I would also like something like this (see Folder locking/hiding (vs nested Vaults) to solve unrelated concerns? )
I don’t need selected folders to be encrypted or compressed physically. I would actually prefer if nothing happened to locked folders when looking them in the OS. I would not even need password for unlocking. Or encryption, compression, password should be only optional.
I would like the possibility to lock (or hide) selected folders within Obsidian. Locking/hiding would mean that the contents of locked folders would not be accessible/visible to Obsidian and the user (as if those folders were none existent). Why? For two purposes (both are important to me):
- Temporarily reducing number of notes in the vault hence gaining speed.. Say, I have home, hobby and work folders under the root. They are quite interlinked but I know that in the next session I will only work on a specific project in the work folder. Temporarily locking the home and hobby folders and keeping the work folder unlocked could greatly reduce the number of active notes in my vault, and make things faster, during that session. (Obsidian would not load any notes in locked folders into memory or whatever.) But if during the session it turns out that I do need to access a note in the hobby folder, that would be just one click away.
- Temporarily hiding notes in a robust and safe way. Say, I am discussing over some of my Obsidian notes with other folks and I would like to avoid that some private notes are accidentally clicked and displayed. (Excluding folders with e.g. the “-path:private” search string is overriden if you click on a note in that path, so it is no help in this case). This kind of folder locking would be a perfect and very yrobust solution.
I should note that I could achieve this funcionality by simply moving out a folder from the vault before starting Obsidian: Notes on a graph in an out-moved folder have different colour. When I click on one of them, I get an incorrect error message (“Folder already exists.”) but otherwise I have experienced no problem with this approach so far. When I need that folder, I simply move it back to its original place (I could create an OS alias to know where a folder belongs), of course before starting Obsidian. Certainly, I will not move folders in and out of the vault, while Obsidian is running.
This could be done much more intelligently in Obsidian with a plug-in, without physically doing anything with the folders. That is outside Obsidian nothing would be different. Some ideas:
- Select one or several folders and have the command: “Lock selected folder(s)”.
- Select one or several locked folders and have the command: “Unlock selected folder(s)” and “Unlock all locked folders”.
- Locked folders and notes in locked folders would be indicated visually also (maybe with a lock !
. (On the graph, they already have different colour if they are in a folder that I moved out from the vault.) It could be an option setting whether their names would be still visible or only the lock icon. - As an option to be set in the preferences, clicking on a note that is in a locked folder would bring up a pop-up or something offering “Unlock” or “Unlock (the note and the enclosing folder(s))” and “Unlock all locked folders”. If this option would be not set, one just have a sound (of a misplaced click whatever).
Maybe you can add other functionalities. Anyway, currently I am experimenting with moving folders out (and back in when needed) the vault before starting Obsidian.
Please note, that nested vaults can not provide the functionality of temporary locked folders.