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Obsidian has an Indent visual width setting, and then ignores it whenever you indent with spaces: turn Indent using tabs off, set the width to 2 or 8, and pressing Tab still inserts exactly four spaces. The setting is honoured for real tab characters and hardcoded for spaces.
This plugin makes one indent insert the number of spaces you actually set, so the indentation you get is the indentation you chose. If you indent with tabs, Obsidian already draws them at your configured width and this plugin has nothing to do.
Reported on the forum.
More screenshots
Demo vault
The documentation is a demo vault. The feature has a note that explains what it does and why you would want it, with buttons that set both editor settings for you so you can press Tab and count the spaces.
Start reading here — it is plain markdown, so it works on GitHub with nothing installed.
A copy of the vault ships with every release. You can access it via any of the following:
- Running the
Fix Tab Size: Open demo vault command. - Downloading
fix-tab-size-demo-vault.zipfrom the Releases. It unzips into a singlefix-tab-size-demo-vault-<version>folder. - Browsing its source in
demo-vault/in this repository.
What it does
- A space indent is as wide as you configured, matching
Indent visual widthinstead of Obsidian's hardcoded four. Applies whileIndent using tabsis off; there is nothing to configure in the plugin itself. 01 Fix tab size
See also
| Plugin | Features | How Fix Tab Size differs |
|---|---|---|
Indent with Spaces |
Own Tab/Shift+Tab handlers and indent-width setting; table navigation | Same indentation goal; uses core Indent visual width; no extra setting/key handler |
Simple Tab Indent |
Zero-width space plus tab; own display width; avoids code-block parsing | Alternative indentation: keeps spaces; changes their count per indent |
Last searched for similar plugins on 2026-10-26.
Installation
The plugin is available in the official Community Plugins repository.
Beta versions
To install the latest beta release of this plugin (regardless if it is available in the official Community Plugins repository or not), follow these steps:
- Ensure you have the BRAT plugin installed and enabled.
- Click Install via BRAT.
- An Obsidian pop-up window should appear. In the window, click the
Add pluginbutton once and wait a few seconds for the plugin to install.
Debugging
By default, debug messages for this plugin (id: fix-tab-size) are hidden.
If you need to enable them refer to the documentation.
Changelog
All notable changes to this project will be documented in the CHANGELOG.
Contributing
Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING to get set up.
Support
Filing an issue (for AI agents and humans)
Open issues through the issue forms, not as blank issues.
To report a bug from inside Obsidian, run the Fix Tab Size: Report a bug command. It opens the bug form with the plugin version, the Obsidian version and your operating system already filled in.
Filing from the CLI or the API (gh issue create --body, or an AI agent filing for you) skips the form, and gh issue create --template cannot load an issue form. In that case, open the matching form in .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/, copy every field as a ### <label> heading in the form's order, and fill in each one. Always state the plugin version, the Obsidian version and your operating system.