Redacted

Redacted

An Obsidian plugin that permanently replaces selected text with block characters — the classic declassified-document look, right in your notes.

Select some text and run Redact selection — from the command palette, the right-click menu, or the eraser ribbon icon — and the selection is immediately replaced:

My password is hunter2 and my cat's name is Miso.

becomes (with hunter2 selected):

My password is ███████ and my cat's name is Miso.

Features

• Three ways to redact — command palette, right-click context menu (appears whenever text is selected), or the eraser ribbon icon.
• Three redaction styles:
  • Per character (default) — one block per character, so the redaction is one-to-one: secret name → ███████████
  • Preserve spaces — spaces stay visible so word boundaries remain: secret name → ██████ ████
  • Fixed length — each line becomes a constant run of 5 blocks, so no word or line length leaks: secret name → █████
• Choice of redaction character — pick from a dropdown of presets (█ ░ ▒ ▓ ■ ● ★ ✦ ✱), or choose Custom… and type or paste any single character (♥, ☀, an emoji…).
• Limited folders — optionally restrict redaction to specific folders, picked from a vault-folder suggester, so the command is only active where it's meant to be used.
• Live preview — the settings tab shows a before/after example of your current style and character.
• Multiple selections — hold Option (Alt on Windows/Linux) and drag to add more selections, then redact them all at once. Each is redacted to its own length, in a single undoable step.
• Shape-preserving — multi-line selections keep their line breaks in every style, and blank lines stay blank.
• Searchable settings — built on Obsidian's declarative settings API, so every option shows up in the global settings search.

Settings

• Limited folders — restrict redaction to notes inside specific folders. Add a row with the list's + control, then pick a folder from the suggester (or type a path like Notes/Sensitive); remove one with its ✕. Leave the list empty — or add the vault root (/) — to allow redaction anywhere. Renaming or moving a limited folder updates the list automatically; a folder that doesn't exist in the vault (a typo, or one deleted since) is flagged with an inline warning. Running the command outside a limited folder shows a notice instead of silently doing nothing.
• Redaction style — Per character, Preserve spaces, or Fixed length (see above). Note that Preserve spaces reveals word lengths, which makes short redacted phrases easier to guess.
• Redaction character — the preset dropdown, plus Custom… for any single character. Blank or invisible characters and Markdown symbols (ASCII punctuation such as * - # ~) aren't accepted: the first would make redacted text look like empty space, the second can turn it into formatting — a divider, a heading, or a code block. For an asterisk look, use the ✱ Heavy asterisk preset instead of *.
• Preview — a live before/after example showing your current redaction style and character in action.

Important: what "permanent" does and doesn't mean

Redaction rewrites the text in your note. The original characters are gone from the note itself — but copies of them can survive elsewhere:

• Undo history: Ctrl+Z / Cmd+Z restores the original text for as long as the note's editor history exists. Close and reopen the note (or restart Obsidian) if you want the undo path gone.
• File Recovery: Obsidian's built-in File Recovery core plugin keeps periodic snapshots of your notes. A snapshot taken before redaction still contains the original text until it expires or you clear it.
• Sync and backups: any sync service, version control system (e.g. a Git repository), or backup tool may retain pre-redaction copies of the file.
• Length disclosure: in the per-character styles, the length of the redacted text remains visible. ███ tells a reader the secret was three characters long. Use the Fixed length redaction style if length itself is sensitive.

Treat Redacted as a presentation tool for notes you share or publish, not as a substitute for proper secrets management.

Edge cases worth knowing

• Emoji and accents: characters are counted as you see them, so an emoji built from several code points (👨‍👩‍👧, 👍🏽, a flag) or a letter with a combining accent becomes exactly one block.
• Multi-line selections: line breaks are preserved so redacted text keeps its shape, and blank lines stay blank.
• Reading view: redaction only works in editing view, where you can see what's selected.

Installation

Requires Obsidian 1.13.0 or later.

Until the plugin is available in the community directory, install it manually:

1. Create the folder <your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/redacted/
2. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release and copy them into it
3. Reload Obsidian and enable Redacted under Settings → Community plugins

Development

This is a TypeScript project. To build:

npm install
npm run build

This typechecks with tsc and bundles the sources into main.js via esbuild. npm run dev rebuilds main.js on every change instead.

To lint with eslint-plugin-obsidianmd — the same rules the community plugin review uses:

npm run lint

To release, bump the version in manifest.json, package.json, and versions.json, then push a tag that matches it exactly (e.g. 1.0.8, no v prefix). The release workflow lints, builds, and publishes main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css with build provenance attestations.

License

MIT