Local Version History

Local Version History gives every note its own on-disk version history, JetBrains style. It highlights the lines you change as you type, captures a timeline of earlier versions that survives restarts, and lets you diff, restore, or revert any point, all fully local with no account and no network. It follows a show-but-do-not-interfere principle: useful feedback during long edits, large-note refactors, multi-author reviews, or recovery from a bad sync or git pull, without getting in the way.

It complements Obsidian Sync version history rather than replacing it. Sync keeps periodic server-side snapshots as a paid cloud backup; this plugin gives immediate in-editor feedback plus a free local per-file time machine that also tracks deleted and moved files. The two work together.

Features

• Live per-line highlighting in Source and Live Preview modes. Changed, added, removed, restored, and whitespace-only lines each get their own marker, shown as a colored gutter bar or a single gutter character. Markers are session-scoped and clear when a line returns to its original state.
• Whitespace-only edits get a distinct indicator color so you can tell them apart from real content changes.
• File-explorer rows and workspace tab headers tint by what changed this session, so the tree and tab bar agree with the editor gutter at a glance. Folders whose only changes are in files hidden by Obsidian's excluded-files filter or your own exclude patterns stay untinted.
• Optional reading-mode block indicators and a properties-panel diff, each toggled in settings.
• A single "Marker intensity" setting scales how strong every change colour reads (editor markers, reading-mode bars, file-tree and tab tints) at once.
• On-disk timeline per file, captured on an edit-count and time interval so it records meaningful points rather than every keystroke, with independent retention caps for live files and for deleted-file tombstones. Pin any version with a label to protect it from eviction.
• Diff modal with four views (side-by-side, line-by-line, word-level inline, and a clean zero-context patch you can copy), a searchable version rail, and next/previous difference navigation.
• Restore a whole file to any version or to its original state, or revert a single changed block straight from the editor gutter.
• Command-palette reset of the tracker snapshot for the current note, or for every tracked note at once, when you want the change markers to start from a clean slate.
• Recent changes side panel listing the active file's timeline with action, date, and line deltas.
• Vault changes side panel: a whole-vault list of every file that still differs from its history origin (modified, added under tracking, or deleted), shown as a folder tree or a flat path-annotated list and filterable by name. It docks into the right sidebar on first load; reopen it any time from the command palette.
• Folder history: a changes-only file tree plus a timeline rail for a whole folder, with restore, delete, and label actions on the selected file.
• Deleted and moved files are kept as recoverable tombstones instead of being dropped; changes the editor never saw (a git pull, a sync, an external editor) are detected, captured, and marked with an inline badge.

Screenshots

Gutter change bars in the editor	Gutter hover panel
Diff, side by side	Diff, line by line
Diff, copyable patch	Settings

Installation

Requires Obsidian 1.13.0 or newer (see manifest.json); runs on desktop and mobile.

Community plugins (pending review): once listed, install from Settings, then Community plugins, then Browse for "Local Version History".

Via BRAT: install and enable BRAT, choose "Add Beta plugin", and enter https://github.com/bartlab/obsidian-local-history.

Manual: download the latest release, copy main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css into VaultFolder/.obsidian/plugins/local-version-history/, reload Obsidian, and enable the plugin.

Configuration

Open Settings, then Community plugins, then Local Version History. Most options are self-describing; the non-obvious ones:

• Any retention or snapshot count/age field accepts 0 to disable that particular cap.
• Excluded paths are regular-expression patterns, each matched independently against the vault-relative path; a file is excluded when any pattern matches. Patterns are case-insensitive unless "Case-sensitive path exclusion" is on.
• Keep history until is a single ordered choice for how long tracked history lives: file close (drop it when you close the file), app close (keep it for the session), or kept across restarts (persist it to disk). At kept across restarts the highlighted change set (file tree, tab headers, editor gutter, and vault changes panel) is bounded by your retention caps: a file whose changes all predate the retention window drops off those status surfaces, while its full per-file history stays browsable in the history modal.

Custom CSS example

The indicator colors resolve from CSS variables, so a snippet can recolor every surface at once:

/* Recolor the editor gutter bars and reading-mode block indicators. */
.lct,
.lct-rm-indicator {
    --lct-color-changed: #4a9eff;
    --lct-color-added: #ff6b35;
    --lct-color-restored: #fcdb89;
    --lct-color-removed: #b6b6b6;
}

/* Or target a single change type on the gutter bar directly. */
.cm-gutter.lct-gutter-bar-col .lct-added .lct-gutter-bar {
    background-color: #4ecdc4;
}

/* Recolor directories independently of the file rows. Folders resolve their own
   --lct-dir-* colours, defaulting to the file-status colours. The global colour
   intensity (the share of the hue kept before it is blended with transparency)
   is now the "Marker intensity" setting; a snippet can still override the
   underlying --lct-tint-strength, but must use !important to beat the value the
   plugin writes inline on <body>. */
body {
    --lct-dir-modified: var(--color-purple);
    --lct-dir-added: var(--color-green);
    /* --lct-tint-strength: 60% !important; */
}

Privacy and data storage

The plugin runs entirely on your device: no network access, no telemetry, no account. History is stored as JSON shards under .obsidian/plugins/local-version-history/history/ in your vault, each holding the captured file text needed to diff and restore.

If you version-control or cloud-sync your vault configuration, those shards ride along unless you exclude them:

• Git: add .obsidian/plugins/local-version-history/history/ to your .gitignore.
• Cloud sync or Obsidian Sync config sync: exclude that folder, or disable config-folder sync for the plugin.

Localization

The plugin follows Obsidian's UI language, shipping a dictionary per language under lang/<code>.json and falling back to English. To add a translation, copy lang/en.json to lang/<code>.json (using the exact Obsidian language code), translate every value while keeping the keys and {name} placeholders intact, register the catalog in src/helpers/i18n.helper.ts, and add it to tests/i18n-catalog-parity.test.ts.

Support

If this plugin is useful to you:

Developing

npm install
npm run dev        # build in watch mode
npm run build      # type-check and build for production
npm run lint       # run ESLint
npm test           # run the vitest suite

For the architectural rationale and history-model invariants, see ARCHITECTURE.md. For the release history, see CHANGELOG.md.

License

Licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.