Show / hide which file types to be shown in file explorer

an option to select / deselect what file types are shown in file explorer would be useful
not everything that is in a folder needs to be shown - e.g. pictures that are referenced in md-files,
intentionally exclude pdfs, etc.
the limitation to / exclusion of file types then must be indicated somewhere

41 Likes

Why don’t you move it to feature request branch?

1 Like

Moved to feature requests.
Not a bad idea :+1:

2 Likes

It can be just a line where we will specify which extensions we want to see (like Zettlr).
E.g.

.pdf .jpg .jpeg .png .gif

Or complement with something more advanced like specifying the file type (just complement, extension by extension is much more important).
E.g.

  • [ ] Videos
  • [ ] Documents
  • [ ] Musics
  • [ ] Images
  • [ ] Compressed
4 Likes

Most other tools or MacOSX Finder has either shown or not.

+1 for the idea

1 Like

Bumping this thread :frowning_face:

It’s really difficult to organize the notes/documents when you have 30+ notes and a lot of them have images/files. Becomes a sorta mess to locate the notes in the left sidebar where you have notes as well as the media files.

I think there should definitely be a way to hide the media files from the left sidebar.

4 Likes

Similar to Hide select vault folders from Obsidian. It’d be great to be able to tell Obsidian what to show/hide in terms of non-note files.

For my own purposes, it’d be fine to say “ignore PDFs, JPGs, and PNGs.” But I could also see hiding individual files being useful, so maybe that’s a path worth walking, too.

The use case: I keep notes on e.g., projects that also feature lots of other resources. I don’t want to keep separate folders on my file systems for the PDFs for those projects, but I also never want to refer to them in Obsidian. Right now there’s no escape, though. I am continually haunted by Receipt 25303.pdf. Haunted! :ghost:

3 Likes

Might be worth merging this with Show / hide file types to be shown in file explorer to boost the like count on either request

1 Like

A similar issue: I don’t really want external links to show on the graph, but sometimes they do. A show/hide toggle for these would be great as well.

+1 for this. Would be nice to also show .txt by default.

3 Likes

I have all of “my data” in one big folder, “Life.”

Under that folder, I have subfolders such as “Music” and “Woodworking” with files (both .md and non-.md) within those folders. (e.g. the “Music” folder has .md file for music theory notes, and also my .mp3s).

I’d like to see the non-.md files in Obsidian’s File Explorer, so I can keep related data “close together” so I have context for the full structure, and so I don’t accidentally delete “empty” folders which are really just folders with non-.md files inside.

This feature would be combined well with “open file in other app” options for those non-.md listings.

12 Likes

Love the idea. I would like to treat Obsidian not only as a note taking app, but also as a hub for my research projects.

Example: I heavily use MindManager. It would be great to see and be able to “open with default app” my Mind Maps directly from Obsidian,

Andy

3 Likes

Not sure if this is universally helpful, but I’ve taken to using web-links to OneDrive URLs to link to non-MD content. If you’re using it in a consistent folder, using file:// as the markdown link will work as well.

Or .mmd, which is, sometimes, used for MultiMarkdown.

You can create a css file like the following:

div[data-path$='assets'], 
div[data-path$='assets'] + div.nav-folder-children 
{
	display: none;
}

div[data-path$='.png']{
	display: none;
}

Replace assets and .png with the folder name and extension that you want to exclude.
This is a workaround until such a feature may be integrated in some years.
(Usually you would setup this once. So that’s a workable workaround)

16 Likes

+1 for this feature request – Toggle visibility of non .md files in file explorer

Although I’ll try to work in .md formats as much as possible going forward, colleagues may not. Adding their non .md files to mine should probably not make their stuff hidden :slight_smile:

out1
Folder has 5 files but only 3 are shown. One could imagine navigation getting harder with more files – think 50 files in folder but only 30 are visible.

1 Like

+1 for this feature request

I’ve just started using obsidian and I like it so far… BUT this is a huge friction problem for me starting out. I noticed this thread is pretty old does anyone know if any solutions have been found?

Thanks,
Chris

2 Likes

Ditto here. The best I’ve found is setting up the folder where to automatically put attachments.

Settings → Files & Links → Attachment folder path

It is annoying that every time you drag an attachment in (image, pdf, etc) the attachment folder opens to show that the file is there, but it’s better than nothing. :slight_smile: