material-icon-theme-for-vault

An Obsidian plugin that brings the Material Icon Theme file tree style to Obsidian.

This plugin adapts the file and folder icon experience from the open-source material-extensions/vscode-material-icon-theme project for Obsidian's file explorer.

Features

• No build step.
• No npm dependencies.
• Bundled Material-style SVG file and folder icons.
• Icon matching driven by the upstream dist/material-icons.json mapping file.
• Filename, compound extension, extension, language-id fallback, folder name, and expanded-folder name matching.
• Settings for icon size, opacity, grayscale, and file/folder toggles.

Install locally

1. Create a folder in your vault:

   <your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/material-icon-theme-for-vault/
   

2. Copy these files into that folder:

   manifest.json
   main.js
   styles.css
   icons/
   dist/material-icons.json
   LICENSE
   MATERIAL_ICON_THEME_LICENSE.txt
   README.md
   

3. In Obsidian, go to Settings -> Community plugins.

4. Turn off restricted mode if needed.

5. Enable material-icon-theme-for-vault.

Icon resources

Obsidian's community plugin installer downloads the plugin entry files, but it may not install the large icons/ and dist/ resource folders. If the settings page reports missing icon resources:

1. Open the plugin settings.
2. Click Open download page.
3. Download material-icon-souce.zip from the latest GitHub release.
4. Extract the zip.
5. Click Import folder and choose the extracted folder that contains icons/ and dist/material-icons.json.

The plugin copies those resources into its vault plugin folder and reloads the file explorer icons automatically.

Release assets

Each GitHub release should include material-icon-souce.zip so users can import the icon resources from the plugin settings page.

After creating a release for a tag, upload the resource pack:

scripts/release-resource-pack.sh <release-tag>

The script rebuilds material-icon-souce.zip from dist/ and icons/, then uploads it to the release with gh release upload --clobber.

Attribution

The bundled SVG icons and dist/material-icons.json mapping are derived from material-extensions/vscode-material-icon-theme, which is licensed under the MIT License.

Keep MATERIAL_ICON_THEME_LICENSE.txt with this plugin when copying, sharing, or redistributing the bundled icon assets.

License

This Obsidian adapter code is released under the MIT License. See LICENSE.

The bundled Material Icon Theme assets retain their original MIT copyright notice. See MATERIAL_ICON_THEME_LICENSE.txt.