🌿 Git History for Obsidian

Version control for your vault, with an intuitive interface and no terminal required.

Every note you edit is tracked. You can look back at what changed and when, undo a change you regret, and keep a backup copy somewhere safe. The plugin shows all of it as a visual timeline inside Obsidian — point, click, done.

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🌱 New to Git? Start here

Git is a tool that remembers every version of every file. Three ideas cover almost everything you will do:

Term	What it means for your vault
📸 Commit	A snapshot of your vault at one moment, with a short note about it. Like a save point you can return to.
⬆️ Push	Uploads your snapshots to a backup copy, so they also exist off this computer.
⬇️ Pull	Downloads snapshots you made elsewhere, for example on another computer.

A typical day needs one habit: write what changed, press Commit, press Push. Everything else in this plugin is there for the moment you want to look back.

If your vault is not a Git repository yet, run the Initialize Git repository command from Obsidian's command palette and the plugin sets one up for you.

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What you get

📋 Source control panel

Your changed notes, grouped and ready to commit.

• See at a glance which notes changed, and by how much
• Stage individual notes, whole folders, or everything at once
• Commit with a message, amend the last one, or commit and push in one step
• Pull, push, fetch and stash from the toolbar, with progress while they run
• Switch or create branches
• Refreshes itself when you edit notes or come back to the window

🌳 Commit graph

The history of your vault as a timeline.

• Every commit with its author, date, and how much changed
• Branches and merges drawn as coloured lanes
• Click a commit to expand it and see what it contained
• Search by message, author, or commit ID

A compact version lives in the sidebar, so you can glance at recent commits without leaving what you were doing.

🕰️ File history

Pick any note and see only the commits that touched it — including the ones from before you renamed it. Available from the command palette and from the right-click menu in the source control panel.

🔍 Diff viewer

See exactly what changed in a note: old and new side by side, or as one annotated text. You can stage or undo a single block of changes instead of the whole file.

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🧩 Requirements

• Obsidian 1.7.2 or later
• Git installed on your computer (how to install)
• Desktop only — Git cannot run on mobile

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⌨️ Commands

Available from Obsidian's command palette (Ctrl/Cmd + P).

Command	What it does
Open source control	Opens the sidebar panel
Open Git graph	Opens the full history timeline
Commit	Jumps to the panel to write a commit
Push	Uploads your commits
Pull	Downloads commits made elsewhere
Fetch	Checks for new commits without applying them
Backup: stage all, commit & push	Snapshots and uploads the whole vault in one step
Show file history	Shows the history of the note you have open
Initialize Git repository	Sets up version control for a vault that has none

⚙️ Settings

Setting	Default	What it does
Commit message template	(empty)	Message used by the one-step backup
Pull strategy	merge	How downloaded commits are combined with yours
Default diff view	side by side	Side by side, or one annotated text
Auto-fetch	off	Check for new commits in the background
Auto-fetch interval	300s	How often to check
Show status bar	on	Branch and change count in Obsidian's status bar
Show nested repositories	off	List folders that are repositories of their own. They cannot be committed together with the rest of the vault
File watcher debounce	1000ms	How long to wait after an edit before refreshing

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🔒 What the plugin does on your computer

Obsidian lists what a plugin is capable of, so here is what those capabilities are used for:

• Runs the git command. That is how every action works — it is the same program you would use in a terminal, run inside your vault's folder only.
• Writes to the clipboard. Only when you use "Copy SHA" or "Copy path".

Nothing leaves your machine unless you press push, and then only to the backup location you set up yourself.

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License

MIT