Expandomatic
Onsi Fakhouri98 downloadsExpand selection outward through word, sentence, paragraph, section, document — like VSCode's expand selection.
- Overview
- Scorecard
- Updates1
An Obsidian plugin that progressively expands the selection outward, modelled after VSCode's Expand Selection (Alt+Shift+→).
Usage
You'll need to assign the keybindings to Expand Selection and Shrink Selection yourself.
Press ⌃⇧⌘→ (Control+Shift+Command+Right Arrow) repeatedly to grow the selection one unit at a time. Each press wraps the current selection in the next larger syntactic unit. Moving the cursor or changing the selection manually resets the expansion.
Press ⌃⇧⌘← (Control+Shift+Command+Left Arrow) to shrink back through the expansion history one step at a time. Shrink only works while the selection exactly matches the last expanded selection — any manual change to the cursor or selection clears the history.
Expansion levels
Prose (default)
| Press | Selects |
|---|---|
| 1st | Word under cursor |
| 2nd | Full URL (if cursor is inside one), otherwise sentence |
| 3rd | Sentence |
| 4th | Paragraph (blank-line bounded) |
| 5th+ | Innermost section (heading + content), then parent sections outward |
| Last | Entire document |
Sentence detection uses punctuation heuristics (. ! ? followed by a capital letter or end of text). Single-letter abbreviations like U.S. and Dr. are not treated as sentence boundaries.
Inside a table
| Press | Selects |
|---|---|
| 1st | Word |
| 2nd | Cell content (between ` |
| 3rd | Entire row |
| 4th | Entire table |
Inside a fenced code block
| Press | Selects |
|---|---|
| 1st | Word |
| 2nd | Entire line |
| 3rd | Entire fenced block (from ``` to ```) |
Inside a math block ($$...$$ or inline $...$)
Inline $...$:
| Press | Selects |
|---|---|
| 1st | Word/token |
| 2nd | Term (operator-bounded: + - * / = ^ , ( ) [ ] { }) |
| 3rd | Entire $...$ (including delimiters) |
| 4th | Entire line |
Block $$...$$:
| Press | Selects |
|---|---|
| 1st | Word/token |
| 2nd | Term |
| 3rd | Entire line |
| 4th | Entire $$ block |
Installation
- Build:
npm install && npm run build - Copy
main.jsandmanifest.jsoninto<vault>/.obsidian/plugins/expandomatic/ - Enable the plugin in Settings → Community Plugins
Hotkeys can be rebound under Settings → Hotkeys by searching for "Expand Selection" or "Shrink Selection". The defaults are ⌃⇧⌘→ (expand) and ⌃⇧⌘← (shrink).
Development
npm install
npm run dev # watch mode, rebuilds on save
npm run build # production build