Heading Outliner is an Obsidian plugin that brings Outliner-style editing to heading-based Markdown. Move, indent, and unindent entire sections using the same keyboard hotkeys as bullet lists.

Features

Section movement (Ctrl+Shift+↑ / Ctrl+Shift+↓)

Move a heading and all its content (body text + sub-headings) up or down past sibling sections. Fold state is preserved - sections that were folded before the move stay folded afterward.

Indent / unindent (Tab / Shift+Tab)

Increase or decrease heading levels. Tab/Shift+Tab only activates when the cursor is on a heading line - body text and list items are unaffected. Supports single or multiple selected headings (range selection or multi-cursor). Fold state is preserved. Smart fold handling: When indenting a heading to become a child of a folded parent, the parent automatically unfolds to show the new child. All other fold states remain unchanged.

Progressive outline folding (Fold more / Fold less)

Expand or collapse the document outline level by level, operating on all selected visible headings at once. Works seamlessly with Obsidian's built-in fold commands.

Workflow: Use Obsidian's Fold all headings and lists to collapse everything, then run Fold less to reveal one heading level at a time across your selection. Run Fold more to collapse back down. When nothing is selected, the command falls back to the heading under the cursor.

Visual heading indent

Optional per-level indentation in both the editor and reading view, styled via CSS.

Compatibility with Outliner

Fully compatible with the Outliner plugin. Both plugins use context-aware CM6 keymaps: Heading Outliner intercepts keypresses only when the cursor is on a heading line and explicitly passes through to Outliner on bullet/list lines. There are no hotkey conflicts.

Installation

Obsidian Community - Heading Outliner

Or just search Heading Outliner in Obsidian Settings → Community plugins → Browse

Hotkeys

Hotkeys are handled via CodeMirror 6 keymaps and are not exposed to Obsidian's hotkey manager. This is intentional: these keys need context-aware interception (activate only on heading lines, pass through otherwise) which Obsidian's command system cannot provide (see Hotkey Architecture Dilemma). Custom modifier configuration is planned for a future release.

Settings

Roadmap

• Implement moving all selected blocks up/down, same way as indenting/unindenting selected blocks work
• Implement custom movement modifier configuration via individual ALT, CTRL, SHIFT boolean toggles in settings
• Implement Drag-n-drop

Changelog

1.1.0

• New: Fold more and Fold less commands for progressive outline folding
• New: Commands operate on all selected visible headings, falling back to cursor heading when nothing is selected

1.0.2

• Prepared for release, bugs fixed

0.0.4

• Fixed: Multi-selection now preserves all selections after indent/unindent
• Fixed: Nested headings no longer cause duplicate text changes
• Fixed: Fold states are now properly preserved during operations
• Fixed: When indenting into a folded parent, only that parent unfolds (siblings stay folded)
• Refactored: All operations now use native CodeMirror 6 API for better reliability

0.0.3

• Initial release with core features