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Vault Timeline

by Vault Timeline
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Description

This plugin has not been manually reviewed by Obsidian staff. Global chronological timeline of your entire vault — automatically indexes all notes by date, supports filtering by tags/folders, zoom, and interactive navigation.

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Latest Version

Invalid date

Changelog

See all version on GitHub

README file from

Github

Vault Timeline

An Obsidian plugin that turns your notes into an interactive, zoomable timeline — automatically indexed from frontmatter dates.

Features

  • Auto-indexing — scans all markdown files and builds a timeline from their frontmatter dates
  • Zoomable axis — switch between Day / Week / Month / Year / Decade views
  • Tag-based color groups — assign colors to tags; events are colored by their first matching tag
  • Duration bars — notes with both a start and end date render as a horizontal span
  • Search & filter — filter events by full-text search or by tag
  • Minimap — a compact all-events overview at the bottom with a draggable viewport indicator
  • Tooltips — hover over any event to see its title, date, excerpt, and tags
  • Click to open — click any event dot or label to jump straight to the note
  • Context menu — right-click an event for quick actions (open note, jump to date)
  • Auto-refresh — timeline updates automatically when notes are created, modified, or deleted

Installation

From the Obsidian Community Plugins browser (once published)

  1. Open Settings → Community plugins → Browse
  2. Search for Vault Timeline
  3. Click Install, then Enable

Manual installation

  1. Download the latest release from the Releases page (main.js, manifest.json, styles.css)
  2. Copy the files into your vault at .obsidian/plugins/vault-timeline/
  3. Reload Obsidian and enable the plugin under Settings → Community plugins

Usage

Opening the timeline

  • Click the clock-calendar icon in the left ribbon, or
  • Run the command Open Vault Timeline from the command palette (Ctrl/Cmd + P)

Date frontmatter

The plugin reads dates from your notes' YAML frontmatter. By default it looks for the field date:

---
title: Project kickoff
date: 2024-03-15
endDate: 2024-04-01
tags: [project, milestone]
---

Supported date formats:

  • 2024-03-15
  • 2024-03-15T09:30
  • 15.03.2024
  • 15/03/2024
  • 2024/03/15

If a note has no date field, its file creation time is used as a fallback.

Navigation

Control Action
‹ / › buttons Move the view backward / forward by one zoom unit
Today button Jump to the current date
Zoom buttons Switch between Day, Week, Month, Year, Decade
Minimap dots Click any dot to jump to that event

Settings

Open Settings → Vault Timeline to configure the plugin.

Setting Default Description
Date YAML field date Frontmatter key used as the event date
End date YAML field endDate Optional frontmatter key for the event end date (enables duration bars)
Exclude folders (empty) Comma-separated folder paths to skip (e.g. Templates, Archive)
Filter tags (empty) Only include notes that have at least one of these tags; leave empty for all notes
Default zoom level Month The zoom level shown when the timeline first opens
Show excerpts in tooltips on Whether to display note text previews in hover tooltips
Auto-refresh on vault changes on Automatically re-index when notes are added, edited, or deleted
Color groups see below Map tag names to hex colors

Default color groups

Tag Color
project #4A90E2 (blue)
milestone #E2844A (orange)
journal #50E3C2 (teal)
task #B8E24A (lime)

You can add, edit, or remove color groups in the settings panel. The first matching group color is applied to each event.

Commands

Command Description
Open Vault Timeline Opens (or focuses) the timeline view
Re-index Vault Timeline Forces a full re-scan of all notes

Development

Requirements: Node.js 18+

# Clone into your vault's plugin directory
git clone https://github.com/veltrix42/vault-timeline .obsidian/plugins/vault-timeline
cd .obsidian/plugins/vault-timeline

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Development build with watch
npm run dev

# Production build
npm run build

The plugin is written in TypeScript and uses the standard Obsidian Plugin API.

Contributing

Pull requests and issues are welcome. Please open an issue before submitting large changes so we can discuss the approach first.

License

MIT

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