Advanced Exclude

Advanced Exclude

Obsidian's Files and links > Excluded files setting does less than its name suggests: excluded files still sit in the Files pane, still turn up in Backlinks, still appear in search. They are de-emphasized, not excluded.

This plugin makes them behave as though they are not there, and lets you say which ones with gitignore syntax — the pattern language you already know — kept in two places: global patterns in the plugin settings, which Obsidian Sync carries to every device, and local patterns in a .obsidianignore file for this device only. Your existing .gitignore and Obsidian's own setting can feed it too.

[!WARNING]

The plugin makes Obsidian behave like the ignored files do not exist. This might affect features like Obsidian Sync, Obsidian Publish, etc.

Ensure you configured the plugin correctly to avoid data loss.

Demo vault

The documentation is a demo vault. Every feature has a note that explains what it does and why you would want it, with folders already in place to hide and un-hide.

Start reading here — it is plain markdown, so it works on GitHub with nothing installed.

A copy of the vault ships with every release. You can access it via any of the following:

1. Running the Advanced Exclude: Open demo vault command.
2. Downloading advanced-exclude-demo-vault.zip from the Releases. It unzips into a single advanced-exclude-demo-vault-<version> folder.
3. Browsing its source in demo-vault/ in this repository.

What it does

• Exclude with gitignore syntax — a folder, an extension, a path, in two settings text areas: global patterns that sync with your vault, and local patterns kept in .obsidianignore for one device. A line starting with # is a comment, as in .gitignore; write \# for a pattern that really starts with #. 01 Exclude a folder

• Whitelist instead of blacklist, including the negation trap that catches most people: once * ignores everything, folders must be re-included with !*/ before any !file rule can reach inside them. 02 Whitelist with negation

• Catch pattern mistakes as you type — every pattern box lists, under it, the lines that match nothing (an unclosed [, a lone \ at the end, a ./ path) in red, and the lines that probably mean something else (a \ between folders, a trailing space, a regular expression copied from Obsidian's Excluded files) in amber. Nothing is blocked: every line is still saved and applied. When .obsidianignore is edited outside Obsidian and gains an error, a notice names the line when you come back.

• Choose where patterns come from and how hard they hide — your .gitignore, Obsidian's own Excluded files setting, and how completely an ignored file disappears: Full removes it from Obsidian's index, so even a 30,000-file folder is never indexed; Files pane hides it from the Files pane only; Soft leaves it out of search, the quick switcher, link suggestions, graph, unlinked mentions and Bases, exactly where Obsidian's own Excluded files applies, while it stays in the Files pane and in links. The extra sources are off by default, so a fresh install changes nothing until you turn one on. 03 Exclude mode and sources

• Pick the features the Soft mode reaches — search, graph, unlinked mentions and the rest each have a toggle, so a folder can be left out of unlinked mentions only while search and graph still find it. 03 Exclude mode and sources

• Exclude notes by property, in the Soft mode — visibility: gm-only keeps a game master's notes out of search and graph without moving them. 03 Exclude mode and sources

• Hide folders left empty by exclusion, cascading up through parents whose whole subtree went away. Genuinely empty folders stay visible. 04 Settings

• Switch between profiles — named sets of patterns and settings that compose with @import, so Focus can import Work and add its own lines, with !negation working across them as in one .gitignore. @import file:<vault path> pastes a vault file's patterns the same way, so @import file:.gitignore places the vault's .gitignore anywhere in a profile. The profiles sync with the vault; each device picks its own active one from the status bar. 05 Profiles

See also

My other Obsidian resources

Last searched for similar plugins on 2026-10-26.

Installation

The plugin is available in the official Community Plugins repository.

Beta versions

To install the latest beta release of this plugin (regardless if it is available in the official Community Plugins repository or not), follow these steps:

1. Ensure you have the BRAT plugin installed and enabled.
2. Click Install via BRAT.
3. An Obsidian pop-up window should appear. In the window, click the Add plugin button once and wait a few seconds for the plugin to install.

Debugging

By default, debug messages for this plugin (id: advanced-exclude) are hidden.

If you need to enable them refer to the documentation.

Changelog

All notable changes to this project will be documented in the CHANGELOG.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING to get set up.

Support

Filing an issue (for AI agents and humans)

Open issues through the issue forms, not as blank issues.

To report a bug from inside Obsidian, run the Advanced Exclude: Report a bug command. It opens the bug form with the plugin version, the Obsidian version and your operating system already filled in.

Filing from the CLI or the API (gh issue create --body, or an AI agent filing for you) skips the form, and gh issue create --template cannot load an issue form. In that case, open the matching form in .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/, copy every field as a ### <label> heading in the form's order, and fill in each one. Always state the plugin version, the Obsidian version and your operating system.

License

© Michael Naumov