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File Metadata

A sidebar panel for Obsidian that shows file info, text statistics, and a document outline — without touching your frontmatter.

screenshot-Obsidian-2026-03-10-000888@2x screenshot-Obsidian-2026-03-10-000894@2x screenshot-Obsidian-2026-03-10-000890@2x

Features

  • File info — name, full path, folder, created/modified dates, size
  • Details — frontmatter tags, backlinks count, and all frontmatter properties
  • Text statistics — words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, estimated pages, reading time, readability score
  • Link & code counts — internal/external links, fenced code blocks
  • Document outline — clickable headings indented by level
  • Image metadata — dimensions, colour space, camera (EXIF via exifr)
  • Collapsible sections — click any section header to collapse or expand it
  • Click to copy — click any row to copy its value; right-click for more options
  • Date format — choose between short, long, or relative date display
  • Style Settings support — customise colours, spacing, and layout via the Style Settings plugin
  • Configurable — toggle individual fields and sections on or off in Settings

Installation

Community plugins

  1. Settings → Community plugins → Browse → search File Metadata
  2. InstallEnable

Manual

  1. Grab main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release
  2. Drop them into .obsidian/plugins/file-metadata/ inside your vault
  3. Settings → Community plugins → enable File Metadata

Usage

Click the icon in the left ribbon, or run File Metadata: Open File Metadata panel from the command palette.

The panel lives in the right sidebar and updates as you switch files or edit.

Collapsible sections

Click any section header (File, Statistics, Outline) to collapse or expand it. The collapsed state is remembered for the duration of the session.

Context menu

Right-click any row to copy just the value, or copy the full "Label: Value" pair.

Settings

Settings → File Metadata

File

Setting Default Description
Show file name On Display the file name (click copies full path)
Show file path Off Display the full vault path
Show folder On Display the parent folder
Show created date On Creation date and time
Show modified date On Last modified date and time
Show file size On Size on disk
Date format Short Choose Short (5 Mar 2026, 14:30), Long (Wed, 5 March 2026, 14:30), or Relative (3h ago)
Folder click copies Vault path Choose Vault path or Obsidian URI (obsidian://open?vault=…)

Details

Setting Default Description
Show Details section On Toggle the entire section
Show tags On Frontmatter and inline tags
Show backlinks count On Number of notes linking to this file
Show properties On All frontmatter key-value pairs

Statistics

Setting Default Description
Show Statistics section On Toggle the entire section
Show sentences On Sentence count
Show paragraphs On Paragraph count
Show estimated pages On Estimated page count
Words per page 300 Used for the page estimate
Show reading time On Estimated reading time based on word count
Reading speed (wpm) 200 Words per minute for the reading time estimate
Show readability score Off Flesch reading ease (0–100); higher = easier to read
Show link counts Off Internal ([[wikilinks]]) and external link counts
Show code block count Off Number of fenced code blocks

Outline

Setting Default Description
Show Outline section On Toggle the heading outline

Behaviour

Setting Default Description
Click to copy On Click any row to copy its value

Style Settings

If you have the Style Settings plugin installed, File Metadata exposes the following customisation options under Style Settings → File Metadata:

Option Type Default
Section header colour Themed colour Text normal
Row label colour Themed colour Text muted
Row value colour Themed colour Text normal
Outline item colour Themed colour Text muted
Section divider opacity Slider (0–1) 0.5
Spacing above divider Number (px) 12
Label column width Slider (20–60%) 40%

Without Style Settings installed, the plugin uses sensible defaults and looks identical.

Future improvements

  • Reveal file/folder in system file explorer (Finder/Explorer)
  • Configurable section ordering in settings

Attribution

Sidebar styling draws on the approach used by Simple File Info (Lukas Capkovic), which uses Obsidian's built-in tree-item components. EXIF parsing is handled by exifr (Mike Kovařík).

License

MIT

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Obsidian plugin — file metadata, text statistics, and document outline in the sidebar

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