Show Hidden Files

English | 简体中文

Show hidden dot-files, dot-directories, and symlinks in Obsidian's file explorer — and open any non-Markdown file (code, config, logs, ...) in a syntax-highlighted viewer/editor instead of Obsidian refusing to show it.

Obsidian's file explorer hides anything starting with . and only really knows how to display Markdown, images, audio/video, and PDFs. If your vault (or a symlinked directory inside it) contains .gitignore, .env, config files, or plain source code, you either can't see them at all or can't open them meaningfully. This plugin fixes both problems.

• Toggle via the ribbon icon (eye / eye-off) or the "Toggle hidden files visibility" command
• Dot-files and dot-directories (.obsidian, .git, .env, ...) appear in the file explorer when enabled
• Symlinks are followed and shown too — not just dot-prefixed ones. A symlinked directory anywhere in the vault (e.g. local/harness/artifacts/<link>) gets its target content injected into the tree, whether or not the link itself starts with a dot
• Stays in sync as the underlying filesystem changes (deletes, renames) — a debounced watcher reconciles the injected entries so deleted paths don't linger as stale tree items
• Optional italic + dimmed styling for hidden entries, so they're visually distinct from real vault content
• Configurable exclusion list (.git, .DS_Store, .obsidian, .trash by default) — supports exact names, full vault paths, and prefix/* wildcards, so things like .git's huge internal tree don't get enumerated and slow the explorer down

Opens 40+ file types (.js/.ts/.py/.go/.rs/.java/.c/.json/.yaml/.toml/.sql/.sh/.env/ .gitignore/..., plus filename-based detection for Dockerfile/Makefile/dotless configs) in a dedicated view instead of Obsidian's "no viewer available":

• Preview mode — renders through Obsidian's own Markdown renderer inside a code fence, so it gets your theme's normal syntax highlighting, with real line numbers and a wrap/no-wrap toggle
• Edit mode — a real CodeMirror 6 editor (syntax highlighting, bracket matching, fold gutter, undo history) with Mod+S to save
• Copy button for the full file content, plus double-click the path label in the toolbar to copy the absolute or vault-relative path
• Files Obsidian already handles natively (Markdown, images, PDF, audio, video — the exact list is configurable) are left alone; this view only takes over what Obsidian can't already render

• Native extensions list — extensions that should always fall through to Obsidian's own viewer instead of being captured by this plugin (defaults to Obsidian's actual built-in support: md/canvas/base, common image/audio/video formats, pdf)
• Force code-view path regexes — make specific paths always open in the code viewer even if they'd normally get Obsidian's native handling (e.g. force .md files under a templates/ folder to open as raw text instead of rendered Markdown)

Filesystem access (symlink following, direct fs reads for speed) is desktop-only — gracefully degrades to Obsidian's own async adapter.list()/adapter.read() on mobile, where hidden-file visibility depends on whatever the platform's adapter already returns.

Note: the plugin's own in-app settings tab UI is currently labeled in Chinese (显示隐藏文件/目录, 屏蔽的路径, ...) — the table above is what each one means/does, in English.

Not on the community plugin registry — clone/copy into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/show-hidden-files/ and enable it in Settings → Community plugins.

npm install --legacy-peer-deps   # obsidian@latest currently has a peer-dep mismatch
                                  # against the pinned @codemirror/* versions in package.json
npm run build

MIT