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Mass Editor

by ondreu
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Description

Powerful mass search and edit across your vault: nested AND/OR query builder, safe bulk frontmatter/tag/body operations, backups and undo. - This plugin has not been manually reviewed by Obsidian staff.

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Latest Version

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Changelog

See all version on GitHub

README file from

Github

Mass Editor

An Obsidian plugin for mass search and editing of notes across your vault. Build a visual query (nested AND/OR groups with NOT), get a list of notes, and run bulk edit operations on them — safely, with backups and undo.

The UI inherits your active Obsidian theme.

ko-fi

Features

  • Visual query builder with nested AND/OR groups and NOT.
  • Two-phase search engine (metadata → content) with three-valued (Kleene) logic — note bodies are read only where metadata alone can't decide. Fast even on thousands of notes.
  • Fields: tag, frontmatter (per key), body, name, path, location (folder + recursion), created/modified dates.
  • Edit operations: frontmatter set / add / delete / append-to-list, tag add / remove, body append / prepend, regex find & replace (capture groups $1).
  • Result selection via checkboxes (all selected by default), with a live count.
  • Regex match preview: peek at the lines a regex operation will hit in any result (with the matches highlighted) before you run it.
  • Impact summary + change preview before applying: a per-operation breakdown, plus an optional dry-run diff of the body transformation on a sample of the selected notes — nothing is written.
  • Backup + undo: each run is a single transaction; restore from backup with drift detection. Only files that actually changed are backed up.
  • Git-style diff: inspect exactly what an edit changed in any note — a line-by-line comparison (backup before vs current after), unified or side-by-side, with word-level highlighting.
  • Export report: save a run as a Markdown note with a unified diff per file.
  • Presets: save and reload a query + operations combination.
  • Layout: single pane on desktop, two tabs on mobile.

Install via BRAT

  1. Install the BRAT community plugin.
  2. In BRAT choose Add Beta Plugin and enter the repository: ondreu/mass-editor.
  3. BRAT downloads the latest release; enable the plugin in Settings → Community plugins.

Open it via the ribbon icon (⟳) or the command Mass Editor: Open.

Usage

  1. Query — compose rules and groups. The AND/OR toggle is on each group, the NOT toggle on both rules and groups. The live count shows an estimate (up to N notes, until content rules are evaluated).
  2. Search — computes the full result (including reading bodies where needed).
  3. Results — uncheck any notes you don't want to change (all selected by default).
  4. Operations — add one or more edit operations.
  5. Apply — an impact summary is shown; after confirmation a backup is created and the operations run.

Operation order is fixed and deterministic: frontmatter → tags → regex → append/prepend.

Backups and undo

  • Each edit run backs up the affected files (only those that actually changed) and writes a manifest.json.
  • History and Undo are behind the history icon in the toolbar.
  • Undo restores files from the backup. If a file was manually changed in the meantime (drift), the plugin warns and offers skip / overwrite.
  • View changes: expand a run and click the compare icon next to a file for a git-style diff of the backup against the note's current content. Toggle unified / side-by-side; changed words within a line are highlighted; unchanged runs collapse into hunks with surrounding context.
  • Export report: the download icon on a run writes a Markdown note (in the report folder) containing the run metadata and a fenced unified diff per file.

Backup location tradeoff: the default backup folder is inside the plugin folder (.obsidian/plugins/mass-editor/backups/). That folder may not sync and reinstalling the plugin can delete it. For durable backups, set a path inside your vault (backupFolder) in Settings.

Settings

Key Default Description
Backup folder plugin folder Where to store backups
Backup retention 20 Number of runs to keep
Confirm before apply on Confirmation dialog
Select all results by default on New results start selected
Regex scope body only body (safe) / whole file (YAML risk)
Report folder Mass Editor Reports Vault folder for exported run reports
Side-by-side diff by default off Two-column diff layout instead of unified
Live count debounce 200 ms Recompute delay

Development

npm install
npm run dev      # watch build → main.js
npm run build    # typecheck + production bundle
npm test         # unit tests (engine, operators, op ordering)

Key modules: src/query (types, operators, evaluator, engine), src/edit (operations, applier, summary, diff, report), src/backup (backups + undo), src/ui (DOM components incl. shared diff renderer), src/view (main view).

Implementation safety: frontmatter/tags are edited exclusively through app.fileManager.processFrontMatter, and bodies through app.vault.process (atomic). No manual YAML parsing.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

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