GridSense

GridSense

Excel-grade grid over your Obsidian notes' frontmatter — a standalone alternative to Bases for hands-on-the-keyboard data editing.

What it does

• Folder-scoped grid view — open any folder as an editable table (folder context menu → Open in GridSense, or the command/ribbon). Rows are notes; columns are the union of frontmatter properties, ordered by usage.
• Real multi-cell selection — click-drag, Shift+click, Shift+arrows, click a header to select a column.
• Excel keys — arrows/Tab/Enter navigation, type-to-edit, F2/Enter to edit, Esc, ⌘D fill down, ⌘R fill right, ⌘C/⌘V TSV copy-paste (works with real spreadsheets), Delete clears, ⌘Z undo.
• File metadata columns — Modified, Created, Size, Extension and Folder, toggled in the columns manager. They sort by the real underlying value, and date columns filter with in the last … days, after and before, so "the notes I touched in the last thirty days" is one condition. The same fields are available to the stacked filters as file.mtime, file.ctime, file.size, file.ext, file.folder, file.name and file.path.
• Per-column filters — a funnel button on every column header opens an Excel-style dropdown: fuzzy-search the values, tick the ones you want, filter blanks, sort, or add a condition (contains / is / > / is empty …). ⌘⇧L turns the buttons off and clears the filters; ⌘Z brings them back.
• Add row form — the ＋ row toolbar button (or Grid: add row…) opens a stacked form with a field per property, value autocomplete from what the column already contains, a live path preview that warns before a name collision, and Create & add another for typing several rows in a row. One ⌘Z removes the whole note again. The inline draft rows at the top and bottom of the grid still work for quick entry.
• Open Stashpad notes in Stashpad (setting, off by default) — when a grid row's note lives in a Stashpad folder, clicking it opens the note in Stashpad's own view (keeping its parent/children context) instead of the markdown editor. Cmd/Ctrl-click and middle-click do the same in a new tab. Needs the Stashpad plugin; every other note opens normally, and nothing breaks when Stashpad is absent.
• Find & replace in selection (⌘F) — or the whole grid when nothing is selected.
• Heading-content columns — add a read-only column showing each note's body text under a chosen heading (for the stuff you keep outside frontmatter).
• Spreadsheet importer with helper columns — paste from Excel/Sheets/Numbers, map columns to properties, and add extra helper columns (empty, or with a default) that are seeded on every imported note so the grid has ready-to-fill columns the source didn't contain.
• Compiled database — the grid is rendered from a compiled snapshot of your frontmatter, persisted as JSON under .obsidian/plugins/gridsense/db/, auto-invalidated by metadata-cache events.
• Keyboard-first property editor — command Edit properties of current note: navigate, edit, rename, add, and delete properties without touching the mouse; every write is undoable.

All writes go through Obsidian's processFrontMatter — nothing touches your note bodies.

Installation

GridSense is in the community plugin store — in Obsidian, go to Settings → Community plugins → Browse, search for "GridSense", install, and enable.

Other ways to install:

• BRAT (for pre-release builds): add grub-basket/GridSense in BRAT.
• Manual: download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release and copy them into <your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/gridsense/, then enable GridSense in Settings → Community plugins.

License

MIT