Enable use of hidden files and folders starting with a dot /dotfiles/.dotfolders within Obsidian

Feature requests
,
61

+1
please)

1 Like
62

+1 on this. I make use of .folders and .files all the time, I get the need to not show the .obsidian folder in the vault, but that could easily be made as a non-removable default exclusion.

1 Like
63

Chiming here, terribly belated, not to add a +1 (although I wish this feature existed and not sure why it goes against standard convention however that’s neither here nor there), but to provide a solution.

I’m aware there is a plugin that can achieve this hiding, yet I believe this to be absurdly overkill to remove a folder from a filetree. So… I came up with a simplistic CSS snippet to achive this.

.nav-folder-title[data-path="3. Resources/Scripts"],
.nav-folder-title[data-path="3. Resources/Templates"] {
  display: none;
}

This hide it’s from the filetree, and given my Scripts folder only contains .js files they’re not searchable anyway, but in the case of templates I am still able to search my those files and alter them in Obsidian should I wish. Although I have hidden from

Some people suggest turning on “Detect all file extensions”, and then adding a plugin called obsidian-vscode-editor, however I don’t consider Obsidian a code editor… this is what VSCode—or nvim—is for!

I hope this provides someone in the future a glimmer of hope until we can get a technical explanation as to why dot files/folders are not allowed, and/or the feature is enabled. You’re welcome in advance!

2 Likes
64

Hidden files are not the only reason to allow files that start with a dot. For example, I want to create a note for “.NET” related topics.

Workaround: I had to use a ‘․’ (0x2024) instead of the standard ‘.’ (0x002e) to allow this. Fortunately, this special character still shows up in search results when searching by the standard dot, so that’s good, but I imagine renaming these files later when support is added, may be tedious.

On a side note, I’ve just started trying Obsidian because I love the aesthetic and fuller feature set, but in Logseq, which isn’t even out of Alpha yet, this just works.

3 Likes
65

+1 for this

66

+1 on this thing

67

+1 for this

68

+1 :grin:

69

+1. muuuuch needed.

70

How is this still a problem? It should be straightforward to add the option to stop ignoring these files.

For me, I wanted a quick and easy way to link to my .gitignore because it sometimes needs to be updated, but not does it fail to show up when “Detect all file extensions” is enabled, but Obsidian creates a Markdown file (.gitignore.md), then refuses to acknowledge it exists, but errors that the file already exists. Even when converting this to a standard link instead of the Wiki-style ones, it will not let me link to a dotfile.

(Using file:/// linkes is unacceptable, because the link should work from any Markdown processor on any system instead of being tied to an absolute file path.)

1 Like
71

My temporary workaround is to create a shell script to open the file and link to that.

Apparently 10 minutes is so long ago that I couldn’t possibly need to edit my reply. :smiley:

72

I really need this. Images look clumsy in my folders.

73

any news from devs? can we get this on the next update?

1 Like
74

The same problems here:

  • required a possibility to attach files without extension or dot file, i.e. files with names starting with dot
  • required a possibility to name notes and folders with name starting with dot
  • required a possibility to view attachments without extension or dot files (now I get an unexpected behavior - obsidian creates a new page, i.e. new file with .md extension)

Can’t really see objective limitations that prevent this from being allowed and implemented.

75

Same here, took a while to understand the problem. Hidden folders for assets is usefull, should be a valid option for configuration

77 
/* hide path's with __before and ending with__ */
.nav-folder-title[data-path^="__"][data-path$="__"] {
  display: none;
}

This one works better :nerd_face:

1 Like
78

Thanks! That’s a great idea.
But since it might have multiple classes, this would work better.

/* hide path's with __before and ending with__ */
[class~="nav-folder-title"][data-path^="__"][data-path$="__"] {
  display: none;
}
79

This, unfortunately, does not address my use case, which is to make individual files invisible, but still referenceable.

I currently have a Hazel rule that notices when I drop a PDF into Obsidian and it automatically creates a markdown file with the same name and some frontmatter that gets extracted from the PDF, along with an ![[the-pdf-file.pdf]] to render the contents of the PDF into my Markdown. This works wonderfully to add the ability to put metadata on my PDFs within Obsidian.

It would just be so nice to make the PDF itself invisible, so I don’t see everything twice in my file explorer.

80

I am a new Obsidian user. One of the first things I tried to do with Obsidian was to put pasted images into .attachments. I was surprised that this doesn’t work currently. +1 from me.