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Notebook Navigator 3.0 – The writer's release! Manual sort, word count targets, custom group headers, and much more!
▲ 467 r/ObsidianMD

Notebook Navigator 3.0 – The writer's release! Manual sort, word count targets, custom group headers, and much more!

Notebook Navigator is a better file browser and calendar for Obsidian, inspired by Apple Notes, Bear, Evernote, and Day One.

Version 3.0 adds manual sorting, word count targets, and custom group headers, making it a compelling alternative to Scrivener and Ulysses!

Enjoy the release! 🎉

New

  • Manual sort. New manual sorting mode in list pane. You can now arrange notes in any order you want. The position is saved as a numeric index value in a frontmatter property, and works in single folders as well as with Show notes from descendants enabled.
  • Manual sort. You can reorder notes directly in the list pane. Select one or more notes and press Cmd/Ctrl + Arrow Up/Down. Or pick Edit sort order... from the sort menu to open a dedicated drag-and-drop view, which supports multi-select on desktop and touch on mobile.
  • Manual sort. New setting: List > Manual sort > New note placement controls where new notes are added when manual sort is active: Top, Bottom, Below selected note, or Unsorted. Default is below selected note.
  • List pane. Custom group headers. Set group mode to "Custom" then create or edit group headers by right clicking files in list pane.
  • List pane. Word count targets. Custom group headers can show total word count and progress against a target word count, similar to writing targets in Scrivener.
  • List pane. Group headers can now be collapsed. Click the chevron next to a group header to collapse or expand it.
  • Recent files. You can now drag items from recent files into shortcuts, folders, tags and properties.
  • Calendar. New setting Calendar > Calendar integration > Periodic notes locale controls whether Notebook Navigator periodic note paths use the selected calendar locale or Obsidian locale.

Improved

  • List pane. Word count display now supports title placement, property placement, target word counts, and target percentage display. Change it in List > Notes > Word count.

Changed

  • Settings. "Property to sort by" was renamed to Properties to sort by. It now takes a comma-separated list of frontmatter properties, and each one shows up as its own option in the list pane sort menu.

Fixed

  • Commands. When Notebook Navigator: Delete files was called and the navigation pane was last focused, it could delete the selected folder. It now only deletes selected files.
  • Shortcuts. Folder and note shortcuts no longer break when synced between devices with different path case sensitivity, for example appLab/SKILLS-WORKFLOWS vs applab/skills-workflows.
  • List pane. Fixed extra spacing in feature image rows when dates are hidden and tags or properties are visible.
  • List pane. Removed tiny hairline gap above the sticky group header showing on some scaling modes.
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u/jsann — 2 days ago
▲ 921 r/ObsidianMD

Notebook Navigator just passed 500 000 downloads since September 2025, making it one of the fastest growing plugins ever for Obsidian. Thank you for all your feedback and suggestions!

u/jsann — 14 days ago
▲ 126 r/ObsidianMD

There have been a few recent posts on this forum about plugin security.

As most of you know, the Obsidian team does not review plugin updates. Since plugins run with full user permissions it means that plugins can technically be updated to do virtually anything in your computer or network, either by mistake or through malicious intent.

I take security extremely seriously, so I have now added CodeQL scans and OpenSSF compliance to all future releases of Notebook Navigator. You can always see the latest security status in the official repo, at https://github.com/johansan/notebook-navigator

I also do full scans with ESLINT and the official Obsidian ESLINT plugin (latest is 0.2.9 released yesterday) on every single build. Even a single warning aborts the entire build process. This is to make sure the plugin behaves as expected within the Obsidian environment.

I also clearly document every single network access done by Notebook Navigator at https://github.com/johansan/notebook-navigator#11-network-usage-disclosure . This is also something I miss a lot in many other plugins.

---

Now I would really like your feedback:

Is this good enough? Anything you feel should be added to this process to make it even better?

Looking at many of the other 2700+ plugins I haven't seen any other plugin doing anything even remotely similar to this. And I would also not be surprised if the majority of all approved plugins would fail the Obsidian ESLint 0.2.9 verification.

---

I also just released Notebook Navigator 2.6.3 which has now passed through this extensive verification process. Full release notes:

New

  • Settings. General > Show tooltips > Show word count. Shows word counts in tooltips.
  • Commands. Toggle tags by selection and Toggle properties by selection.

Improved

  • Calendar. Calendar now keeps the displayed date when switching between the left and right sidebar.
  • Search. Property value filters now match substrings, so ".author=chomsky" matches values such as "Avram Noam Chomsky" and "Chomsky et al.".
  • List pane. Sort and appearance menus in list pane now include options for "Change default settings" to open settings.
  • Internal. Added automated GitHub quality checks, CodeQL security scanning, and OpenSSF Scorecard.
  • Internal. Updated all third-party libraries used by the plugin to their latest versions.
  • Internal. Improved robustness across services, modals, and content providers.
  • Internal. Full support for the latest Obsidian ESLint plugin (0.2.9, released April 30).

Changed

  • Calendar. The setting "Calendar > Month name format" now applies to all views.
  • List pane. The grouping options in list pane (group by date, folder or no group) are moved from the appearance menu to the sort menu.
  • Settings. Removed the setting List > Display > Variable note height. It made no sense keeping it with the new variable line height feature.
  • API. API metadata icon fields now return the same icon format as stored in frontmatter.
  • Internal. Minimum supported Obsidian version is now 1.11.0.

Fixed

  • Navigation pane. Fixed rainbow colors on file tags not showing in list pane when tags used uppercase letters.
  • List pane. Fixed incorrect row heights in list pane (virtualizer breaking) after changing calendar settings or navigating certain folders.
  • Settings. The two settings List > Notes > "File name icon map" and "File type icon map" now work correctly again. They broke after the icon format was introduced in 2.6.2.
u/jsann — 19 days ago