Grid Layout/Card View/Masonry Gallery

[peeragetalkers]

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 a clear demand for more visual ways to browse notes. A grid/masonry layout would transform folders from simple file indexes into rich visual spaces that offer a bird’s eye view of our knowledge and creativity.

This would significantly improve the experience of:

• Visual thinkers who process information spatially
• Those managing large note collections
• Anyone who wants their knowledge system to feel more alive and explorable
• Teams collaborating on shared vaults

Proposed solution

Add a second, grid/masonry view mode for folders that, for each tile, displays:

• Note title
• First few lines/paragraphs
• Thumbnail preview of first image or attachment
• Key metadata (tags, date modified)

The layout should maintain snappy performance even with many notes and provide all currently available sorting options.

The grid view could be accessed by clicking on folder name, replacing the current expand/collapse action, which would be relegated to the chevron button. (That’s how it’s implemented in Folder Note and MAKE.MD community plugins.)

Implementation could follow the successful patterns seen in apps like Craft and Google Keep, while staying true to Obsidian’s clean aesthetic.

Additional examples

Current workaround

Canvas

It’s possible to drag & drop a folder onto Canvas to bulk create cards for each of its notes. This is only an acceptable solution for working with a very limited number of notes due to the static nature of Canvas, and due to performance dips if lots of cards are added.

Community plugins

While some community plugins offer grid layouts, they tend to:

• Live within dedicated notes rather than enhancing the core UI
• Lack polish and optimization
• Are hobbyist projects with little to no support
• Are purely visual and miss key features like note management
• Require extra maintenance overhead

A native implementation would provide the seamless, performant experience that such a view calls for.

List of community plugins in question

1. Cards View

2. Notes Explorer (offshoot of Cards View)

3. Vault Explorer

4. MAKE.MD

5. Note Gallery

6. Obsidian-Notes-List (requires Dataview only)

7. Kanban

8. Lineage

9. AidenLx’s Folder Note (last updated May 5, 2023)

10. Card View Switcher (last updated Mar 17, 2022)

11. Card View Mode (last updated Oct 2, 2021)

12. Folder Note (last updated Feb 20, 2021)

Related feature requests

This request was previously voiced in:

• Preview all notes as tiles in the right pane
• Select folder to view all contained notes in main pane
  
  

Requests in the same vein of adding new and better ways to browse folders

• Flat view - Folder toggle - (mode to only show files in Explorer pane) - goes hand-in-hand with the request above
• Note list view with fragments of note body
• Canvas gallery view
• Continuous View - Scrivener Like
• Open file automatically in accord to file explorer focus using keyboard navigation
• Option to separate folders from notes in file explorer

Related posts

• Plugin for 3 pane file explorer with note previews
• Note previews, gallery/grid view mode with images if the note has an image near the top, and note preview mode in graph view
• Index card view
• Is canvas all in one possible?
• Enhancing Note Viewing and Navigation in Obsidian: Seeking Tips and Tricks : r/ObsidianMD
• How can I make Obsidian home page look like Google Keep? : r/ObsidianMD

[Jopp]

Pinterest is a good example, how to organize images in an appealing and effective way.

Well, I think the concept of “note walls” works as long as there’s some image present in a note, preferably on the top of a note. Otherwise, how should “note walls” work? OK, there are callouts and other stylistical elements to diversify text, still images are the most immediate way to recognize quickly content.

In one of the latest versions of obsidian mobile, v.1.7.4, Obsidian changed suddenly (textual) tabs to a visual overview of tabs, visual organization.

I’m not sure if “note walls” are so effective without images.
To be honest, I really liked the simple, compact view of textual menus of tabs before the introduction of Obsidian mobile v1.7.4, the access to textual lists is much quicker, than looking and eventually, scrolling through a looong list of image cards. I mean, “note walls” are very very nice to have, but not essential at the end, at least without images.

BTW, with the keyword “card” you get a lot of matches in community plugins to “try out” this concept to see how “useful” this idea really is, in everyday use.

Talking from my experience , I used some of these “note walls” plugins too and wasn’t able to integrate them as a new habit to search notes in a regular fashion, so I also dropped them after a short while.
For text navigation, this feature looks more like toys than a tool - I prefer dynamic tables created by dataview.
That’s me at least.

[Tu2_atmanand]

This feature varies from user to user. However, since most of the popular services have this feature built-in, it has become a habit for many users to view their notes in a card view on the homepage to see recent notes. As a result, this feature can be essential for users transitioning from those apps to Obsidian. Personally, I think it would be great to have this as an additional built-in feature in Obsidian.

It’s not necessary to completely replace the current vault navigation method (tree view on the left-side section) with this new navigation style. Instead, it could be offered as an optional feature.

The closest way to implement this is by using the Dataview plugin to create a homepage that can open at Obsidian startup. In terms of UI and displaying recent notes, I’ve found the Card View plugin to be the closest match for this functionality. However, it still requires some improvements, such as better image display support and handling the content of the cards to make it look better at that scale.

[peeragetalkers]

While images certainly enhance the visual appeal of the card view, I disagree that visual media is its defining value or functionality. The card view excels even for text-only content.

Here’s a personal example: I’ve compiled a large note containing hundreds of inspirational quotes. Although breaking them into separate notes would offer greater versatility, I prefer keeping them together to preserve their collective essence. When viewed as a whole, the collection becomes more impactful than its individual components.

The “wall” analogy you used is fitting. It’s like pinning an entire folder of notes onto a wall to survey them at a glance, capturing the big picture. In contrast, the current setup feels like flipping through pages in a notebook, limiting the ability to view the broader context.

Canvas, while useful, doesn’t quite solve this. It requires manual updates and arrangement, which adds friction. The card view, by contrast, is seamless—it’s dynamic, requires no setup, and organizes itself automatically.

Although the Cards view plugin comes close to achieving this vision, it’s still got a long way to go.

You may take a look at “Additional examples” under “Proposed solution” to get a better idea of what I mean.