Redacted

An Obsidian plugin that permanently replaces selected text with block characters — the classic declassified-document look, right in your notes.

Select some text and run Redact selection — from the command palette, the right-click menu, or the eraser ribbon icon — and the selection is immediately replaced:

My password is hunter2 and my cat's name is Miso.

becomes (with hunter2 selected):

My password is ███████ and my cat's name is Miso.

Features

• Three ways to redact — command palette, right-click context menu (appears whenever text is selected), or the eraser ribbon icon.
• Three redaction styles:
  • Per character (default) — one block per character, so the redaction is one-to-one: secret name → ███████████
  • Preserve spaces — spaces stay visible so word boundaries remain: secret name → ██████ ████
  • Fixed length — each line becomes a constant run of 5 blocks, so nothing about the original word or line lengths leaks: secret name → █████
• Choice of redaction character — pick from a dropdown of presets (█ ░ ▒ ▓ ■ ● ★ ✦), or choose Custom… and type or paste any single character (✱, ♥, an emoji…).
• Limited folders — optionally restrict redaction to specific folders, so the command is only active where it's meant to be used.
• Live preview — the settings tab shows a before/after example of your current style and character.
• Shape-preserving — multi-line selections keep their line breaks in every style, and blank lines stay blank.
• Searchable settings — built on Obsidian's declarative settings API, so every option shows up in the global settings search.

Settings

• Limited folders — restrict redaction to notes inside specific folders. Add folders with the list's + control, entering names exactly as they appear in your vault (e.g. Private or Notes/Sensitive). Leave the list empty to allow redaction anywhere. Running the command outside a limited folder shows a notice instead of silently doing nothing.
• Redaction style — Per character, Preserve spaces, or Fixed length (see above). Note that Preserve spaces reveals word lengths, which makes short redacted phrases easier to guess.
• Redaction character — the preset dropdown, plus Custom… for any single character.
• Preview — a live before/after example showing your current redaction style and character in action.

Important: what "permanent" does and doesn't mean

Redaction rewrites the text in your note. The original characters are gone from the note itself — but copies of them can survive elsewhere:

• Undo history: Ctrl+Z / Cmd+Z restores the original text for as long as the note's editor history exists. Close and reopen the note (or restart Obsidian) if you want the undo path gone.
• File Recovery: Obsidian's built-in File Recovery core plugin keeps periodic snapshots of your notes. A snapshot taken before redaction still contains the original text until it expires or you clear it.
• Sync and backups: any sync service, version control system (e.g. a Git repository), or backup tool may retain pre-redaction copies of the file.
• Length disclosure: in the per-character styles, the length of the redacted text remains visible. ███ tells a reader the secret was three characters long. Use the Fixed length redaction style if length itself is sensitive.

Treat Redacted as a presentation tool for notes you share or publish, not as a substitute for proper secrets management.

Edge cases worth knowing

• Complex emoji: characters made of multiple code points joined together (like family emoji 👨‍👩‍👧) count as several characters, so one visible glyph may become several blocks. Simple emoji and accented characters count correctly as one.
• Multi-line selections: line breaks are preserved so redacted text keeps its shape, and blank lines stay blank.

Installation

Requires Obsidian 1.13.0 or later.

Until the plugin is available in the community directory, install it manually:

1. Create the folder <your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/redacted/
2. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release and copy them into it
3. Reload Obsidian and enable Redacted under Settings → Community plugins

Development

This is a TypeScript project. To build:

npm install
npm run build

This produces main.js from the TypeScript sources via esbuild.

License

MIT