Easy Links

Easy Links

Internal links that include a folder, like [[Personal/SurfacerAI]], normally display the whole path. Easy Links shows just the file name — SurfacerAI — while keeping the link target untouched, so clicking still navigates exactly where it did. Aliased links like [[Personal/SurfacerAI|Alias]] are left alone.

Features

• Hide the folder path — un-aliased internal links show only the basename (A/B/Note → Note), in both reading view and live preview. Heading and block refs are preserved: only slashes in the folder path are collapsed, so A/B#Heading → B#Heading and a slash inside an anchor (Note#A/B) is left untouched.
• Embeds keep their full path — ![[A/B]] is not shortened in either mode, so embed labels stay consistent between live preview and reading view.
• Edit-friendly live preview — optionally reveal the full path on the line your cursor is on, so links stay easy to edit.
• Plain link color — optionally color internal links like normal text instead of the accent color.
• Smart link suggester — optionally replace Obsidian's built-in [[ popup for the plain case, floating notes from your most-used (or hand-picked) top-level folders to the top of the autocomplete. Off by default. Heading (#), block (^), and alias (|) completions still use the built-in popup.

Smart link suggester

When Smart link suggester is on, typing [[ opens a popup that ranks notes from your priority folders first, then by fuzzy match. It matches against both a note's file name and its frontmatter aliases, just like the built-in popup, and inserts links using your configured link format (fileManager.generateMarkdownLink), so wikilink-vs-markdown and shortest-path settings are respected. An empty query (just [[) lists priority-folder notes most-recently-modified first.

Priority folders are auto-detected as the top-level folders containing the most markdown notes, recomputed as the vault changes. Set Priority folders to pin specific folders instead.

This feature only intercepts the plain [[query case (no ], #, ^, |). Anything else falls through to Obsidian's native suggester untouched. To win precedence over the core link popup it reorders Obsidian's internal editor-suggest list; this is an undocumented internal API, accessed defensively and reverted when the feature is turned off or the plugin unloads, so disabling it fully restores the stock behavior.

Settings

• Hide folder path in reading view — shorten un-aliased link labels in reading view.
• Hide folder path in live preview — visually collapse the folder prefix in live preview.
• Reveal full path on the active line — show the full path on the cursor's line for editing.
• Plain link color — color internal links like normal text.
• Smart link suggester — float notes from your most-used folders to the top of the [[ autocomplete (off by default).
• Priority folders — comma-separated top-level folder names to float to the top, in order. Empty = auto-detect the folders with the most notes.
• Number of priority folders — how many top-level folders to auto-detect as priority (1–5; ignored when Priority folders is set).

Development

A TypeScript project bundled with esbuild (entry src/main.ts → root main.js). The live-preview feature uses Obsidian's bundled CodeMirror 6, so @codemirror/view and @codemirror/state are dev-only dependencies (esbuild externalizes @codemirror/*; they are never bundled).

Obsidian declares an exact peer on @codemirror/state, while @codemirror/view pulls a newer patch of it, so .npmrc sets legacy-peer-deps=true to let npm resolve the tree. A package-lock.json is committed so npm ci is reproducible in CI.

npm install          # install dev dependencies (honours .npmrc legacy-peer-deps)
npm run dev          # esbuild watch build (inline sourcemap, no minify)
npm run build        # tsc --noEmit typecheck, then a minified production bundle
npm run lint         # eslint with the Obsidian plugin-guideline rules

styles.css is hand-written at the repo root and auto-loaded by Obsidian. main.js and styles.css are committed — they are the release assets.

Release

npm version <x.y.z>  # bumps package.json, syncs manifest.json + versions.json, makes a bare tag
git push --follow-tags

Pushing the tag triggers .github/workflows/release.yml, which runs npm ci, lints, builds, verifies manifest.json matches the tag, attests build provenance, and publishes a GitHub release with main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css.