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🌈 Colorful Folders for Obsidian
Transform your Obsidian file explorer from a dull list into a vibrant, organized, and high-performance visual dashboard. Colorful Folders automatically applies premium color palettes, smart icons, and structural intelligence to your vault. Whether you want a strictly organized, monochromatic workspace or a neon-glowing cyberpunk aesthetic, this plugin makes navigation intuitive and your workspace beautiful.
🚀 Latest: 4.1.4 - The "Visual & Performance" Update
4.1.4 introduces Zero-Lag Performance Hardening by decommissioning the legacy animation engine in favor of high-performance static visual standards. Includes negative slider limits for seamless divider lines. Full Changelog
📏 1. New: Seamless Divider Connectivity
Set divider line gaps as low as -10px to allow lines to perfectly intersect your central "pills" or icon backgrounds.
✨ Core Features
🎨 Vivid Color & Visual Hierarchy
- Color-Coding Hierarchy: Automatically assigns distinct, beautiful colors to your top-level and nested folders.
- Visual Wayfinding: Uses glowing connector lines to create a clear "breadcrumb trail" to your currently active file.
- Stunning Built-in Palettes: Choose from preset themes like soft Pastel Dreams or high-contrast Neon Cyberpunk, or enter your own comma-separated hex codes for brand consistency.
- Smart Rainbow Logic: Cycle files independently through your palette for a full rainbow effect, or use the Adaptive Heatmap that seamlessly syncs with your chosen colors.
- Minimalist & Monochromatic Modes: Force subfolders to inherit their parent's color for strict organization, or use Outline Only Mode to remove background tints entirely while keeping the bright connecting lines.
🤖 Smart Iconography
- Auto-Icon Engine: Automatically detects folder and file names and injects high-fidelity Lucide/SVG icons based on categories (e.g., Journal -> 📅, Finance -> 💰, Tech -> 💻).
- Built-in Offline Libraries: Ships with 6 curated local icon sets (including Material, FontAwesome, and Vibrant packs) for instant, zero-latency styling without an internet connection.
- Enhanced Iconify Support: Import seamlessly from Iconify with perfect alignment, alias preservation, and custom offset support.
- Independent Icon Styling: Change icons and emojis without overriding your custom colors. Native icons are automatically replaced for a unified workspace.
- Universal 18px Sizing: All icons are standardized to a professional 18px baseline with perfect vertical centering across all themes and font sizes.
📁 Advanced Customization & Typography
- Individual File/Folder Styling: Right-click any item and select "Set Custom File Style" to override its color, icon, and text formatting.
- WYSIWYG Menu: The custom style modal intelligently pre-fills with the exact colors currently visible in your vault, sensitive to dark-mode brightness.
- Advanced Typography: Instantly make key projects stand out with bold and italic toggles, or custom text color overrides.
- Smart Inheritance: Force a specific style down an entire folder tree or instantly style all files within a folder to match its aesthetic.
📐 Organization & Spacing
- Section dividers: Add vertical visual dividers to group your files and folders. Includes Markdown support for rich descriptions in glassmorphic popovers and a dedicated smart editor. Features asymmetrical spacing (independent left/right gaps) and support for solid, dashed, or dotted lines.
- Dynamic item counters: Display recursive statistics showing the total count of folders and files contained within a directory, color-matched to their parent folder.
- Exclusion Lists: Keep utility directories like
attachmentsortemplateslooking standard and unaffected by plugin styling.
🕵️ Stealth & Privacy Engine
- Visual Privacy: Hide any file or folder from the sidebar with a single click via the context menu.
- Ghost Mode: Toggle semi-transparent viewing of hidden items with a sleek blur effect.
- Password Protection: Secure your privacy settings with a custom Password Modal featuring shake animations for invalid attempts.
- Management Dashboard: A new "Privacy & stealth" card in settings to manage all hidden items and recovery options.
⚡ Performance & Visual Stability
- Cross-Platform Engine: Built for zero-lag performance with a robust CSS engine that works identically on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.
- Static Premium Standards: All animations have been decommissioned in favor of hardcoded, high-performance static visual standards (e.g., Luminous Selection) to ensure zero GPU stutter.
- Vault Maintenance Tools: Includes one-click buttons to "Reset All Styling" or "Clear Icon Library", plus an Icon Debug Mode to track exactly how auto-icons are being applied.
🛠️ Installation
Via BRAT (Recommended & Fastest)
Using the BRAT (Beta Reviewer's Auto-update Tool) plugin is the best way to install Colorful Folders. It ensures you receive the latest feature drops, bug fixes, and color presets the moment they are released.
- Install the BRAT plugin from the Obsidian Community Plugins gallery.
- Go to Settings > BRAT > Beta Plugin List.
- Click Add Beta plugin.
- Paste the repository URL:
https://github.com/RohitNahar-Offical/colorful-folders-obsidian - Click Add Plugin.
- Enable Colorful Folders under your Community plugins tab.
💡 Pro Tip
You can access all styling configurations by navigating to Settings > Colorful Folders. Look for the large "💡 Pro Tip" banner at the top of the settings page for hidden tricks, including how to set up custom overriding colors!
👨💻 Developer Documentation
If you are a developer looking to understand the internal architecture, contribute features, or debug the styling engine, please refer to our comprehensive technical guides:
- Developer Master Guide: The entry point for all technical documentation.
- Internal Engine Architecture: Deep dive into the rendering pipeline and logic flow.
- API Reference: Detailed class and method documentation.
- Customization Guide: Advanced CSS snippets and styling overrides.
Developed with ❤️ by ROHIT-NAHAR