Drawer Explorer

Drawer Explorer

A pop-up file and tag explorer for Obsidian with modal, vim-style navigation and a live preview pane — inspired by the snacks.nvim / neo-tree explorer experience. Focus defaults to the tree, not a search bar.

• Modal navigation: hjkl through the tree, a/r/d file operations, x/y/p move & copy, Space for individual selection, and v/V for visual ranges — no mouse required.
• Filter like a picker: i focuses the fuzzy filter. In Files, Esc keeps the results for j/k navigation; in Tags, it returns to the hierarchy.
• Tags as a lens: press t to browse nested tags, focus one as a virtual collection, then progressively refine it with co-occurring tags.
• Preview pane: rendered markdown, images, .canvas minimaps, .base summaries — and a small provider API so plugins can add more types.
• Theme-aware, keyboard-first, works alongside vim plugins such as Vim Motions.

Status: young but daily-driven. Expect sharp edges; issues and PRs welcome.

Showcase

File lens

Browse the physical folder tree with modal navigation, file operations, fuzzy filtering, and rich previews for Markdown, images, Canvas, Bases, and text.

Tag lens

Focus a hierarchical tag, combine co-occurring refinements with AND, navigate the deduplicated notes, and inspect rendered previews without leaving the drawer.

Installation

Install Drawer Explorer from the Obsidian Community Plugin directory, or open Settings → Community plugins → Browse and search for Drawer Explorer.

Other installation options:

• BRAT for pre-release builds: add Fjx-dylanZ/obsidian-drawer-explorer as a beta plugin.
• Manual: grab manifest.json, main.js, and styles.css from the latest release into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/drawer-explorer/, then enable it in Settings → Community plugins.
• From source: npm install && npm run build, then copy the same three files (or use OBSIDIAN_PLUGIN_DIR=... npm run install:vault).

Open it with the Drawer Explorer: Open drawer command. Use Drawer Explorer: Open tag lens when you want a dedicated hotkey that opens directly into tags.

To type a file name right away, turn on Start in insert mode in the plugin settings. The drawer then opens with the filter focused.

Keys

Normal mode (default)

Tag lens

Press t in normal mode (or click Tags) to switch from physical folders to a metadata-backed tag tree. Parent tags include notes from nested descendants, matching Obsidian's own tag-search semantics. A note matching several active tags appears only once in the Notes results.

Focused tags are shown as chips above the filter. Counts update against the current result set, and tag edits made elsewhere in Obsidian refresh the lens from the metadata cache. Files whose metadata is still indexing are not incorrectly shown as untagged.

Tag navigation is resumable for the current Obsidian session. Reopening the drawer restores its scope, refinements, and expansion state. When the active note is visible in that scope, the cursor follows it; otherwise the previous logical row is restored. Text entered in the fuzzy filter is transient and is cleared on close.

Within the Tags section, Enter establishes a scope and follows its first note, while Space establishes the scope without opening one and keeps the cursor among refinements when any are available. Within Refine, Enter adds the highlighted constraint and follows the resulting notes; Space toggles it and stays. l only moves deeper—it expands a collapsed branch or moves to its first child—while h owns collapse and parent navigation.

The first tag-lens version is intentionally read-only: file creation, rename/delete, and cut/copy/paste remain in the file lens. Tag mutation needs a separate workflow because renaming or merging a tag can rewrite many notes.

Selection and bulk actions

Select items individually with Space (highlighted rows), or press v/V and use j/k/gg/G to extend an inclusive Visual range. Both controls edit the same selection: Visual mode retains existing selected items, updates its range as the cursor moves, and returns to Normal with v, V, or Esc while keeping the result.

d/x/y act on all selected items instead of the cursor row (p pastes the whole set). Selection survives filtering, so you can i-filter, select a few results, filter again, and select more — then cut and paste them into one folder. In Normal mode, Esc clears the selection.

Clipped items show a dot on the right edge — accent for copy, red (plus strikethrough) for cut — until pasted. X/Y takes items back out of the cut/copy clipboard.

Filter mode

Type to fuzzy-match file paths, or tag and note paths in the tag lens. Results where the query appears in fewer pieces rank first; among those, matches in the file name (or a tag's last segment) come before matches only in its folders or parent tags. Ctrl+j/Ctrl+k or arrows move the selection and Enter activates it. In the file lens, Esc pops back to normal mode keeping the filtered results so you can navigate them with j/k; in the tag lens it clears the transient search and returns to the restored hierarchy.

Previews

The right pane previews the selected item. Built-in providers:

Adding a preview provider (for plugin devs)

Providers are resolved first-match-wins. From another plugin:

const drawerExplorer = this.app.plugins.plugins["drawer-explorer"];
drawerExplorer?.registerPreviewProvider(
	{
		id: "csv-table",
		canPreview: (file) => file.extension === "csv",
		render: async ({ app, el, file, component }) => {
			const raw = await app.vault.cachedRead(file);
			// render into `el`; use `component` for MarkdownRenderer lifecycles
		},
	},
	{ before: "text" }, // outrank the generic text provider
);

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the code map and provider guide.

Vim Motions integration

vim.keymap.set("n", "<leader>e", function()
	vim.cmd("obcommand drawer-explorer:open")
end, { desc = "Explorer drawer" })

-- global (works when focus is outside the editor):
vim.obsidian.keymap.set("<leader>e", ":obcommand drawer-explorer:open", { desc = "Explorer drawer" })

License

MIT