File Explorer/Manager inside a Tab with multiple views

[Tu2_atmanand]

I wanted to know if there is any plugin to achieve the following :

A Tab which shows files and folders in a Grid view

When the vault grows too big, viewing all the files and folder in the sidebar files explorer becomes clumsy.
I know I can simply open my OS File Explorer for this, to view all my files and folder in a grid view or in any other view. But I think if there is a plugin to do this, it might help me from opening a new application.

A better idea for this feature will be having different types of views to view all the files and folders like list view, grid view and tree view which is more like Midnight Commander file explorer.

[CawlinTeffid]

I believe one or more of the “folder note” plugins include a tile view option. (There may also be plugins that do just that; I’m not sure.)

[Tu2_atmanand]

Yeah, the Folder Note does what I want to see, but that requires me to create a file under each folder and kind of annoying, I simply wanted to surf my vault and see how the folders has been organized, so using this different view, I might improve my vault folder structure.

I recently found a much better plugin called Vault Explorer, I think it’s doing the job in a much better way, but I probably will need to tweak the plugin, to make it the way I want it. Better to know someone has already created it.

[peeragetalkers]

There’s a feature request for this:

Grid Layout/Card View/Masonry Gallery

Use case or problem We organize our lives in Obsidian, yet the current file explorer presents our notes as a mere list of titles–missing the rich visual context that makes note-taking apps like Craft, Google Keep and Evernote so delightful to use. When working with dozens or hundreds of notes, being able to view snippets, images, and metadata at a glance becomes essential–not just convenient. While the hover preview is helpful, it’s inefficient for scanning through many notes quickly. There’s …

In this post, see “List of community plugins in question” for a quick overview of plugins that add card views to Obsidian.

[Tu2_atmanand]

Ohh cool…
Thanks for sharing, I didn’t know so many plugins already existed to see the notes in Grid View.

Although, your feature request is focusing more towards visualizing the notes as cards, so the user can know what content inside those notes and get a better intuition about the notes and whether they should be in those folders or not. This will be a very useful feature, I would love to have it. But what I basically wanted is to simply have a file explorer with multiple views. The Midnight Commander way of exploring folders is an awesome way I think to get an idea of how the vault has been divided into sub-folders and sub-sub-folders, and which notes exist inside these folders. So, while surfing in these folders, if I felt like, the file A shouldn’t be in this folder, then I can move it to the suitable folder. So organization of files will become better.

First I thought Grid view is a great way of achieving this, but after using few of the plugins, I think in grid view it will occupy a lot of area from the screen for showing those cards. So, I guess the Midnight Commander way of exploring the folders will be the correct way for me to explore and organize my vault. But yes, for sure your feature request will be going to help a lot.

So I guess, I might create a new feature request for this, or will try to use more of these plugins to achieve the requirement. (Or third option is to create a new plugin, don’t have time for that at present.)

Resolved the links issue in my post, my bad.

[peeragetalkers]

I’m not at all familiar with Midnight Commander. Looking at screenshots, it seems that you want separate panes for folders and files? There’s a feature request and workarounds for this too:

Option to separate folders from notes in file explorer

I would like an option to have one panel for folders/subfolders and a separate panel that displays the notes in the currently selected panel. See e.g. Notable’s separation of tags/subtags and the files that fall under the currently selected (sub)tag.

[Tu2_atmanand]

@peeragetalkers

Looking at screenshots, it seems that you want separate panes for folders and files?

Not exactly, in Midnight Commander, as you keep clicking on sub-folders, it opens new panes on the right side. So this way you know like what all folders and files are there 3 levels out, or 2 levels out or just 1 level out. Everything becomes visually clear in front of your eyes, how you have structured your sub-sub-… folders. Maybe see YouTube videos, might find something on how it actually works.

But hey, you saved me from I guess, building another plugin to have Midnight Commander functionalities. I think the File Tree Alternative Plugin is almost close to MC functionality. I think, this will do the job.
Thanks again, got what I was looking for!

[peeragetalkers]

You’re welcome. But a word of caution about File Tree Alternative. I’m in the middle of a project where I need to move files between folders and subfolders extensively. I thought I’d utilize the pseudo-two-pane Evernote view that the plugin offers but I found it to be more of a nuisance than an aid. There seems to be a bug where the entire plugin pane becomes completely blank, forcing one to disable/reenable the plugin to resolve this. This had happened so often that I gave up on this plugin and went back to the vanilla explorer. But YMML.

I haven’t gotten around to making a bug report on GitHub for this because:

1. I couldn’t determine the exact steps to reproduce the bug (and at this point I’m not going to try). I think this always happened when I moved notes between folders.
2. The plugin doesn’t seem to be actively developed as of now.