Transform your Obsidian file explorer from a dull list into a vibrant, organized, and high-performance visual dashboard.

Colorful Folders automatically applies premium color palettes, smart icons, and structural intelligence to your vault. Whether you prefer a strictly organized, monochromatic workspace or a neon-glowing cyberpunk aesthetic, this plugin makes navigation intuitive and your workspace absolutely beautiful.

What's New in Colorful Folders

🚀 5.0.7 — Smart Contrast, Palette Precision & Customizable Heatmaps

This update introduces a new Auto contrast section that lets your themes automatically pick readable text and icon colors, a redesigned Custom colors palette table with live previews and drag-to-reorder, and editable heatmap age limits so you control exactly how long a note stays a certain color. It also adds new row layout controls for Notebook Navigator and publishes extra information for theme makers.

🎨 1. Auto Contrast — Readable Text & Icons, Automatically

• Automatic Readability: When turned on, the plugin shifts folder colors so the text and icons always stand out against the background — no more squinting at low-contrast combinations.
• Four Easy Controls: A master switch lets you turn auto contrast on or off. Three sliders fine-tune it: how far colors shift, whether colors that run out of room snap to pure white or black, and how close to white or black a color has to be before snapping.
• Per-Color Auto Toggle: Each color in your palette has its own Auto checkbox. Turn it off for a specific color to pin its text and icon exactly where you want them.
• Theme-Friendly: The plugin now tells your active theme what contrast state it is in, so your theme can apply its own styling rules instead of the plugin guessing.

🖌️ 2. Custom Colors — A Smarter, More Flexible Palette Table

• Live Color Previews: See the exact text and icon color the plugin will use for each palette color, updated in real time as you adjust things.
• Drag to Reorder: Reorder your custom palette colors by dragging them up or down.
• Delete Any Color: Remove a color from your custom palette with a single click.
• Per-Color Auto Checkbox: Each row has its own Auto toggle, so you can mix automatic and hand-picked colors in the same palette.
• Cleaner Layout: The palette table and its description now live together in one neatly framed group, spaced nicely from the rest of your settings.

🌡️ 3. Heatmap Age Limits — You Control the Clock

• Editable Age Bands: In Heatmap mode, folders change color based on how recently their contents were edited. You can now type in your own five age limits (in days) instead of using the defaults.s
• Applies to Every Palette: Your custom age limits work across all palettes, not just the built-in ones.
• Palette Age Column: The palette table now shows an Age column that reflects the color generation mode you have selected, so everything stays in sync.

🧩 4. Notebook Navigator Row Layout Controls

• Accent Border Width: Adjust the colored left border on Notebook Navigator rows, or turn it off entirely.
• Row Spacing: Change the gap between rows in the Notebook Navigator list for a more compact or more spacious look.
• Text Weight: Make folder names in Notebook Navigator appear bolder or lighter to match your taste.
• Border Radius: Notebook Navigator rows now follow your chosen corner radius setting.

🔧 5. Behind the Scenes Improvements

• Subfolder Opacity Published: Themes can now read the subfolder opacity setting, so they can judge text contrast against what is actually painted on nested folder rows.
• Per-Row Background Alpha: Each colored row now reports how transparent its background is, giving themes an even better picture of what is on screen.
• Hand-Picked Color Detection: When you manually choose a text or icon color for a folder, the plugin now tells themes to stand back and let your choice win, instead of fighting it.
• All Languages Updated: Every setting label and description has been translated into all supported languages.

Note: This update includes contributions by Retron (@retronified on GitHub), with additional modifications and refinements by Rohit Nahar. Thank you, Retron, for your valuable contributions!

✨ Core Features

🎨 Vivid Color & Visual Hierarchy

• Color-Coding Hierarchy: Automatically assigns beautiful, distinct colors to top-level and nested folders.
• Auto Contrast Engine: Dynamically calculates WCAG-compliant text and icon colors with custom shift steps and snap tolerance thresholds.
• Palette Text & Icon Pairing: Customize text and icon pairings for each palette hex color with live preview and drag-to-reorder table UI.
• Editable Heatmap Age Bands: Fine-tune 5 custom day thresholds for heatmap mode with $O(\log K)$ zero-allocation binary search.
• Visual Wayfinding: Glowing connector lines create a clear "breadcrumb trail" to your currently active file.
• Smart Rainbow Logic & Text: Cycle files through your palette, enable custom rainbow text gradients on individual items, or use the Adaptive Heatmap to sync colors.
• Curated Palettes: Premium built-in palettes (including Tailwind UI, Tailwind UI Dark, Cyberpunk, Nord, and Pastel).
• Minimalist Modes: Force subfolders to inherit parent colors, or use Outline Only Mode to remove background tints while keeping bright connecting lines.

🤖 Smart Iconography & Custom Packs

• Live Animated Icons: Real-time animated SVG icons in your sidebar that play smoothly without freezing while scrolling and inherit custom folder colors.
• Smart Auto-Icons: Automatically matches relevant icons to your folder and file names (e.g., Journal -> 📅, Finance -> 💰).
• Manual Override Priority: Pin your preferred icons on any item to permanently override automatic suggestions.
• Custom & Offline Icon Packs: Built-in offline libraries (Lucide, FontAwesome, Tabler, Material, Simple Icons) plus custom pack support via .obsidian/icons.
• Open & Closed States: Set distinct icons for expanded versus collapsed folders globally or per folder.
• Pixel-Perfect Alignment: All icons are automatically standardized and vertically centered with clean 18px baseline sizing.

📁 Advanced Customization & Typography

• Right-Click WYSIWYG Menu: Select "Set Custom File Style" on any item to easily override its color, icon, border radius, and text formatting.
• Custom Border Radius: Adjust border-radius per folder or file using a smooth range slider in the style modal.
• Advanced Typography: Make key projects pop with bold, italic, custom text colors, and rainbow gradients.
• Smart Inheritance: Force a specific style down an entire folder tree with a single click.

📐 Organization & Appearance Controls

• Toggle Collapse Indicators: Easily show or hide folder collapse arrows in the file explorer via settings.
• Section Dividers: Group files with vertical visual dividers supporting glassmorphic popovers and custom line styles.
• Dynamic Item Counters: Display recursive statistics showing total folder and file counts.
• Exclusion Lists: Keep utility directories (like attachments or templates) standard and unaffected.

🎨 Synchronization & Ecosystem

• Tag Color Sync: Automatically color tags matching styled folder names (e.g., styling "Work" styles #Work) across Reading Mode, Live Preview, and the Sidebar Tag Pane with luminous glow badges.
• Colored Tags in Sidebar: Tags in the sidebar Tag Pane match folder colors or custom tag rules with glowing pill counters and uniform styling.
• Custom Tag Rules: Manually map specific tags to any hex color or folder path (e.g., garden/plant = #5ebd8e).
• Outline & Heading Sync: Match the Outline Pane table of contents and in-note headings (H1–H6) to your active color palette with glow highlights.
• Graph View Sync: Folder colors sync directly into Obsidian's built-in Graph View as color groups.
• Notebook Navigator Integration: Cleanly isolated selector styles and virtual container exclusions ensure zero cold-start loading clashes with Notebook Navigator.

🕵️ Stealth & Privacy Engine

• Visual Privacy: Hide any file or folder from the sidebar instantly via context menu.
• Ghost Mode: Toggle semi-transparent viewing of hidden items with a sleek blur effect.
• Password Protection: Secure privacy settings with a custom modal.

🛡️ Stability & Performance Engine

• Zero-DOM Engine: High-performance adoptedStyleSheets engine with zero GPU lag, even in 10,000+ note vaults.
• Security Hardened: Fully sanitized SVG DOM parsing and escaped CSS attribute selectors for maximum vault safety.
• Cross-Platform: Flawless performance across Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.
• Strict Network Privacy: 100% private offline styling engine with zero user data transmission.

🛠️ Installation

Via Obsidian Community Plugins (Official & Recommended)

1. Open Obsidian and navigate to Settings > Community plugins.
2. Click Browse next to Community plugins.
3. Search for Colorful Folders.
4. Click Install, then click Enable.

Via BRAT (For Beta Releases)

Want to test the absolute latest features before they hit the store?

1. Install the BRAT plugin from the Obsidian Community gallery.
2. Go to Settings > BRAT > Beta Plugin List.
3. Click Add Beta plugin.
4. Paste the repository URL: https://github.com/RohitNahar-Offical/colorful-folders-obsidian
5. Click Add Plugin.
6. Enable Colorful Folders in your Community plugins tab.

💡 Pro Tip

Access all styling configurations by navigating to Settings > Colorful Folders. Look for the large "💡 Pro Tip" banner at the top of the settings page to discover hidden tricks, including how to set up custom overriding colors!

👨‍💻 Developer Documentation

Looking to understand the internal architecture, contribute features, or debug the styling engine? Check out our comprehensive technical guides:

• Master Documentation Index: The entry point for all technical documentation and subsystem guides.
• Internal Engine Architecture: Deep dive into the Zero-DOM rendering pipeline and logic flow.
• Codebase Subsystems Guide: Comprehensive guide to all source files and services.
• Customization Guide: Advanced CSS snippets and styling overrides.

Developed with ❤️ by ROHIT-NAHAR