VCF Contacts Viewer

VCF Contacts Viewer is a read-only Obsidian plugin for inspecting .vcf files as contact cards, raw source, and import-preflight warnings. It is built for safely reviewing vCards that arrive in a vault without turning Obsidian into a contact manager.

Features

• Opens .vcf files in a dedicated view.
• Parses one or more BEGIN:VCARD / END:VCARD blocks.
• Supports common vCard 3.0 and 4.0 fields where practical.
• Shows a contact list with full name, organization, primary email, and primary phone.
• Shows detail fields for names, phones, emails, addresses, URLs, organization, title, birthday, UID, REV, categories, notes, PHOTO metadata, and raw fields.
• Provides raw source view with line numbers.
• Searches across names, organization, email, phone, normalized fields, and raw source.
• Reports import-preflight warnings for unsupported fields, malformed cards, folded-line issues, encoded fields, version mismatches, and PHOTO fields.
• Keeps PHOTO handling private: remote URLs are never loaded and embedded data is never rendered or imported.
• Stays read-only by design: it never writes back to .vcf files.

Positioning

The existing community plugin VCF Contacts is a richer contact manager with import, export, and markdown contact notes. VCF Contacts Viewer is deliberately narrower: it is a file viewer and import-preflight tool, not a CRM, sync tool, or contact note generator.

Privacy and security

vCards often contain personal data. VCF Contacts Viewer keeps inspection local:

• no network APIs
• no clipboard APIs
• no eval or dynamic code execution
• no write-back to .vcf
• no contact note creation
• no contact export
• no click-to-call or mailto links
• no FaceTime, Contacts.app, or external app launch actions
• no remote PHOTO loading
• no avatar import

Installation

Community plugin directory

Install from the Obsidian Community directory or search for VCF Contacts Viewer in Settings → Community plugins → Browse.

Manual installation

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release.
2. Create this folder in your vault: .obsidian/plugins/vcf-contacts-viewer/.
3. Put the downloaded files in that folder.
4. Reload the app.
5. Enable VCF Contacts Viewer in Settings -> Community plugins.

BRAT installation

For beta testing, install the plugin with BRAT using this repository URL:

https://github.com/viggomeesters/obsidian-vcf-contacts-viewer

Usage

Open any .vcf file in your vault. The file opens with VCF Contacts Viewer.

Use the toolbar to:

• search contacts
• switch between cards and source views
• refresh the file after external changes

Parser scope

The parser handles folded lines and common vCard 3.0/4.0 properties. It preserves raw fields so unsupported or unusual properties can still be inspected. Encoded fields such as quoted-printable and base64 are warned about instead of silently pretending the viewer fully decoded them.

Development

npm install
npm run build
npx tsc --noEmit
npm test

For local development, copy or symlink this repository into .obsidian/plugins/vcf-contacts-viewer/ inside a test vault.

Release process

Community plugin files are installed from GitHub releases. For each release:

1. Update manifest.json, package.json, and versions.json.
2. Run npm install, npm run build, npx tsc --noEmit, and npm test.
3. Create a GitHub release whose tag exactly matches manifest.json.version.
4. Attach main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css as release assets.

Releases are built and verified locally, then uploaded manually. The release tag must exactly match the manifest version.

Community directory

VCF Contacts Viewer is listed in the Obsidian Community directory.

License

MIT