Heading Outliner

Heading Outliner is an Obsidian plugin that brings Outliner-style editing to heading-based Markdown. Move, indent, and unindent entire sections using the same keyboard hotkeys as bullet lists.

Features

Section movement (Ctrl+Shift+↑ / Ctrl+Shift+↓)

Move a heading and all its content (body text + sub-headings) up or down past sibling sections. Fold state is preserved - sections that were folded before the move stay folded afterward.

Indent / unindent (Tab / Shift+Tab)

Increase or decrease heading levels. Tab/Shift+Tab only activates when the cursor is on a heading line - body text and list items are unaffected. Supports single or multiple selected headings (range selection or multi-cursor). Fold state is preserved. Smart fold handling: When indenting a heading to become a child of a folded parent, the parent automatically unfolds to show the new child. All other fold states remain unchanged.

Progressive outline folding (Fold more / Fold less)

Expand or collapse the document outline level by level, operating on all selected visible headings at once. Works seamlessly with Obsidian's built-in fold commands.

Workflow: Use Obsidian's Fold all headings and lists to collapse everything, then run Fold less to reveal one heading level at a time across your selection. Run Fold more to collapse back down. When nothing is selected, the command falls back to the heading under the cursor.

Action	Behavior
Fold less	Unfolds the shallowest folded heading level among selected visible headings
Fold more	Folds the deepest unfolded heading level among selected visible headings

Visual heading indent

Optional per-level indentation in both the editor and reading view, styled via CSS.

Compatibility with Outliner

Fully compatible with the Outliner plugin. Both plugins use context-aware CM6 keymaps: Heading Outliner intercepts keypresses only when the cursor is on a heading line and explicitly passes through to Outliner on bullet/list lines. There are no hotkey conflicts.

Installation

Obsidian Community - Heading Outliner

Or just search Heading Outliner in Obsidian Settings → Community plugins → Browse

Hotkeys

Action	Hotkey
Move section up	Ctrl+Shift+↑
Move section down	Ctrl+Shift+↓
Indent section	Tab (on heading line)
Unindent section	Shift+Tab (on heading line)

Hotkeys are handled via CodeMirror 6 keymaps and are not exposed to Obsidian's hotkey manager. This is intentional: these keys need context-aware interception (activate only on heading lines, pass through otherwise) which Obsidian's command system cannot provide (see Hotkey Architecture Dilemma). Custom modifier configuration is planned for a future release.

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
Indent headings by level	On	Visually indent headings by level
Indent size (em)	0.5	Spacing per heading level

Roadmap

• Implement moving all selected blocks up/down, same way as indenting/unindenting selected blocks work
• Implement custom movement modifier configuration via individual ALT, CTRL, SHIFT boolean toggles in settings
• Implement Drag-n-drop

Changelog

1.1.0

• New: Fold more and Fold less commands for progressive outline folding
• New: Commands operate on all selected visible headings, falling back to cursor heading when nothing is selected

1.0.2

• Prepared for release, bugs fixed

0.0.4

• Fixed: Multi-selection now preserves all selections after indent/unindent
• Fixed: Nested headings no longer cause duplicate text changes
• Fixed: Fold states are now properly preserved during operations
• Fixed: When indenting into a folded parent, only that parent unfolds (siblings stay folded)
• Refactored: All operations now use native CodeMirror 6 API for better reliability

0.0.3

• Initial release with core features