Enclave

An Obsidian plugin that encrypts your notes and folders on disk.

A locked note's contents are unreadable to anything outside Obsidian: sync services, backups, file browsers, other apps. Inside Obsidian you unlock it with a password, edit it as usual, and it locks itself again when you're done. Locked notes keep their names, so they still show up in the file explorer, in links and in the graph.

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[!WARNING] There is no password recovery. If you forget a password, the notes locked with it are gone. Keep a backup of anything you can't afford to lose.

• Installation
• Usage
• What is and isn't encrypted
• How it works
• Settings
• Development
• Credits and license

Installation

Enclave needs Obsidian 1.13 or later.

Enclave is not listed in the Obsidian community plugin directory. Install it in one of two ways.

With BRAT (updates from GitHub releases)

1. Install BRAT from the community plugins.
2. If this repository is private, create a fine-grained GitHub token with read-only Contents access to this repository only, and paste it into BRAT's settings.
3. In BRAT, add the repository flo-wolf/obsidian-enclave.

Manually (works with iCloud or Obsidian Sync)

1. Run npm install && npm run build.
2. Copy main.js, manifest.json and styles.css into <your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/enclave/.
3. Enable Enclave under Settings → Community plugins.

If your vault syncs through iCloud, or through Obsidian Sync with "Installed community plugins" turned on, the plugin reaches your other devices, including iOS, with the vault.

Usage

Two kinds of password

• Vault password: one password for all your everyday locked notes. You enter it once per session; it is kept in memory only and forgotten after 30 minutes (configurable) or when Obsidian quits.
• Separate password: a password for one note, or one group of notes, that should not open with the vault password.

You choose the vault password the first time you lock a note with it. After that, a mistyped vault password is rejected right away instead of locking notes under a password you didn't mean. The same goes for a folder's separate password. Enclave remembers a small encrypted check for each, never the password itself (see Password checks).

Lock and unlock a note

Right-click a note in the file explorer:

Menu item	What it does
Enclave: lock note	Encrypts the note with the vault password.
Enclave: lock with separate password	Encrypts the note with a password of its own.
Enclave: unlock note	Decrypts the note so you can read and edit it. It locks again when you leave it.
Enclave: permanently decrypt note	Removes the encryption for good and turns it back into a normal note.

The lock icon in the left ribbon turns orange while any note is unlocked; clicking it then locks them all again, each with its own password. When nothing is unlocked, it unlocks the current note if it's locked, or locks it with the vault password if it isn't.

Lock a folder

Right-click a folder → Enclave: lock folder (vault password) or Enclave: lock folder with separate password (one password for the whole folder). This locks every note in it, including subfolders, and keeps the folder locked:

• A note moved into the folder brings up a prompt to lock it too. For a vault-password folder you confirm; for a separate-password folder you enter that folder's password. Only the folder's own password is accepted, even if notes with other passwords sit in it. Moving several notes, or a whole folder, asks once.
• A note created in the folder is locked the first time you leave it.
• Renaming or moving the folder keeps it locked.
• Notes you permanently decrypt inside the folder stay decrypted.

Each note keeps its own password, so a folder can mix both kinds: lock one note with a separate password, then lock the folder, and the folder lock leaves that note alone.

Unlocking a folder (right-click → Enclave: unlock all notes in folder) is temporary, like unlocking a note: the folder stays locked and its notes lock again when you leave them. Enclave asks for the vault password if any notes use it, then for a separate password if any notes use one. Every note that password opens is unlocked; notes with a different password stay locked and are listed in the summary. Cancel the separate-password prompt to skip them.

Permanently decrypting a folder (right-click → Enclave: permanently decrypt folder) removes the encryption from its notes and stops keeping it locked.

Lock several notes

Select several notes, right-click, and choose lock selected notes or lock selected notes with separate password (one password for all of them). This locks just those notes; unlike a folder, nothing is kept locked afterwards.

Commands

All actions are also in the command palette:

Command
Lock note (vault password)	Current note
Lock note with a separate password	Current note
Unlock note	Current note
Permanently decrypt note (remove encryption)	Current note
Lock all currently-unlocked notes	Re-locks everything you have open right now
Lock every note in the vault (vault password)	Whole vault
Unlock every locked note in the vault	Whole vault
Permanently decrypt every locked note in the vault	Whole vault
Forget vault password (lock session)	Clears the password from memory
Secure notes left exposed (after a crash)	Only shown when needed, see below

While notes are unlocked, the status bar shows how many (for example "1 unlocked"). Click it to lock them all. It disappears once everything is locked.

What is and isn't encrypted

Encrypted	Not encrypted
The note's text	The note's file name
The note's own properties (frontmatter)	Folder names
	Attachments: images, PDFs and any other non-Markdown file
	Notes while they are unlocked (see below)

Enclave only encrypts Markdown notes. Locking a folder does not touch the other files in it.

How it works

A locked note on disk

Locking replaces the note's contents with this, in the same .md file:

---
locked: true
lock-scope: vault
---
```enclave
{"v":1,"alg":"AES-GCM","kdf":"PBKDF2","hash":"SHA-256","iterations":310000,"salt":"…","iv":"…","ct":"…","scope":"vault"}
```

• locked marks the note as encrypted. lock-scope says which password it needs: vault or note (separate).
• ct holds the entire original note, properties included, encrypted.
• In Obsidian, the block shows as a card saying the note is locked, with an Unlock button. A locked note can't be typed into; unlock it to edit.
• Because it's still a plain text file, a locked note syncs, backs up and works with version control like any other note.

Encryption

• A 256-bit AES-GCM key is derived from your password with PBKDF2 (SHA-256, 310,000 iterations by default).
• Every note gets its own random salt and IV, so two notes with the same text and password still look completely different.
• AES-GCM is authenticated: a wrong password or a tampered file fails with an error instead of producing garbage.
• Before the plain text is overwritten, the encrypted result is decrypted and compared to the original. If they differ, the lock is cancelled and the note is left as it was.
• Everything uses the Web Crypto API built into Obsidian, on desktop and mobile.

While a note is unlocked

Unlocking writes the plain text back to the file so you can edit it normally. That means an unlocked note is readable on disk and by your sync service until it is locked again. Enclave keeps that window short:

• It re-locks a note when you navigate away from it.
• It re-locks notes that have been idle for 5 minutes (configurable).
• It re-locks everything when Obsidian quits, and when it's hidden: on mobile whenever the app goes to the background, on desktop when you minimize it or switch to another space (you can turn that off in the settings).

If Obsidian crashes while notes are unlocked, Enclave notices on the next start and offers Secure notes left exposed to encrypt them again.

Password checks

To recognise a mistyped password, Enclave keeps a check for the vault password and for each separate-password folder in its settings file (.obsidian/plugins/enclave/data.json). A check is a short fixed text encrypted with the password, exactly like a note, so it is just as hard to brute-force as any locked note and reveals nothing more. The passwords themselves are never stored.

If you already had vault notes before checks existed, the vault check is created the first time the vault password successfully unlocks one of them.

Changing the vault password

Settings → Vault password → Forget lets you choose a new vault password the next time you lock a note. Notes locked with the old one still open with the old one: if the new password doesn't open a note, Enclave asks for the earlier password. When that note locks again while you're using the new vault password, it's re-encrypted with the new one, so old notes move over as you use them.

Permanent decryption

Permanently decrypting a note restores it as a normal note and removes it from Enclave's tracking. It will not be locked again unless you lock it yourself.

Settings

Setting	Default
Lock when leaving a note	On	Re-lock a note when you switch to another note.
Hide properties of locked notes	On	Hide the properties box on locked notes, which only shows Enclave's own locked and lock-scope properties.
Lock when Obsidian is hidden	On	Desktop only: re-lock unlocked notes when you minimize Obsidian or switch to another space or full-screen app. On mobile, notes always re-lock when the app goes to the background.
Auto-lock after inactivity	5 min	Re-lock idle unlocked notes. 0 turns it off.
Forget vault password after	30 min	How long the vault password stays in memory. 0 keeps it until Obsidian quits.
Key derivation iterations	310,000	PBKDF2 iterations for newly locked notes. Higher is slower to unlock and slower to brute-force.
Verify before overwriting	On	The round-trip check described above. Roughly doubles the time a lock takes.
Vault password	Not set	Whether the vault password has been chosen. Forget lets you choose a new one the next time you lock a note; see Changing the vault password.
Locked folders	None	Folders you've locked, with their kind of password. Deleting one from the list stops locking new notes there; its notes stay as they are.

Development

npm install      # install dependencies
npm run dev      # rebuild main.js on every change
npm run build    # type-check and build a production bundle
npm run deploy   # build and copy the plugin into $OBSIDIAN_VAULT
npm test         # run the test suite

To try a change before releasing it, run OBSIDIAN_VAULT=/path/to/vault npm run deploy, then turn Enclave off and on again under Settings → Community plugins (or run Reload app without saving). This overwrites the copy BRAT installed; BRAT puts the released version back the next time it updates.

To publish a release, set the version in manifest.json, package.json and versions.json, then push a tag with exactly that version (for example 1.0.1, no v). A GitHub Action builds the plugin and attaches main.js, manifest.json and styles.css to the release, which is what BRAT installs.

Credits and license

Enclave is a fork of Locky by boinkdevteam, which is itself a fork of Lockbox by Danzar.

Licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later, like both projects it is based on. See LICENSE.