approach is operators that specify exactly how should a particular folder or file be ignored. For example, maybe I just want to hide the folder obsolete/irrelevant/ in Obsidian’s file explorer while keeping its content available for linking and searching. Say I also need to completely hide the folder downloads, no linking, no nothing inside Obsidian.

.obsignore would then contain these lines:

obsolete/irrelevant %invisible
downloads

Or something like this.

1 Like
26

OP here :wave:t3:
Almost a year later.

Needing this more and more as I—and many others it seems—use Obsidian as part of broader “systems” involving other apps. (The same driver behind the desire for supporting symlinks and composing Vaults with Folders from multiple sources.)

Hope we can get some more attention on this “Ignore” Configuration feature. :slight_smile:

1 Like
27

Whether this CSS approach is or isn’t possible, it would only address the presentation layer of the file viewer. Having Obsidian actually ignore files/folders—especially with explicit “scope” directives—means they would not be included in searches, graphs, auto-linking, etc… In other words, it’s not about just hiding them in the file explorer/UI, but keeping them out of processing too.

2 Likes
28

I just started using Obsidian daily and as I have a lot of symlinks to source material in my vault the quick switcher is extremely polluted.
Power users need this feature and I am sure its very easy to implement. Would implement it myself if Obsidian were open source.
For performance reasons this should absolutely be a core feature and not a plugin.

6 Likes
29

So this makes me think it needs to be a bit more powerful.
.Obsidianignore should to be able to ignore:

  • by filesystem object types (“symlinks”, “file”, “directory”) (like find -file)
  • by full string match (e.g.: ignoreme.txt)
  • by wildcard match (e.g.: *.txt, * copy.*) ← good for file.ext based file type ignores
  • by regex pattern (e.g.: aw heck you know…)

And ignore directives should be declare-able for different contexts/scopes

  • all
  • search
  • graph
  • fileexplorer
  • sync
  • publish

Can be as simple and as powerful as the user needs. :+1:

9 Likes
30

I like this approach pretty much.

31

+1 I would love such a feature, too.

I think being able to ignore based on a string match that supports regex and basic wildcards would cover all the use cases @borisanthony describes in his last reply (^2 above):

# String:           Ignores:
"_site"           # directory and its contents (or maybe "_site/"?)
"ignoreme.txt"    # every file with this exact filename
"*.txt"           # all .txt files
"/^[0-9]{6,14}/"  # any Zettelkasten-prefixed file

And then each context/scope could have a single line that lets you enter comma-separated quoted strings as matches:

  • all: "_site", "/^README/", "LICENSE", "CNAME"
  • search: "_pastedimagesfolder"
  • graph: "_templates"

etc.

3 Likes
32

Big +1 from me as well. I don’t have the largest vault, but I already feel I need something like this for my templates and assets folder.

2 Likes
33

+1 please

1 Like
34

Yes please. I only started using Obsidian a few days ago and it’s been able to do everything I’ve wanted it to so far except for this.

2 Likes
35

This would be so useful because the main thing I edit/write is work projects with node_modules which can have hundredths of files.

1 Like
36

+1 – this would be great for those of us with v large mdnotes-generated notes. Right now my switcher and [[ suggestions make way too much noise.

1 Like
37

I feel the same… It’s the only thing that stops me from migrating all my notes to Obsidian.

38

I want this.

I want to link certain embedded files like Excel spreadsheets and source repos, but I also don’t want Obsidian to spend so much time indexing them.

3 Likes
39

+1 for all the great reasons outlined above! (but especially for easy static site generation and the fun experiments it would enable)

1 Like
40

I’ve found that Obsidian does ignore hidden files (dotfiles), which works as an okay workaround for me right now.

But I’d love to see better support for this as well.

2 Likes
41

+1 Same thing (

1 Like