Focus mode

Plugins ideas
1

I would love to see a focus mode where you can focus in and only see notes from a specific folder. This would be great when you have a writing inbox folder for instance. It’s easy to get distracted by all the other notes, so I would like to hide everything else away and only work with what I have in my inbox.

9 Likes
2

You can achieve the effect you want by making that folder a nested vault. So long as you are aware of the caveats and potential risks.

1 Like
3

What would be the potential risks? From what I’ve seen I need to redo all configurations like shortcuts/themes/etc in the nested vault which makes it really hard to maintain.

2 Likes
4

Risks depend on the way you have set up your settings. Especially the path and whether you use markdown links. I’ve seen no problems when I tested, but usually I use shortest path and don’t use markdown links. It’s important for all file names to be unique, else there could be a clash when you are in the higher vault. You won’t be able to make or use links with files outside the folder.
I think you can save a bit of time by copying your .obsidian file into the root of the new vault - though prefer to set each vault up individually.

Safest way is to test it first. Copy the folder to a different location. Work in that until you are confident there are no problems. Once happy, copy the folder back; this should bring all the changes with it.

As always a robust backup process is advisable.

There will be no interaction between the vaults.

5

current workarounds and related requests:

Context menu in file explorer contains option “Show in system explorer”.
Search results can be filtered by “path:” search operator.
AutoHotkey code to add search prefix automatically is here.

Integration of search with file explorer is requested in Unified files and search view and in File Explorer to be more like Windows (sort by properties) /Merge with search .

keywords: directory, folder, narrow, restrict, scope

1 Like
6

I’m working on a plugin for this.

Here’s the initial idea (you can run this in the console of the developer tools):

var app_container = document.querySelector('.app-container');
var view_content = document.querySelector('.view-content');
var collapse_buttons = document.querySelectorAll(
    '.workspace-ribbon-collapse-btn'
);

Array.from(collapse_buttons).forEach((collapse_button) => {
    var is_not_collapsed = collapse_button.getAttribute('aria-label') !== 'Expand';

    if (is_not_collapsed) {
        collapse_button.click();
    }
});

if (app_container.style.visibility !== 'hidden') {
    app_container.style.visibility = 'hidden';
} else {
    app_container.style.visibility = 'visible';
}
view_content.style.visibility = 'visible';
7

Plugin is up:

PR submitted:

1 Like
8

Hi - I just checked out this plugin, but it doesn’t seem to address the focusing on folder request above; just focuses on active pane. Is there another setting I should use?

9

Just a thought, you might be able to change your vault to a sub folder and then change it back again after your Focus session. Of course, all the notes you need would have to be in that sub folder.

I have no idea if there are ramifications of changing the vault location back and forth. And obviously if you had another computer/phone syncing your vault, that could be a mess.