Obsidian Automatic Table Of Contents

An Obsidian plugin to create a table of contents in a note, that updates itself when the note changes

---

• Installation
  • From Obsidian (easiest)
  • From git
  • From source
• Usage and options
  • Available options
• Limitations and known bugs
• Publish a new version
• Changelog
• License
• Contributing

Installation

From Obsidian (easiest)

Install the plugin from the Community plugins section in the app settings.

From git

Clone the plugin in your .obsidian/plugins directory:

cd /path/to/your/vault/.obsidian/plugins
git clone git@github.com:johansatge/obsidian-automatic-table-of-contents.git

From source

Download the latest release and unzip it in the .obsidian/plugins/automatic-table-of-contents directory.

Usage and options

Insert a codeblock with the table-of-contents (or its short version toc) syntax.

```table-of-contents
option1: value1
option2: value2
```

Alternatively, two commands are available in the command palette:

• Insert table of contents
• Insert table of contents (with available options)

Available options

Most options can have a default value configured in the plugin settings (Settings → Community plugins → Automatic Table of Contents). These defaults will be used for all tables of contents in your vault, unless overridden in individual codeblocks.

The following options are available:

Option	Default value	Description
title	None	Title to display before the table of contents (supports Markdown)
style	nestedList	Table of contents style (can be nestedList, nestedOrderedList or inlineFirstLevel)
minLevel	0	Include headings from the specified level (0 for no limit)
maxLevel	0	Include headings up to the specified level (0 for no limit)
include	All	Include headings with a regexp (example: /Some heading/i)
exclude	None	Exclude headings with a regexp (example: /Some heading/i)
includeLinks	true	Make headings clickable
hideWhenEmpty	false	Hide TOC if no headings are found
debugInConsole	false	Print debug info in Obsidian console

Limitations and known bugs

• The table of contents may not be generated correctly if the document doesn't implement a correct titles hierarchy (level 1 title then level 3 without a level 2 in between, for instance)
• HTML & markdown that may be in the document headings are stripped when includeLinks: true (see #24 & #27)
• LaTeX equations are not rendered correctly when includeLinks: true (see #13)
• Links might not behave correctly if the same title is present several times on the page (see #57)
• Generated table of contents is not foldable (see #23)
• The table of contents is based on a codeblock so it can be updated; it doesn't generate real Markdown in the document (see #10) so it won't be visible when exporting, or on Obsidian Publish (see #31) and links might not work in PDFs (see #12)

Publish a new version

• Build the plugin with npm run build (--watch during dev)
• Push a commit with the new version number as message with:
  • The relevant changelog in README.md
  • The new version number in manifest.json
  • The updated main.js (with npm run build)
• Tag the commit with the version number
• Publish a new GitHub release with:
  • The version number as title
  • The changelog from README.md as description
  • main.js and manifest.json from as attachments
  • Set as the latest release checked

Changelog

This project uses semver.

Version	Date	Notes
1.8.0	2026-02-07	Introduce global settings (@stevedoyle) (fix #38, #83)
1.7.3	2025-05-25	Fix default include & exclude values (fix #73)
1.7.2	2025-05-03	Fix italic stripping (fix #43)
1.7.1	2025-05-02	Fix # in wikilinks (fix #64)
1.7.0	2025-04-27	Add include & exclude options (fix #46)
1.6.1	2025-02-23	Inline title when style:inlineFirstLevel (fix #59)
1.6.0	2025-02-23	Ignore empty headings (fix #60)
1.5.1	2025-01-18	Rename command for readability (fix #53)
1.5.0	2024-11-24	Add hideWhenEmpty option (fix #51)
1.4.0	2024-05-19	Add nestedOrderedList style (@bjtho08) (fix #41)
1.3.3	2024-05-16	Compute the right min level when style:inlineFirstLevel (fix #39)
1.3.2	2024-02-18	Harden headings stripping
1.3.1	2024-02-18	Strip headings for readability (fix #24, #27)
1.3.0	2024-02-17	Introduce title option (fix #5, #32)
1.2.0	2024-01-19	Introduce toc shorthand trigger (fix #19)
1.1.0	2024-01-03	Introduce minLevel option (@ras0q) (fix #11)
1.0.6	2023-11-02	Escape special characters (fix #3)
1.0.5	2023-11-01	Fix plugin activation on mobile (fix #17)
1.0.4	2023-10-31	Support pages with no first level headings (fix #6)
1.0.3	2023-09-30	Fix readme
1.0.2	2023-09-25	Fix output sometimes displaying undefined headings
1.0.1	2023-09-09	Fix reference to global App instance
1.0.0	2023-08-27	Initial version

License

This project is released under the MIT License.

Contributing

Bug reports and feature requests are welcome! More details in the contribution guidelines.