Breadcrumbs
Michael Porter203k downloadsVisualise the hierarchy of your vault using a breadcrumb trail or matrix view.
- Overview
- Scorecard
- Updates578
Give your Obsidian vault a structure you can see and navigate.
Breadcrumbs lets you add typed links to your notes — up/down, next/prev, or any relationship you define — and builds them into a directed graph. Where Obsidian's own graph only shows that two notes link, Breadcrumbs shows how they relate: which note is the parent, which comes next, which belongs to which. You describe the shape of your vault once, then Breadcrumbs lets you visualise and walk it.
What you can do
- See where you are. A breadcrumb trail at the top of each note shows its ancestors and the path back to the top.
- Browse the hierarchy. The Tree side view expands the full structure beneath the current note; the Matrix view groups every incoming and outgoing relationship by type.
- Move through your notes. Previous / Next buttons turn a chain of notes into a readable sequence.
- Embed diagrams. Drop a
```breadcrumbs ```codeblock into any note to render its neighbourhood as a tree, a Mermaid diagram, or an interactive Markmap mind-map. - Export to Canvas. Lay out a note's neighbourhood as a native Obsidian Canvas — a tidy tree of file nodes and labelled edges you can rearrange and edit.
Ways to define relationships
You're not limited to one convention — Breadcrumbs reads structure from whatever you already use:
- Frontmatter properties (typed links), tags, and Markdown lists
- Naming schemes — Dendron (
parent.child), Johnny.Decimal (01.02 Title), dates, and custom regex - Folders (folder notes) and Dataview queries
On top of the relationships you declare, Breadcrumbs derives implied relations automatically — e.g. if A is up from B, then B is down from A — and lets you define your own transitive rules.
Obsidian 1.13
As of 4.15.0, Breadcrumbs requires Obsidian 1.13 or later (minAppVersion 1.13.0). The settings tab uses the new declarative settings API, so every section appears in global settings search and supports page-based navigation. The legacy imperative display() fallback has been removed.
Still on Obsidian 1.12? Use Breadcrumbs 4.14.2 — the last release supporting 1.12. Fixes for the 1.12 line are maintained on the 1.12-compat branch.
Demo Vault
Want to see Breadcrumbs in action before configuring your own vault? The Breadcrumbs Demo Vault is a ready-to-open vault with pre-configured edge fields, example notes, and working graph structure.
Documentation
Breadcrumbs has its own docs site!✨ All detailed documentation lives there: https://breadcrumbs-docs.michaelpporter.com
Contributing
See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup, build commands, and how to submit a pull request.
Donations
If you find Breadcrumbs useful, consider sponsoring continued development:
Original creator SkepticMystic also accepts donations via Ko-fi — their foundational work is what made this plugin possible.
Security & Privacy
Breadcrumbs is fully open source and makes no automatic network requests. To report a vulnerability, see the Security Policy. For a full audit of network requests, the bundled WebAssembly engine, and non-obvious code patterns, see DISCLOSURES.md.
Credits
- SkepticMystic: Original creator of Breadcrumbs. The plugin concept, architecture, and community were built by them.
- mProjectsCode: For their PRs, insightful suggestions, and efficiency improvements.
- HEmile: For their PRs, and helpful discussions on graph-theory.
- michaelpporter: Current maintainer.
History
As of May 2026, Breadcrumbs is maintained by michaelpporter. The plugin was originally created by SkepticMystic, whose foundational work made this all possible. Development continues at github.com/michaelpporter/breadcrumbs.
Older media kept for posterity. Many predate v4 and may not match current behavior, but the effort of the authors is appreciated.
Written
- @Rhoadey: How a Hierarchy Note sharpened my thinking in 20 minutes
- Obsidian Hub - Breadcrumbs Quickstart Guide
- Obsidian Hub - Breadcrumbs for Comparative Law
- Obsidian Hub - How to get the most out of Breadcrumbs
Videos
- @SkepticMystic: Breadcrumbs - Everything you need to know (Outdated)
- @SkepticMystic: Breadcrumbs - Obsidian Community Showcase (Outdated)
- @Zen Productivist: Threading Mode with the Breadcrumbs Plugin in Obsidian (2022-01-01)