File list contains images? Yuk?

[DrGary]

I’m new to Obsidian and creating my first notes. I pasted an image into a note and see that it displays correctly. Great. But it also created a new note in the note list with a non-human-readable name like “pasted image 23423434”. It’s going to make my note list hard to read if every resource file is shown there. Is there a way to hide them? I see a preference about hiding extensions, but it didn’t seem to work for the note list.

[sanyaissues]

When you add an attachment (as an image) the images need to be stored somewhere, by default they go to your vault’s root. You can change where the attachments will be stored:

1. Create a folder attachments in your vault

2. Go to settings settings > files and links > Default location for new attachments and choose In the folder specified below
   

3. Under the Attachment folder path option select the folder that you created.

   
   
   
   This way the attachments will be stored in a folder:
   

To avoid the “ugly name” you can try the Paste Image Rename plugin

[ariehen]

Just to add a bit to the above, I think most folks keep their all attachments in a specified folder (I do), with the Default location for new attachments set to this.

For me, the only exception is if a project has images, etc., that I want to keep together with the project notes. Then they manually get put in an assets folder within the project itself. e.g.

.
├── 00 meta/
│   ├── assets/
│   │   ├── img1.jpg
│   │   └── my great novel.pdf
│   ├── templates/
│   └── templater/
├── 01 inbox/
├── 02
├── 03
└── 04 projects/
   └── 2024 - back deck/
       ├── assets/
       ├── concept.md
       ├── materials.md
       └── timeframe-before-winter.md

[DrGary]

Thanks for the great info, @ sanyaissues and @ ariehen.

It seems that the “Attachment folder path” must be inside your vault. I couldn’t specify an absolute path. I understand that Obsidian markdown files are just text, so the assets like pngs need to be stored somewhere. The problem is that creating an ‘assets’ or ‘attachments’ folder in the vault or in a subfolder means that the assets folder shows up in the notes list. But it’s not a note, so thats seems wrong from a UI perspective. Also, when I sort my notes by “modified time (new to old)”, the assets folder always stay at the top. That’s also wrong UI-wise when notes have been modified without assets changing.

Is there a way to hide the assets folder or put it somewhere where it doesn’t show up in the notes list?

[sanyaissues]

Well, actually attachments are also “Content” that you are adding to your vault, it could be a PDF, an Image, etc… Pieces of relevant data that, by default, you don’t want to go to an obscure folder.

The beauty of Obsidian is that you can have it your way. If you don’t want to see the folder just hide it. Try file-hider.

[Feralflora]

Also, it’s not called the “note list” by Obsidian, but the File Explorer, so it does exactly what is says on the box. So your comment about the UI being “wrong” is a mismatch of expectations rooted in this misconception.

[ariehen]

By default, folders are sorted above notes/files. You’ll see numbers used a lot (like in my example) to set the order to your liking. The feature request for custom folder/note sorting is here:

File Explorer Custom Sort

I would like to be able to drag/drop files in the file explorer into a custom sort that can be toggled on/off along with other sort options.

You can use CSS or the plugin mentioned above to hide the folder from the Files tab, but I would just tuck it away in a sub-folder. You may want to see what’s in there, rename attachments, etc.

---

You can also absolute link to or embed external images outside of your vault, e.g.

![123.jpg](file:///C:%5CUsers%5CUSERNAME%5CDesktop%5C123.jpg). More examples here: Linking to external files & folders 🔗

[sanyaissues]

Probably right know you only have some .md files and because of that it seems weird to have some PNG hanging there, but, I speak for myself, the more you use Obsidian, the more you will be tweaking how you store the data, and probably you will have different methods for different task (Is not the same how you treat the list of your favorites movies than your meeting notes or the book you are working on).

Also, at some point you will have some CSS snippets, JS scripts, templates etc… that’s why some of us have a general folder for those things. This is an example of one of my Vaults:

Keep writing, keep playing and asking until you feel comfortable.