File Viewer

File Viewer lets you open common data, transcript, and text-based files directly in Obsidian with purpose-built views instead of raw plain text.

Use it to view and edit .csv files as formatted tables, edit .json files with validation and spacing controls, inspect .log files with filters and highlighting, and read .vtt or .srt transcript files as searchable timestamped cues.

Features

• CSV Parsing — RFC-compliant parser handling quoted fields, escaped quotes, and mixed line endings
• Interactive Tables — Click column headers to sort ascending/descending with smart numeric detection
• Inline Editing — Toggle edit mode to modify cells directly in the table. Changes auto-save on blur. Tab/Shift+Tab to navigate between cells, Escape to deselect.
• CSV Search & Filter — Real-time search across all columns with match highlighting
• JSON Editing — Edit .json files in a monospace editor with live validation, friendly error locations, pretty formatting, and minifying
• Log Viewer — Open .log files with line numbers, log level coloring, timestamp highlighting, level filters, search, and auto-scroll
• Transcript Viewer — Open .vtt and .srt files as readable cue lists with timestamps, multiline captions, and search highlighting
• Theme Support — Uses Obsidian's CSS variables so tables match your light or dark theme
• Responsive Layout — Sticky headers, horizontal scrolling, and text-overflow handling for wide data
• Row & Column Counts — Toolbar shows dataset dimensions and filtered result counts

Installation

From Community Plugins (recommended)

1. Open Settings → Community Plugins → Browse
2. Search for File Viewer
3. Click Install, then Enable

Obsidian CLI

obsidian plugin:install id=csv-viewer enable

Manual Installation

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release
2. Create a folder called csv-viewer in your vault's .obsidian/plugins/ directory
3. Copy all three files into that folder
4. Reload Obsidian and enable the plugin in Settings → Community Plugins

Usage

Once enabled, open any .csv file in your vault and it will render as a table automatically.

• Sort — Click any column header. Click again to reverse the sort direction.
• Search — Type in the search box to filter rows. Matching cells are highlighted.
• Edit — Click the Edit button in the toolbar to toggle edit mode. Click any cell to modify its contents. Changes save automatically when you click away. Sorting is disabled while editing.

Open any .log file in your vault to inspect it in the log viewer.

• Search — Type in the filter box to show matching log lines.
• Level filters — Toggle Errors, Warnings, Info, and Debug to narrow the view.
• Auto-scroll — Keep the viewer pinned to the latest matching line when reading growing logs.

Open any .vtt or .srt file in your vault to read it in the transcript viewer.

• Search — Type in the filter box to show matching transcript cues.
• Cue timing — Each cue shows its number and start/end timestamp.
• Multiline captions — Wrapped captions preserve line breaks from the transcript file.

Open any .json file in your vault to edit it in the JSON viewer.

• Validate — Check whether the current JSON is valid and see friendly line/column errors.
• Format — Pretty-print the document with 2-space or 4-space indentation.
• Minify — Collapse valid JSON to a compact single-line representation.

Options

In the plugin options, you can enable or disable CSV, JSON, log, VTT transcript, and SRT transcript viewing separately. Reload the plugin after changing any file type option.

Privacy

File Viewer works entirely inside your vault. It does not make network requests, collect telemetry, show ads, require an account, or read files outside the CSV, JSON, log, or transcript file opened in Obsidian.

Development

git clone https://github.com/jethrojones/file-viewer.git
cd file-viewer
npm install
npm run dev    # Watch mode with sourcemaps
npm run build  # Production build

License

MIT — Copyright (c) 2026 Jethro Jones