Shard Icons

Folder and file icons for the Obsidian file explorer, in the style of VS Code's Material Icon Theme.

Install in Obsidian · See the icons · Getting started · FAQ

Shard Icons makes a large vault easier to scan. Folders and files get colored, recognizable icons, so you can find Projects, Finance or Docs at a glance instead of reading every name. Most folders are matched automatically from their name. Anything else takes two clicks to change.

Features

• 1,474 icons in four sets. The Material Icon Theme's folder and file icons, everyday topic folders, and 406 brand-logo folders, all in one consistent style.
• Automatic matching. src, docs, images, .github, work, money, travel and thousands of other folder names get the right icon with no setup.
• Fast, forgiving search. Find an icon by name, by file extension (md, py, js), by folder name (pictures, db) or by everyday word (note, photo, password). Small typos still find it, and every tab shows how many icons match.
• Any icon, anywhere. A file can use a folder icon or a logo, and a folder can use a file icon.
• Fits your theme. The icon replaces the one your theme draws instead of sitting next to it, and switches to light variants in light mode.
• Icons in search results too. Files in the search pane show the same icon as in the file explorer.
• Follows your files. Renaming or moving a folder keeps its icon, and the icons of everything inside it.
• Private and offline. No network requests and no telemetry. Every icon ships inside the plugin.

The icons

Right-click any folder or file and choose Change icon… to open the picker.

Folders · 285 The Material Icon Theme's folder icons: src, docs, tasks, server…	Topics · 197 Everyday folders, each in its own color: education, work, money, travel…
Logos · 406 Folders in a brand's color with its logo: FastAPI, Kafka, Jira, Counter-Strike…	Files · 586 The Material Icon Theme's file icons: TypeScript, Python, Minecraft…

Getting started

1. Open Settings → Community plugins → Browse, search for Shard Icons, then select Install and Enable.
2. That's it: folders with a recognized name get an icon right away.
3. To pick an icon yourself, right-click a folder or file and choose Change icon….

Want file icons as well? Turn on File icons in the plugin's settings. Files then get an icon from their name and extension, just like in VS Code.

Using the picker

• Search by whatever comes to mind: an icon's name (python), a file extension (md), a folder name (pictures) or an everyday word (photo). Separate words narrow the results: fast api.
• Results are ranked. Exact names come first, then names that start with what you typed, then everything else.
• All tabs are searched at once. Each tab shows how many icons match. If the tab you are on has none, the picker switches to one that does.
• Typos are fine. If nothing matches exactly, the picker shows close matches and tells you so. For example, pyhton still finds Python.
• The suggested icon is the one the theme would have chosen for this name. It is listed first and marked match.
• Keyboard: the arrow keys move through the grid, Enter picks an icon and Esc closes the picker.

Other actions

• Reset an icon: right-click → Reset icon to default, or Reset to default in the picker.
• Commands: Change icon of the active file and Change icon of the active file's folder open the picker for the note you are in. Assign them a hotkey in Settings → Hotkeys.
• Priority: an icon you chose yourself always wins over an automatic one.

Settings

FAQ

Does it work on mobile? Yes. Shard Icons is not desktop-only and uses no desktop-specific APIs.

Does it slow down large vaults? No. The plugin only draws the rows Obsidian's file explorer is showing, and updates them as you scroll. It never rescans the whole vault.

Where are my icon choices stored? Do they sync? In .obsidian/plugins/shard-icons/data.json, alongside your settings. That file syncs with Obsidian Sync or any other sync tool, so your icons appear on every device.

What happens if I uninstall or disable the plugin? Every icon it added is removed from the explorer straight away, and your notes are never touched. Your choices stay in data.json, so they return if you enable the plugin again.

An icon shows as a plain folder. Why? That icon is not available in this version. It may come from a newer release on another device, or be a symbol icon from before 0.4.0. Your choice is kept rather than deleted, and appears once the versions match.

The icon I want is missing. Please open an issue with the icon or brand you have in mind.

Privacy

Shard Icons makes no network requests and collects no data. It reads only folder and file names, to match icons, and stores only your settings and icon choices.

Contributing

Bug reports, ideas and pull requests are welcome. Please open an issue first for larger changes. Building, testing and releasing are covered in docs/development.md and docs/releasing.md. See CHANGELOG.md for what changed in each release.

Credits and licenses

Shard Icons is released under the MIT license; see LICENSE. The icons it bundles come from these projects, under their own licenses:

• Material Icon Theme: MIT, © Philipp Kief and contributors. License
• Simple Icons: CC0-1.0. License
• Material Design Icons: Apache-2.0, by Pictogrammers. License

Brand logos are trademarks of their respective owners. The CC0 waiver covers the icon files, not the marks themselves. See licenses/ for the full notices.