What it looks like

Disk (the only real copy)          Obsidian file explorer
03 References/Project A/           01 In progress/
├── alpha.md            ──────▶    ├── meeting-notes.md
├── beta.md                        └── Project A ↪     ← virtual mount
└── subfolder/                         ├── alpha
                                       ├── beta
                                       └── subfolder

The virtual entry looks and behaves like a native folder: click a note and the real file opens, edits show up in both places instantly, and adding or deleting files in the source folder is reflected in the mirror. No folder is created on disk — the mapping lives in the plugin's own data.json.

In one sentence: the file exists once; the virtual location is just an extra node drawn into the file explorer. Rename, create and delete act directly on the real file.

Features

When it's useful

• PARA / Zettelkasten: a reference folder lives in one place but has to show up under both “In progress” and “Archive”.
• One asset, many entry points: templates, attachments and media libraries appear in every project folder while the files stay in one place.
• No re-organising: keep the existing folder structure and mount a few views on top of it.
• Reused notes: the same checklist appears under “This week” and a project — edit either one and it is the same note.

Installation

Option 1 — community plugins (recommended)

Settings → Community plugins → Browse → search “Virtual Mount” → Install and enable.

Option 2 — BRAT

Add ko-Ani/obsidian-virtual-mount as a beta plugin; updates can then be installed from inside Obsidian.

Option 3 — manual

1. Download main.js, manifest.json and styles.css from the latest release.
2. Put them in <your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/virtual-mount/.
3. Reload Obsidian and enable Virtual Mount in Settings → Community plugins.

Usage

Mount a folder

1. Right-click (long-press on mobile) a folder → Mount as virtual folder….
2. Mount to picks the parent folder of the virtual entry; leave it empty for the vault root.
3. Display name can be changed now or later; press Mount.

Right-clicking a note shows Mount as virtual note… instead.

The settings tab has the full editor (type, source, target, name), a list of mounts with per-mount enable toggles, and display options:

Commands (Ctrl/Cmd+P):

• Add virtual mount…
• Mount the current note to…
• Mount the current note's folder to…
• Refresh virtual mounts

Interactions

How it works

Obsidian's file index is built by scanning the vault: TFile.path is the real path, and no API can add a virtual path to that index. Obsidian also explicitly ignores intra-vault symlinks, because two copies of the same file would make [[wikilinks]] ambiguous (help).

So this plugin is a view layer: it reads real TFolder data and injects equivalent nodes into the native file explorer. The virtual path is visual only — the file always keeps its real path, which is exactly why edits stay in sync.

Obsidian 1.6+ renders the file explorer with a virtualized tree: setChildrenInPlace() replaces the children of .nav-folder-children on scroll, so anything appended there is wiped. This plugin therefore:

1. finds the real folder element via data-path on its title,
2. creates a sibling container .vm-children (same tree-item-children styling, but owned by the plugin),
3. rebuilds only when the source changed, and re-injects after the core re-renders (MutationObserver),
4. stops propagation on click / auxclick / contextmenu so the core's delegated handlers never see virtual rows.

The file-menu workspace event is used to add the right-click item, filtered to the file-explorer-context-menu source. For a virtual entry, the plugin hands the real TAbstractFile back to the file explorer view's own onFileContextMenu(), so the menu is generated by core with the exact source as its target; plugin items are appended through a one-shot file-menu listener. On recent Obsidian versions core anchors a menu to the real tree row and auto-closes it when that row is not visible, so the plugin temporarily hides that row association while the menu is built and restores it immediately afterwards. If that internal method is ever unavailable, a small built-in menu (reveal / copy path / remove mount) is used instead.

Mobile

The mobile app runs the same bundle and the same tree DOM, so mounts render identically. Long-press opens the same context menu, and “Copy real path” falls back to execCommand where navigator.clipboard is unavailable.

isDesktopOnly is false.

Compatibility

Limitations

• Drag-and-drop is not supported. Drag the real entry instead. Rename / delete / new note / new folder are available from the virtual entry's native source menu and act on the real file.
• Virtual paths are not linkable. [[01 In progress/Project A/alpha]] will not resolve; links always use the real path.
• Not in search, Quick Switcher or Graph — those read the index, which only knows real paths.
• Mount blocks always sit at the top of the target folder, because the core's virtual list owns the rest of the children.
• Upgrade risk. This depends on core DOM structure; a major Obsidian update may need an adaptation.

Development

pnpm install
pnpm dev      # watch build
pnpm build    # typecheck + production bundle -> main.js
pnpm test     # jsdom tests: DOM injection, plugin entry, i18n

The DOM tests replicate the real 1.8.x tree structure extracted from app.js, including the virtualized-children behaviour.

License

MIT