Link Picker

Obsidian's own link autocomplete searches the whole vault and ranks it fuzzily, which is exactly wrong when you know the link belongs in one folder and you want the same note to come first every time. This plugin is a link picker you can point at a folder and then navigate — pick a folder to descend into it, pick .. to come back out — with a ranking that is deterministic rather than fuzzy: an exact name beats a prefix, which beats a path match, which beats a scattered word match.

It is also callable. The picker returns a string, so a template or a script can ask for a link and drop the answer straight into a property value.

More screenshots

Demo vault

The documentation is a demo vault. Every feature has a note that explains what it does and how to try it.

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:

1. Running the Link Picker: Open demo vault command.
2. Downloading link-picker-demo-vault.zip from the Releases. It unzips into a single link-picker-demo-vault-<version> folder.
3. Browsing its source in demo-vault/ in this repository.

What it does

• Navigate instead of guessing — pick a folder to descend into it and .. to come back out, so the list is one folder's contents rather than the whole vault. 02 Navigating folders
• A ranking you can predict — an exact name beats a prefix, which beats a path match, which beats a scattered one, so the same query puts the same note first every time. 03 Ranking
• Aliases and folder notes are names too — a note aliased three ways offers three rows, and a folder's alias lives on its folder note, read from your existing folder-notes setup rather than configured again here. 03 Ranking
• Named pickers — a folder you link into constantly becomes its own command, already rooted there, with its own prefix, suffix and placeholder. 04 Named pickers
• A control strip that works on a phone — No link, Create new and four view toggles, each a button you tap and a hotkey you press, since a phone has no Alt key. 01 Picking a link
• Callable from a template or a script — the picker resolves with the link as a string, so the answer can drop straight into a property value instead of being typed at a cursor. 06 Calling it from a script
• Settings — folder-note location, excluded paths, Fuzzy segment matching and the frontmatter properties it reads. 05 Settings

Picking a link

Run Link Picker: Insert link... in an editor. Any selected text seeds the query and is replaced by the link you choose. Enter on a folder descends into it, and Enter on .. goes back up.

See also

My other Obsidian resources

Last searched for similar plugins on 2026-10-26.

For plugin developers

The picker is published as a cross-plugin API: select(options) resolves with the link as a string and rejects when the user dismisses the picker, and registerNoteCreator(name, createNote) lets a vault script decide how the plugin's own commands create a missing note. Copy api.d.ts, which depends on obsidian alone, and, to check payloads, api-contract.ts beside it. The contract version is 1.2.0, and it moves independently of the plugin's.

Calling Link Picker from a plugin or a script covers the files to copy, consuming it with or without @mnaoumov/obsidian-lib, and the options worth knowing before you design around it.

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:

1. Ensure you have the BRAT plugin installed and enabled.
2. Click Install via BRAT.
3. An Obsidian pop-up window should appear. In the window, click the Add plugin button once and wait a few seconds for the plugin to install.

Debugging

By default, debug messages for this plugin (id: link-picker) 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 Link Picker: 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.

License

© Michael Naumov