Vault Timeline
Vault Timeline166 downloadsGlobal chronological timeline of your entire vault — automatically indexes all notes by date, supports filtering by tags/folders, zoom, and interactive navigation.
- Overview
- Scorecard
- Updates2
An Obsidian plugin that turns your notes into an interactive, zoomable timeline — automatically indexed from frontmatter dates.
Features
- Auto-indexing — scans all markdown files and builds a timeline from their frontmatter dates
- Zoomable axis — switch between Day / Week / Month / Year / Decade views
- Tag-based color groups — assign colors to tags; events are colored by their first matching tag
- Duration bars — notes with both a start and end date render as a horizontal span
- Search & filter — filter events by full-text search or by tag
- Minimap — a compact all-events overview at the bottom with a draggable viewport indicator
- Tooltips — hover over any event to see its title, date, excerpt, and tags
- Click to open — click any event dot or label to jump straight to the note
- Context menu — right-click an event for quick actions (open note, jump to date)
- Auto-refresh — timeline updates automatically when notes are created, modified, or deleted
Installation
From the Obsidian Community Plugins browser (once published)
- Open Settings → Community plugins → Browse
- Search for Vault Timeline
- Click Install, then Enable
Manual installation
- Download the latest release from the Releases page (
main.js,manifest.json,styles.css) - Copy the files into your vault at
.obsidian/plugins/vault-timeline/ - Reload Obsidian and enable the plugin under Settings → Community plugins
Usage
Opening the timeline
- Click the clock-calendar icon in the left ribbon, or
- Run the command
Open Vault Timelinefrom the command palette (Ctrl/Cmd + P)
Date frontmatter
The plugin reads dates from your notes' YAML frontmatter. By default it looks for the field date:
---
title: Project kickoff
date: 2024-03-15
endDate: 2024-04-01
tags: [project, milestone]
---
Supported date formats:
2024-03-152024-03-15T09:3015.03.202415/03/20242024/03/15
If a note has no date field, its file creation time is used as a fallback.
Navigation
| Control | Action |
|---|---|
‹ / › buttons |
Move the view backward / forward by one zoom unit |
| Today button | Jump to the current date |
| Zoom buttons | Switch between Day, Week, Month, Year, Decade |
| Minimap dots | Click any dot to jump to that event |
Settings
Open Settings → Vault Timeline to configure the plugin.
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Date YAML field | date |
Frontmatter key used as the event date |
| End date YAML field | endDate |
Optional frontmatter key for the event end date (enables duration bars) |
| Exclude folders | (empty) | Comma-separated folder paths to skip (e.g. Templates, Archive) |
| Filter tags | (empty) | Only include notes that have at least one of these tags; leave empty for all notes |
| Default zoom level | Month |
The zoom level shown when the timeline first opens |
| Show excerpts in tooltips | on | Whether to display note text previews in hover tooltips |
| Auto-refresh on vault changes | on | Automatically re-index when notes are added, edited, or deleted |
| Color groups | see below | Map tag names to hex colors |
Default color groups
| Tag | Color |
|---|---|
project |
#4A90E2 (blue) |
milestone |
#E2844A (orange) |
journal |
#50E3C2 (teal) |
task |
#B8E24A (lime) |
You can add, edit, or remove color groups in the settings panel. The first matching group color is applied to each event.
Commands
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
Open Vault Timeline |
Opens (or focuses) the timeline view |
Re-index Vault Timeline |
Forces a full re-scan of all notes |
Development
Requirements: Node.js 18+
# Clone into your vault's plugin directory
git clone https://github.com/veltrix42/vault-timeline .obsidian/plugins/vault-timeline
cd .obsidian/plugins/vault-timeline
# Install dependencies
npm install
# Development build with watch
npm run dev
# Production build
npm run build
The plugin is written in TypeScript and uses the standard Obsidian Plugin API.
Contributing
Pull requests and issues are welcome. Please open an issue before submitting large changes so we can discuss the approach first.
License
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About
Turn notes into an interactive, zoomable timeline indexed automatically from YAML frontmatter dates (falls back to file creation time). Switch Day/Week/Month/Year/Decade views, color events by tags, render start–end durations as spans, search and filter, view a minimap and tooltips, and click or right-click events to open notes or run quick actions.Details
Current version
2.0.0
Last updated
2 months ago
Created
2 months ago
Updates
2 releases
Downloads
166
Compatible with
Obsidian 1.4.0+
Platforms
Desktop, Mobile
License
MIT