Do we have any progress, update, workaround, plugin or solution on this issue?
I’m wondering whether running obsidian as a different user and restricting access for certain folders could be a workaround.
Obsidian would simply be unable to parse or index these.
That would require preserving file extended attributes across sync solutions, but may be feasible.
I really appreciate obsidian. Thanks for this great piece of foss!
I also really want this feature. I am using Obsidian with Quarto, and it generally works really well, except Obsidian messes with folders that are intended just for Quarto.
I’m having the same issue. If I have a node_modules folder within my vault, Obsidian becomes very slow and it becomes completely unusable (it remains stuck to the “loading workspace” screen).
I don’t understand why this feature is being neglected by the development team. Introducing a .obsidianignore file would be extremely easy and effective.
I don’t want to store my project files outside the vault. I’d rather ditch out Obsidian for another app that does not have this limit.
I’m trying to install some npm packages to help me format my dataviewJS folder (which is growing into a bit of a repository since I started using CustomJS) however the node_modules folder immediately caused a ton of issues
This feature would be great
Me, too. I need this feature. Thanks!
Absolute bump +1. My vote is for simple wildcard directory ignoring, like directory/*
same issue. I would have to restructure my vault quite a bit to make the plugin useful…
Anyone got any update on this, I am struggling with Mega Rubbish folder too. My notes refer to it quite often, and it’s a mess. Obsidian Excluded files is not working properly, as it doesn’t prevent linking to it.
If a note called “Proteins” fell into this Rubbish folder and another is part of my actual vault files (e.g. Biochemistry/Proteins), a note that’s originally containing a reference like [[Proteins]] would lead me to Rubbish/2024-01-16/Proteins when I click which I can’t get rid of…
I also need this for my workflow
When I’m using Obsidian for study notes I like to use it as a file manager as well storing all my course related document, which because a problem when course related document is itself a scripting project, even a small git repository, sometimes with hundreds of files that slow Obsidian down like crazy
If I could throw in my own 2 cents - The biggest improvement Obsidian could make in my life right now for this great piece of software would be this ability to completely exclude folders (by regex or glob) from everything.
I depend on Obsidian now, and on multiple occasions I have lost hours dealing with hassles in one way or another coming down to this issue.
I too am a developer who wants to use Obsidian as my Markdown editor for README documentation in repositories contained as subfolders within one large parent mono repo.
Bump +1
+1 No exclude for indexing is a blocker for the use case I care most about.
An include config file would be just as vital. I have an existing research folder with all sorts of guff in it. I could sensibly and efficiently start using Obsidian to organise it, if only I could tell Obsidian to only include/index .md files, and files of other patterns I determine. There is such a variety of guff in my research dir tree that exclude rules would be onerous.
Exclude rules are still necessary, however, for dirs Obsidian doesn’t have permission to read (upon which it chokes, fatally), and dirs that are full entirely of chuff without any meaningful notes or research artifacts.
What is the point of offering the option of using an existing folder as a vault if include/exclude rules cannot be setup to manage it?
Politely adding my +1 to this. Similar use case, I’d like to store git repos in my vault, but node_modules kills the performance.
I’m all for the include/exclude feature. I would also like a mechanism to (deemphasize/exclude/not index) folders based on if they contain a certain file, like how .nomedia makes the media scanner on Android ignore its containing folder.
+1 for this feature. In my scenario, often I want to paste some long text (e.g. very long logs from some code), and do not want to make Obsidian super slow because it will index everything.
+1 to this feature request!
my use case is having a repository with an Astro project that i have markdown files for blog posts.
it would be great to be able to create and edit those markdown files in Obsidian and then just go to VS Code to push it to the repo, while ignoring the node_modules folder entirely and not loosing any performance.
i already tried multiple regex to exclude paths with “node_modules” but none worked, Obsidian still slowed down.
+1 for this!
Initially I’ve searched a possibility to name my attachment folder .attachment so it would be hidden by default from everywhere, but it breaks pasting into documents.
This option is reasonable alternative for my needs
This feature is a must-have. So, I decided to find a solution that works for me in Obsidian until I have finished developing my own “Everything App” 
I’m using an overlay filesystem, with my Obsidian vault as the “lower” directory, and an “upper” directory that contains everything that I don’t want to be visible, searchable and indexed by Obsidian. I.e. GIT repositories, source code, binaries and whatnot.
This is how I mount it in Linux:
sudo mount -t overlay overlay -o “lowerdir=/path/to/vault,upperdir=/path/to/vault.diff,workdir=/path/to/vault.work” /path/to/everything
From the shell, from IDEs, and whatever other tools you use, you can use /path/to/everything. In Obsidian, you open /path/to/vault like usual.
Under the hood, the overlay filesystem will ensure that anything you create somewhere under /path/to/everything will be stored in the vault.diff (upper) directory. The “work” dir should just be an empty directory (initially), that the overlay filesystem will use internally for some operations.
Full documentation here:
https://docs.kernel.org/filesystems/overlayfs.html
There might be some overlay filesystem implementations (maybe FUSE-based?) for macOS and Windows as well, but I haven’t looked into it since it’s not really relevant to me personally. But for Obsidian users on Linux, hopefully this can be helpful! 