GridSense

Excel-grade grid over your Obsidian notes' frontmatter — a standalone alternative to Bases for hands-on-the-keyboard data editing.

What it does

• Folder-scoped grid view — open any folder as an editable table (folder context menu → Open in GridSense, or the command/ribbon). Rows are notes; columns are the union of frontmatter properties, ordered by usage.
• Real multi-cell selection — click-drag, Shift+click, Shift+arrows, click a header to select a column.
• Excel keys — arrows/Tab/Enter navigation, type-to-edit, F2/Enter to edit, Esc, ⌘D fill down, ⌘R fill right, ⌘C/⌘V TSV copy-paste (works with real spreadsheets), Delete clears, ⌘Z undo.
• Find & replace in selection (⌘F) — or the whole grid when nothing is selected.
• Heading-content columns — add a read-only column showing each note's body text under a chosen heading (for the stuff you keep outside frontmatter).
• Compiled database — the grid is rendered from a compiled snapshot of your frontmatter, persisted as JSON under .obsidian/plugins/gridsense/db/, auto-invalidated by metadata-cache events.
• Keyboard-first property editor — command Edit properties of current note: navigate, edit, rename, add, and delete properties without touching the mouse; every write is undoable.

All writes go through Obsidian's processFrontMatter — nothing touches your note bodies.

Installation

GridSense is in the community plugin store — in Obsidian, go to Settings → Community plugins → Browse, search for "GridSense", install, and enable.

Other ways to install:

• BRAT (for pre-release builds): add grub-basket/GridSense in BRAT.
• Manual: download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release and copy them into <your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/gridsense/, then enable GridSense in Settings → Community plugins.

License

MIT