Archive Redirect

Archive remote URLs referenced in your markdown to a local cache, and transparently serve the cache when the note is rendered. Defends your vault against link rot without rewriting any markdown.

The problem

Notes that quote articles, tweets, or research often embed remote images, video, or audio:

![](https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/.../abc.jpg)
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/XYZ.png?name=orig)

When the original host disappears (the WeChat account is deleted, the tweet is removed, the CDN expires the URL), every embed in your vault silently breaks. The note still reads, but the visual context is gone.

What this plugin does

For every remote <img>, <video>, <audio> it encounters:

1. Archives the file under a content-addressed path (SHA1 of the URL). Two storage modes are supported:
   • Sibling (default): <mdDir>/_archive/<sha1>.<ext> — one folder per markdown's directory, notes stay self-contained.
   • Central: <centralPath>/<bucket>/<sha1>.<ext> — a single shared folder at a vault-relative path, bucketed by the first 2 hex chars of the SHA1 (256 buckets). True global dedup; cache survives moving the markdown.
2. Redirects the rendered element's src to the local archive at display time — in both Reading mode and Live Preview.
3. Leaves the markdown file untouched. The URL in your .md never changes. If you later view the file outside Obsidian, share it, or this plugin is uninstalled, the remote URL still works as a fallback.

The archive is content-addressed by URL hash, so the same URL appearing in multiple notes is stored once (sibling mode dedups per folder; central mode dedups across the whole vault).

How it works

┌──────────────────────────┐
│  ![](https://remote.url) │   ← markdown stays as-is
└──────────┬───────────────┘
           │
           ▼
   ┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
   │  Scanner extracts URLs               │
   │  Policy decides which to archive     │   ← domain rules + media extension
   │  Downloader fetches with retry       │
   │  File saved at _archive/<sha1>.<ext> │
   └──────────────────────────────────────┘
           │
           ▼
   ┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
   │  At render time:                     │
   │  resolve(url) → vault path → swap    │   ← Reading + Live Preview
   │  if local present, else leave remote │
   └──────────────────────────────────────┘

Triggers

The plugin archives in three ways:

• On file modify: when you edit a markdown file, new remote URLs in it are queued for download.
• Manual scan: command Scan vault & archive remote resources walks every markdown file in scope.
• No render-time downloads. Display only swaps to local if the archive already exists.

Settings

Setting	Default	Purpose
Archive mode	Sibling	Sibling = per-note folder; Central = one shared vault-relative folder with hash bucketing.
Archive directory name (sibling)	_archive	Subfolder name (sibling to each .md) that holds cached files.
Central archive path (central)	_archive	Vault-relative folder that holds all cached files, bucketed by hash prefix.
Auto-archive on file modify	on	If off, only the manual scan command triggers downloads.
Included paths	(empty = whole vault)	Newline-separated vault paths to operate on. Example: raw/wechat.

Domain policies

Built-in rules in policies.ts:

Domain	Action	Notes
mmbiz.qpic.cn, res.wx.qq.com, mmbiz.qlogo.cn	archive	WeChat — requires Referer: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/
pbs.twimg.com	archive	Twitter / X images
video.twimg.com	skip	Twitter videos are large and the CDN is long-term stable
youtube.com, youtu.be, vimeo.com	skip	stream-only
(anything else)	archive only if URL has a media extension (.jpg/.png/.mp4/…)	prevents accidentally fetching HTML page URLs

Failure handling

• 3 attempts with [0, 1s, 3s] backoff.
• 15 second timeout per request.
• http:// URLs are automatically upgraded to https:// (Obsidian's requestUrl does not accept cleartext HTTP).
• Permanent statuses (400 / 401 / 403 / 404 / 410 / 451) skip retry.
• Failed downloads append a JSONL entry to <archive>/.failed.jsonl with URL, error, and timestamp.

Installation

Via BRAT (current)

While awaiting Community Plugins approval:

1. Install the BRAT plugin.
2. Command palette → BRAT: Add a beta plugin for testing.
3. Enter semsevens/obsidian-archive-redirect.
4. Enable Archive Redirect in Community plugins.

Manual

Download main.js and manifest.json from the latest release into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/archive-redirect/, then enable.

⚠️ Do NOT combine with attachment-cleanup plugins

Archive Redirect never modifies your markdown. The URL in your .md stays remote; the local cache is swapped in only at render time, via the rendered <img> / <video> / <audio> element's src attribute.

This means third-party "remove orphaned attachments" plugins cannot see that the local cache is in use — they scan for markdown ![]() or [[wikilink]] references, not HTML src attributes. They will flag every file in _archive/ as orphaned and may delete the entire folder, including content whose source URLs are already dead and unrecoverable.

Known dangerous combinations (verified via GitHub issues — 450-image vault wipes have happened in the wild):

• oz-clear-unused-images — repeated reports of mass deletion of HTML-referenced images.
• Local Images Plus "Remove orphaned attachments" / "(Plugin folder)" commands.
• Any "garbage-collect unused attachments" tool.

Mitigations Archive Redirect ships with:

• A marker file .archive-redirect-managed is written into every archive folder with a warning. Some cleanup plugins respect such markers; most do not.
• This warning, prominently in the README.

Your responsibility: either uninstall the cleanup tool while Archive Redirect is active, or configure it to exclude your archive folder.

Multi-device & sync

The plugin is designed to behave well across multiple devices that share the same vault via iCloud Drive / Obsidian Sync / Dropbox / Syncthing. URLs are hashed to deterministic paths, settings live in <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/archive-redirect/data.json (which syncs), and the local cache itself is stored inside the vault — so a file fetched on one device naturally appears on all of them after sync.

That said, real-world sync introduces a handful of caveats worth knowing:

Caveats

• iCloud Drive "Optimize Mac Storage": by default, iCloud may keep only file metadata locally and download the bytes on first access. The plugin checks vault.adapter.exists(path) which sees the metadata and treats the file as present — but the rendered <img> then shows a brief blank while iCloud streams the actual bytes in. Mitigation: in the Finder, right-click _archive/ → Download Now, or disable "Optimize Mac Storage" entirely.
• Concurrent migration on two devices is the most dangerous case. If you run Migrate sibling archives to central on two devices at the same time, iCloud will reconcile by creating .icloud-conflict-* siblings. No data is lost, but you get a mess to clean up. Run migration on one device, wait for sync to finish, then verify on the other.
• Plugin version skew: if device A is on v0.5.0+ and uses central mode while device B is still on v0.4.x, B's resolver still looks for files in sibling _archive/ folders that A has emptied. B's notes will silently fall back to remote URLs and stay slower. Update Archive Redirect on every device before switching to central mode.
• Settings drift before sync settles: if you change centralArchivePath on one device and immediately start using the new path on another (before data.json has propagated), the two devices will write to different folders. The new Reconcile stale central archive folders command (v0.5.1+) detects this by scanning for the .archive-redirect-managed marker file outside the current central path and offers to merge.
• Same-URL race during sync delay: device A finishes a download just as device B opens the same note. B may not yet see A's file (sync still propagating) and will re-fetch. No data problem — just duplicate network traffic. The plugin is fully idempotent: same URL → same hash → same byte content, so a duplicate write produces a binary-equal file.

Recommended setup

1. Install and enable Archive Redirect on every device before switching any device to central mode.
2. Run Migrate sibling archives to central on one device only. Wait for sync to settle (watch the iCloud icon in the menu bar) before touching the other devices.
3. If you use iCloud Drive and want fully offline access to cached media, set _archive/ (or your central path) to Always Keep Downloaded in Finder.
4. If you ever see two folders both containing .archive-redirect-managed, run Reconcile stale central archive folders from the command palette — it will move the orphan into the current central path.

Limitations

• Desktop only. Uses Node's crypto module; mobile support requires swapping to Web Crypto (which is async) and is planned for a later release.
• No Live Preview widget replacement. The plugin mutates src after Obsidian renders the element. It does not interfere with other plugins (e.g. auto-embed) that work on page URLs.
• Large files block the main thread. The current downloader is synchronous from Obsidian's perspective. Acceptable for thousands of images; not yet tuned for large video archives.

License

MIT