obsidian-spaces

TL;DR

• Switch between curated views of your vault's folders and notes
• Reorder notes and folders by dragging
• Lightweight: no runtime dependencies, no network requests

Spaces is a plugin for Obsidian that supercharges a vault by letting you gather contextually relevant content into a space. A space is similar in spirit to a Notion teamspace: a view of your vault scoped to one piece of work, with its own contents and its own tabs. It changes what and how you see your vault, not what your vault contains.

Spaces are a lens, not a reorganisation. A note or folder lives at one real path, and can belong to zero or more spaces. Nothing here renames, moves or deletes anything in your vault.

All	A curated space	A folder pinned space

Same vault, same notes, same paths. Only what the explorer shows changes. All is Obsidian's own tree, untouched. A curated space contains one or more arbitrary item(s) you picked. A folder pinned space contains the children of a chosen folder: creating a new note or folder here creates it under that folder's real path.

Navigate spaces by either:

• Clicking a space icon in the space strip
• Clicking your space's icon at the top of the space view
• Using the command palette

Two kinds of space

Curated spaces hold notes and folders you pick by hand. Add a folder and everything inside it comes along; the parent folders needed to reach your files appear dimmed, as scaffolding rather than members.

Folder pinned spaces are a live window onto a single folder. Its contents appear at the top level of the explorer, the folder itself is hidden, and anything you later add to that folder shows up without you doing anything. New notes created while you are in the space land in that folder.

A space's type is fixed when you create it: a curated space can never become a folder pinned space, or the reverse.

How Spaces differs from Workspaces

Obsidian's core Workspaces plugin saves and restores layouts (which panes, tabs and sidebars are open) and you save and load them by name. It does not change what the file explorer shows.

Spaces works the other way round: it filters the explorer, so picking a space changes which notes and folders exist on screen. Tabs follow as a consequence of switching rather than something you save by hand.

The two overlap on tabs, so Spaces defers. If the core Workspaces plugin is enabled, Spaces stops restoring tabs, says so once, and leaves layouts to Workspaces. Filtering carries on as normal, and the setting you chose is left exactly as you set it.

Additional features

Remembers your tabs, if you ask it to. Turn on Restore tabs when switching spaces and each space keeps its own tab layout and sidebar state. It is off by default, so switching moves the file tree and leaves your panes where they are.

Lets you open anything. Open a note that is not in the current space and it appears anyway, dimmed and italic, as a visitor. Links never lead to nowhere. Visitors last as long as you keep them open in a tab.

Reorder as you see fit. Drag rows in the tree to arrange them, remembered separately for each space. Drag the icons in the space strip to reorder your spaces.

Puts finished spaces away. Archive a space instead of deleting it, and restore it later with its notes, folders and order intact. See Archiving.

Requirements

• Obsidian 1.13.0 or later
• Desktop only. The manifest declares isDesktopOnly: true, so Obsidian does not offer the plugin on mobile

Mobile support is on the roadmap. Two things stand in the way today: reordering rides Obsidian's own HTML5 drag events, which never fire from a touch gesture, and the filtering works against the desktop file explorer's DOM, which mobile lays out differently. Both are solvable, neither is verified on a phone yet, and the manifest stays honest about that until they are.

Installing

Build Spaces from a local copy of this repository:

npm install
npm run build

Then copy main.js, manifest.json and styles.css into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/spaces/, creating that folder if needed. Restart Obsidian or reload the plugin, then enable Spaces under Settings → Community plugins.

If your vault uses a custom config folder, substitute it for .obsidian.

main.js is build output and is not tracked in the repository, so rebuild after pulling or switching branches; otherwise Obsidian keeps loading the previous build.

Quick start

1. Enable the plugin. The space strip appears along the bottom of the file explorer, with All at the left.
2. Click + at the right of the strip, run the Create space command, or right-click empty space in the file explorer and choose New space. The explorer pane turns into a creation form.
3. Type a name. Optionally click the dashed square to the left of the name to choose an icon, and Choose icon color to set its color.
4. Choose what goes in it:
   • Curated opens a searchable tree of your vault. Click any notes and folders to include them.
   • Folder pinned shows folders only; pick exactly one to pin the space to.
   • Both are optional. A space with just a name is a valid empty curated space.
5. Click Create space. Spaces switches you into it, and the file tree narrows to match.

1. Name it	2. Curate it	3. Pin it to a folder

Click All to leave the space and see the whole vault again.

Adding and removing things later

Drag a note or folder from the file tree onto a space's icon in the strip to add it to that space. Select several and they all go in together. The icon marks itself while you hover, so the one that lights is the one that will take the drop, and a notice afterwards says what was added. Nothing moves on disk: the note stays exactly where it is and the space gains a member.

When Spaces can see that your selection runs past the edge of the file tree's view, it declines the drop and says so. Select fewer notes and folders, then drag again.

A space pinned to a folder declines the drop and says why. It shows that folder's contents rather than a member list, so there is nothing for a drop to add to. To put a note inside that folder, use Obsidian's own "Move file to...".

The drag needs a pointer. In All, the context menu below does the same job from the keyboard. Inside a space the menu acts on that space alone, so dragging is the only way to put a note into a different space without switching spaces first.

Right-click a row in the file tree:

• In All, Add to space offers each of your spaces.
• Inside a space, Remove from <space name> removes a member. A row that is in the space because you added its parent folder shows a disabled entry naming the folder it came from. Remove the folder, or use Stop showing here to dismiss a visitor.
• On a folder in All, Create folder pinned space builds a space pinned to it in one step.

Right-click a space's icon in the space strip for Rename space…, Change space icon…, Change space color…, and Restore saved ordering.

A row in the file tree	A space's icon in the strip

Only spaces that can take the row are offered: a folder pinned space is a window onto its own folder, so it never appears in Add to space.

Tags

A curated space can hold a tag as well as notes and folders. Every note carrying the tag appears in the space, wherever it lives in your vault.

To add one:

• In the creation form, switch the picker from Vault to Tags and click a tag.
• On an existing space, open Settings → Spaces, click Contents… beside the space, and type the tag under Add a tag.

Nested tags match. A space holding project includes notes tagged project/atlas and project/atlas/phase-1. A space holding project/atlas includes only that tag and the tags nested under it.

Add the tag to a note and it appears, change or delete the tag and it leaves. Tags written in a note's properties and tags written in its text both count.

A tag leaves out any note whose path matches Ignored paths under Settings → Spaces → Preferences. To show one of them anyway, add that note to the space yourself. A note you add by hand is shown whatever the ignore list says.

To drop a single note without dropping the tag, right-click it inside the space and choose Remove from <space name>. The note is listed under Left out in Contents…, where Put back returns it.

Properties

A curated space can hold a property as well as notes and folders. Add the property due to collect every note whose frontmatter has it, or add status with the value active to collect only the notes where status is set to active.

To add one:

• In the creation form, switch the picker from Vault to Properties. Click Has property beside a property to collect every note that has it, or open the property and click one of its values.
• On an existing space, open Settings → Spaces, click Contents… beside the space, and fill in the property under Add a property, with a value if you want one.

Values match without regard to capitals or surrounding spaces, so a note with status: Active is collected by the value active. The property name has to match exactly: Status and status are different properties. A list property is collected by any of the plain values in the list, so a note with topics: [atlas, billing] is collected by the value atlas. A property with no value still counts as having the property.

A note joins the space when it gains a matching property and leaves when it no longer matches. Properties mix freely with notes, folders and tags in one space. Tags are not available as a property. Use Tags instead, which also finds tags written in a note's text.

A property leaves out any note whose path matches Ignored paths under Settings → Spaces → Preferences. To show one of them anyway, add that note to the space yourself. A note you add by hand is shown whatever the ignore list says.

To drop a single note without dropping the property, right-click it inside the space and choose Remove from <space name>. The note is listed under Left out in Contents…, where Put back returns it.

Archiving

Archive a space you are finished with instead of deleting it. In Settings → Spaces, click Archive beside the space.

An archived space leaves the space strip, the dropdown in the space header, the Switch to space picker, the next and previous space commands, and Add to space. It keeps its notes and folders and its place in the order. If you were in the space when you archived it, the file tree goes back to All.

Archived spaces are listed under Archived at the bottom of Settings → Spaces. Each has Restore and Delete. Delete is permanent.

To bring one back, click Restore. The space returns to the same position on the strip. Restoring does not open it, and the file tree stays where it is. Click the space to go in.

If a note or folder the space held has been moved, renamed or deleted, a window lists each one before the space comes back. Each row shows the path that no longer resolves, and under it whether you added that note or folder to the space yourself or it is the folder the space is pinned to. Click Choose folder… to pick the folder it moved to, which keeps a note's own name. Click Type path… for a note that was renamed as well as moved, then enter its new path. Click Remove from space to take it out of the space. Leave a row alone to restore it unchanged, and click Undo to clear an answer you have given. A folder space's own folder can be pointed or left, not removed. Nothing changes until you click Restore in that window, and Cancel leaves the space archived. A tag or a property is never listed.

If a note or folder moves while that window is open, the change you made for it is skipped and a notice names it. Open the space and set it again.

If Restore tabs when switching spaces is on, an archived space keeps any tabs Spaces saved for it. Archiving the space you are in saves its tabs first, the same as switching away from it.

Sorting

Drag a row in the file tree and that arrangement is saved for the space you are in. Spaces keeps those orders separately for each space and for All, and nothing moves on disk.

You are not stuck with a hand-made order. Use the file explorer's own sort button and pick any of Obsidian's modes, and the space renders with that instead. Your saved order is set aside, not discarded, and it comes back untouched.

1. Your order	2. Obsidian's sort menu	3. One of its modes

Spaces adds User ordered to that menu as a seventh mode, ticked when your saved order is what you are looking at. Picking it is one of three ways back:

• User ordered in the sort menu. It appears once the space has an order to return to, so a space you have never dragged a row in will not show it.
• Restore saved ordering on the right-click menu of a space's icon in the strip.
• The Restore saved ordering command, which also covers All.

Two things worth knowing:

Which mode is Obsidian's, not the space's. What Spaces remembers per space is whether to show your order or Obsidian's sort. The sort mode itself is Obsidian's single setting, so putting one space in A to Z and another in modified-time at the same time is not something this can do. One space on your order and another on Obsidian's sort works fine.

Your orders sync; the choice between them does not. Saved orders live in data.json and travel with your vault. Which spaces are currently showing Obsidian's sort is local to each device, so the same space can show your order on one machine and Obsidian's sort on another.

While a space is showing Obsidian's sort, dragging rows in it is switched off, and Spaces says so once rather than silently ignoring the drag.

Space strip placement

The space strip can sit along the bottom of the file explorer, which is the default, or move to the top, left or right.

Left and right show it as a full height vertical ribbon down the side of the pane.

Top puts it between Obsidian's own toolbar row and the space header. Obsidian's toolbar stays above the strip in every placement.

Placement is saved per vault in data.json, so it survives a restart and travels with the vault.

There are three ways to change it, and all three go through the same setter, so a hotkey, the dropdown and a drag can never disagree about where the strip ends up.

The Space strip position dropdown, in Settings → Appearance, sets it directly.

Four commands in the palette, Move the space strip to the top/bottom/left/right, do the same without opening Settings.

Dragging moves it by hand, but only once you ask for it.

The strip stays locked most of the time. Locked is the default, and it is also always the state you find it in after a restart, whatever it was left at before. Locked shows no handle and no extra chrome at all.

Run Unlock the space strip and a grab handle appears at the strip's leading edge, pushing All and the rest of the icons along to make room for it. Drag the handle toward an edge and the region the strip would occupy there lights up; release over it to drop the strip in place. Run Lock the space strip to end the mode and hide the handle again, or right-click the handle and choose Lock the space strip from there instead. A strip that hides itself stays visible while it is unlocked, and hides again once you lock it.

The palette only ever offers one half of that pair at a time: Unlock the space strip while it is locked, Lock the space strip while it is unlocked, never both.

The lock is a mode, not a setting. It lives only for as long as Obsidian is open, is deliberately absent from Settings, and always starts locked again the next time Obsidian loads the plugin.

Hiding the strip

When the strip is on the left, turn on Hide the space strip in Settings → Appearance to get the width back. It is off by default, and it is only offered when the strip is on the left and your device has a pointer that can hover.

A narrow lip stays at the left edge of the file tree. The rest of the strip slides out of view and the file tree uses the space.

Move the pointer to the left edge of the file tree and the strip slides back out over it. The file tree does not move. Move the pointer past the strip's right edge and it closes again at once.

Dragging still works. Drag a note toward the hidden strip and it slides out and stays open until you drop, so you can drop the note onto a space icon. Reordering spaces by dragging their icons works the same way.

Keyboard focus still works. The strip stays in the tab order, and tabbing into it brings it back until you tab out again.

Commands

All available from the command palette, and bindable to hotkeys.

Command	What it does
Switch to All	Leaves the active space and shows the whole vault
Switch to space	Opens a search box; type a space's name to switch to it
Next space / Previous space	Cycles through your spaces
Create space	Opens the creation form in the explorer pane
New note in active space	Creates a note, in the pinned folder if the space has one
New folder in active space	Creates a folder, in the pinned folder if the space has one
Add active file to space	Adds the file you are editing to a space you choose
Pause or resume space filtering	Releases the explorer entirely, showing Obsidian's own unfiltered tree
Restore saved ordering	Returns to your own row order after switching to one of Obsidian's sort modes (see Sorting)
Move the space strip to the top / bottom / left / right	Repositions the space strip, the same as the Space strip position setting below
Unlock the space strip	Shows a grab handle for moving the strip by hand
Lock the space strip	Hides the grab handle again

Settings

Settings → Spaces has three pages. Appearance holds the settings that change how the explorer looks; Preferences holds the behavioral ones; Spaces lists your spaces, where you can rename one, review its members, archive it, or delete it. Every setting here is findable from Obsidian's own settings search.

Setting	Default	What it controls
Show the space name above the file tree	On	A header row naming the active space
Mark folder pinned spaces with a pin	Off	Adds a pin to that header for a folder pinned space; hover it for the folder
All stays at the left of the space strip	Off	Keeps All in place while the other icons scroll
Space strip position	Bottom	Where the strip of space icons sits in the file explorer. Left and right show it as a vertical ribbon
Active space style	Shaded	How the strip marks the space you are in. Shaded shades it the way your theme shades a selected row, Boxed adds an outline in the space's color, Bolded draws the icon at a heavier weight and no shading
Assign a color to new spaces	On	New spaces take the next palette color. Off, they start neutral and you pick
Drag indicator	Box	How the file pane shows where a dragged row will land. Box opens a gap between the rows and fills it. Line draws a thin rule at the boundary and moves nothing
Use theme colors for space icons	Off	Draws every space icon in your theme's icon color. Your saved colors are kept and come back when you turn it off
Show notes you open that are not in this space	On	Whether visitors appear. Off, a non-member note you open stays hidden
Ignored paths	Empty	One glob per line, hidden from every space. * matches within a path segment, ** across segments. A tag or a property leaves out what is listed here. A note you add by hand is still shown, and so is a note you have open
Allow reordering a space's notes and folders	On	Whether dragging rows rearranges them inside a space
Allow reordering outside spaces	On	The same, for All
Restore tabs when switching spaces	Off	Whether each space restores its own tabs. On, switching also rearranges your panes; off changes nothing about which rows are visible
Compact folder chains	Off	Draws a chain of folders that leads to a single folder as one row named for the folders it replaces (see below)

A space that gathers notes from across your vault shows the folders they live in, so one note several folders deep costs several rows. Turn on Compact folder chains under Settings → Appearance, and a chain of folders that leads to a single folder draws as one row named for the folders it replaces, such as Work/Clients/Northwind. Folders you added to the space yourself always keep their own row.

The compacted row is the deepest folder with a longer label, so collapsing it, its context menu and dropping onto it all act on that folder. The setting is vault-wide.

A row whose path is wider than the file explorer drops its leading folders, one at a time, until the rest fits. Research/2026/Q4/Projects/Atlas/Design/Decisions reads ../Q4/Projects/Atlas/Design/Decisions in a pane that is a little too narrow and ../Design/Decisions in a much narrower one, and the row names the full path when you hover it. Widen the file explorer and the folders come back as soon as they fit. Turn Shorten long compacted paths off to always draw the whole path.

Your files and your data

Spaces never creates, renames, moves or deletes notes as part of managing a space. The two creation commands above make files because you asked them to; everything else only changes what the explorer shows.

Spaces, settings and saved row orders live in data.json inside the plugin's own folder. Tab layouts and the selected space are kept in Obsidian's local storage for the vault.

The plugin makes no network requests. A test (tests/noNetwork.test.ts) scans the source for fetch, requestUrl and socket calls and asserts there are none, and that the plugin ships no runtime dependencies.

Limitations

• One active space per window, applied to every file-explorer leaf.
• A space's kind is fixed at creation: a curated space cannot become folder pinned, or the reverse.
• Dragging to reorder rows or spaces needs a pointer; both gestures stand down on touch.
• Dropping notes and folders on a space icon needs a pointer too. The file explorer's context menu offers "Add to space" in All; inside a space it offers only that space, so adding to a different one from the keyboard means switching spaces first.
• A space pinned to a folder does not take the drop at all, because it has no member list. Use Obsidian's own "Move file to..." to put a note inside its folder.
• The item picker in the creation form draws at most 200 rows at a time and tells you how many more matched. Keep typing to narrow it.

Development

npm install
npx tsc --noEmit    # strict type check
npx vitest run      # the test suite
npm run build       # type check, then bundle to main.js

Support

If Spaces earns a place in your vault: Ko-fi for a one-off, or GitHub Sponsors.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.