Explorer Sort

An Obsidian plugin that lets you manually arrange files and folders in the file explorer, giving each folder its own custom order instead of the built-in alphabetical/date sorting.

Features

• Per-folder custom order — every folder (including the vault root) can have its own arrangement. Folders without a custom order keep Obsidian's default sorting.
• Right-click to move — the file explorer context menu gains Move up, Move down, Move to top, and Move to bottom.
• Drag-and-drop reordering — Reorder folder contents… opens a modal where you drag items into place (with up/down buttons as a fallback), then save.
• Commands & hotkeys — move the active file up/down/top/bottom or open the reorder modal from the command palette; bind hotkeys to any of them.
• Survives renames and moves — custom orders are updated automatically when you rename, move, or delete files and folders.
• New files land at the bottom — items without a saved position are appended after the custom-ordered ones, in Obsidian's default order.
• Toggle on/off — disable custom sorting at any time from settings or via the Toggle custom sorting command; your saved orders are kept.

Installation (manual)

1. Build the plugin (see below) or grab main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css.
2. Create the folder <your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/explorer-sort/.
3. Copy main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css into that folder.
4. In Obsidian, go to Settings → Community plugins, refresh the list, and enable Explorer Sort.

Building from source

npm install
npm run build   # produces main.js

For development with automatic rebuilds:

npm run dev

Usage

1. Right-click any file or folder in the file explorer.
2. Use Move up / Move down / Move to top / Move to bottom for quick adjustments, or Reorder folder contents… to drag everything into place at once.
3. To go back to Obsidian's default sorting for a folder, open the reorder modal and click Reset to default sorting — or clear everything from the plugin settings.

How it works

The plugin wraps the file explorer's internal sorting function. When a folder has a saved order, its children are displayed in that order; the order itself is stored in the plugin's data.json as a list of item names per folder path. Because it hooks sorting rather than the DOM, it plays nicely with collapsing/expanding folders and vault changes.

Note: this relies on an internal (non-public) Obsidian API, as all custom-sorting plugins do. If a future Obsidian update changes the explorer internals, the plugin will log a warning and fall back to default sorting rather than break your vault.

License

MIT