Binders

Folders in Obsidian list their notes by name. Books don't work that way. Binders turns a folder into a binder, like Scrivener's: its chapters and scenes keep the order you give them, in Obsidian's own file explorer. Open a binder to see the same notes as a corkboard, an outliner, one continuous manuscript you can edit, or a timeline of the story.

Everything stays plain Markdown. A binder is a folder plus one note that holds its order, and everything about a scene is in that scene's own properties. Turn Binders off and your notes are still ordinary notes.

Public beta. Binders is in public beta. Phone and tablet support is new and has had little testing on real devices. Report what you find in the issue tracker.

What it does

• Order. Notes and folders keep the order you give them, in the file explorer and everywhere else.
• Four views of one binder. A corkboard of index cards, an outliner with columns you pick, the whole manuscript as one page you can edit (or as its synopses, to read the outline), and a timeline of its scenes by story date, with your own calendar if the book needs one.
• Plan. Labels and statuses; filters by any property, saved with the binder; your own properties (point of view, characters, a place) pinned to the inspector; new binders and notes from templates.
• Track. Word count targets for a scene, a chapter or the book; a deadline that says whether you are on pace; a Progress window with the book's words over time and the days you wrote.
• Revise. Snapshots of a scene, a folder or the whole binder, to compare or bring back; revision tasks tied to their scenes; split, merge, duplicate and group scenes; find and replace across the book; undo and redo of moves, properties, renames, deletes, merges and splits.
• Export. A submission manuscript in standard manuscript format (Word or PDF), an ebook (EPUB) for Kindle, Apple Books and Kobo, a print-ready paperback PDF, a Scrivener project, or one note. Book styles you can change, with the real pages beside them, and named exports (Submission, Kindle, Paperback 6 × 9) kept with the book.
• Import. A Scrivener 3 project, or a Word, OpenDocument, rich text, Markdown or text file, as a new binder split at its chapters, with a preview you can put right first. The source stays as it is.
• Focus mode. The text and nothing else, with typewriter scrolling.
• Longform. Longform projects open as binders, and convert to them.
• Phones and tablets. The same views, by touch, on iOS and Android.

The manual covers all of it.

Installation

Binders needs Obsidian 1.13.4 or later, on a computer, a phone or a tablet.

• From Obsidian: open Settings → Community plugins → Browse, search for Binders, then Install and Enable. Binders is in Obsidian's community plugin directory.
• With BRAT, to try versions as they come out: install BRAT from Settings → Community plugins → Browse, run its command Plugins: Add a beta plugin for testing, give it fyresmith/binders and choose the newest version. BRAT installs Binders and can keep it up to date.
• By hand: download main.js, manifest.json and styles.css from the newest release, put them in <your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/binders/, and enable Binders under Settings → Community plugins.
• From source: npm install, then npm run build; see Development.

More in Installation.

Getting started

1. Make a folder a binder. Right-click a folder in the file explorer and choose Make this folder a binder. Its notes and subfolders keep the order they show in now.
2. Arrange its scenes. Click the folder. The binder view opens on it as a corkboard. Drag the cards into the order you want.
3. Switch to Manuscript and write. Click Corkboard at the top left of the view and choose Manuscript. The whole binder is one page, and each section is the note itself.

The walkthrough goes on from here to a first exported file.

Four views

Corkboard

One index card per note, with its title, synopsis, status, label color and word count. Drag cards to reorder them, or lay them out by label to see how a book's threads take turns. More

Outliner

The same notes as rows of a table, folders with their notes under them, with columns you pick: label, status, words, target, progress, or any property of your notes. More

Manuscript

Every note in order as one page. Each section is a real Obsidian editor on that note, so typing, undo, links and formatting work as they do in the note itself. More

Timeline

Scenes along story time, each at its story date and numbered as the manuscript has it. Long empty stretches are drawn short, and scenes with no date wait in a tray. Time runs down, or across on a computer or tablet. Drag a card to give it another date, or set dates from the menu, outliner or inspector. More

Your files

A binder is a folder plus one note that holds its order. Each scene is an ordinary note, and what its card shows (synopsis, status, label, target) are its properties. Binders changes a note's text only where you type or ask it to. How your files look has the whole account.

Limitations

• Public beta. The maintainer uses an iPhone; iPad and Android coverage is still through desktop emulation. What hasn't been tried is listed in full.
• Other file explorers. Plugins that replace the file explorer, such as Notebook Navigator, don't show binder order. The binder view works either way.
• Obsidian internals. Binder order in the file explorer and the editable manuscript rely on parts of Obsidian outside its plugin API. If an update changes one, Binders falls back (name order, a read-only manuscript) and says so.
• Snapshots, export styles and Obsidian Sync. Sync carries them only with "Sync all other types" turned on.
• PDF on a computer. A paperback, or a manuscript as a PDF, is made on a computer. A phone or tablet shows its pages.

The full list is in Known limitations.

Privacy

Binders makes no network requests and has no telemetry. Nothing is downloaded: the typefaces and hyphenation patterns export uses are inside the plugin.

It reads and writes outside your vault only through the files and places you choose:

• Export on a computer writes the file you export (a Word file, an EPUB, a PDF, a Scrivener project, a copy of a style to share) to the place you choose in the save dialog, and to that place again when you export again.
• Import reads the manuscript or Scrivener project you choose in the file picker or project dialog. It never changes it.

More

Documentation

License

MIT. The hyphenation patterns, typefaces and libraries inside the plugin are others' work, under their own licences: third-party notices.