How to see if a header has backlinks?

[midas0441]

I understand that renaming a header auto-updates links only if you use the dropdown menu to change its name, but… how to tell whether I should be worried whether a particular header has backlinks? If there are no backlinks to the header, then I can edit its name very simply (without using dropdown menu).

I am aware of the backlink pane but that seems to list backlinks pointing to the current note. What about backlinks that point to a specific header within the note?

Related:
https://forum.obsidian.md/t/add-clickable-indicator-to-headers-that-it-has-backlinks/1242?u=midas0441

[DEV_Scribbles]

You could use the Block Reference Count plugin which shows a reference count beside a header/block when it is linked somewhere else.

It won’t show the header’s backlinks but should suffice for your need

Edit:
Tried the plugin and clicking the reference count actually shows the backlinks

[midas0441]

Thanks for the tip. The preview video on the GitHub site appears to be a broken link.

A brute-force method I’ve been using is to scan the backlinks for the file to see if any links contain a format note-title#header-title. That is obviously quite tedious.

[shabegom]

I’ll fix the link. The plugin basically does what you want.

[I-d-as]

I want to preface this by saying the plugin is perfectly good for most use cases. I also very much appreciate the plugin and am going to start using it on smaller vaults.

That being said, it really would be so very nice to see this as a core feature. I have a large vault and get performance issues when using the plugin. Again, on a lighter vault, the plugin works just fine. But, unfortunately once installed and after giving it a full day of use to index, it still made my vault regularly pause while scrolling and even typing no matter what I tried. Also, often times even then the reference count buttons would disappear. I have this as the only community plugin installed. Of course, I truly hope to find a way to get it to work and return and delete this post, but until then I will strongly voice my support to make something like this built in. Fortunately, there appears to be a non-zero amount of hope to hold onto:

Automatic/inline update of links to headers and blocks when they are modified (no extra dialog window)

It’s not your fault, I do think the trello card was poorly worded (for brevity). Check out Block-reference-count plugin, it’s a good solution for knowing when to use the rename functionality and maybe some of that will be implemented in core.

Again, this plugin appears to be a good solution for most, as it was recommended by a very trustworthy source. I will surely continue to troubleshoot it and see if I can get it to operate normally on my vault.

Thanks!