Navigate to Neighbouring Files

This Obsidian Plugin adds navigational commands that let you quickly navigate to neighbouring files in your vault.

Use Case

• Navigate from one weekly note to another (e.g., 2023-W17 → 2023-W18)
• Move between daily notes (e.g., 2023-05-31 → 2023-06-01)
• Browse sequentially numbered notes (e.g., A4 → A5)
• Navigate through project files in a folder

obsidian-neighbouring-files.webm

Commands

Default Commands:

• Navigate to next file
• Navigate to prev file

Commands:

• Navigate to next file (alphabetical)
• Navigate to prev file (alphabetical)
• Navigate to older file (creation timestamp)
• Navigate to newer file (creation timestamp)
• Navigate to older file (modified timestamp)
• Navigate to newer file (modified timestamp)
• Folder up
• Folder down
• Next folder
• Prev folder

Supported Sorting Modes:

• Alphabetical: Ordered by file names.
• By Modification Timestamp: Based on the file modification date.
• By Creation Timestamp: Based on the file creation date.

Configuration

Default Sort Order

The default command uses the same sort order as the File explorer. You can configure a fallback sort order in the plugin settings.

Included File Types

By default, navigation is restricted to markdown files. In the settings you can enable support for other file types:

• Limit to Markdown files only
• Include all file types
• Specify additional file extensions to include

Loop Notes in Folder

• When disabled: Navigation stops at the beginning/end of the current folder.
• When enabled: Navigation loops back to the first/last note in the same folder.

Continue Across Folders

• When disabled: Navigation stays within the current folder.
• When enabled: Reaching a folder boundary continues navigation into adjacent folders.

Configure Obsidian Hotkeys

In Obsidian, open Settings -> Hotkeys, search for neighbouring-files, and assign keys to the command IDs you want:

• neighbouring-files:next
• neighbouring-files:prev
• neighbouring-files:next-alphabetical
• neighbouring-files:prev-alphabetical
• neighbouring-files:older-created
• neighbouring-files:newer-created
• neighbouring-files:older-modified
• neighbouring-files:newer-modified
• neighbouring-files:folder-up
• neighbouring-files:folder-down
• neighbouring-files:folder-next
• neighbouring-files:folder-prev

Configure VIMRC keybindings

Instead of configuring obsidian hotkeys to trigger the navigation commands, you can also use the obsidian-vimrc-support plugin to map more useful hotkeys such as gn or gp (Caveat: This only works when the editor mode is on).

Example .obsidian.vimrc.

" define navigation commands
exmap next_file              obcommand neighbouring-files:next
exmap prev_file              obcommand neighbouring-files:prev
exmap next_file_alphabetical obcommand neighbouring-files:next-alphabetical
exmap prev_file_alphabetical obcommand neighbouring-files:prev-alphabetical
exmap older_file_created     obcommand neighbouring-files:older-created
exmap newer_file_created     obcommand neighbouring-files:newer-created
exmap older_file_modified    obcommand neighbouring-files:older-modified
exmap newer_file_modified    obcommand neighbouring-files:newer-modified
exmap folder_up              obcommand neighbouring-files:folder-up
exmap folder_down            obcommand neighbouring-files:folder-down
exmap folder_next            obcommand neighbouring-files:folder-next
exmap folder_prev            obcommand neighbouring-files:folder-prev
" add navigation mappings
nmap gn :next_file<cr>
nmap gp :prev_file<cr>
nmap fu :folder_up<cr>
nmap fd :folder_down<cr>
nmap fn :folder_next<cr>
nmap fp :folder_prev<cr>

Releasing

1. Add a changeset for user-facing changes:

   make changeset
   

2. Publish with the Makefile release target:

   make release
   

make release runs Changesets versioning, creates the release commit/tag, and pushes tags to trigger the GitHub release workflow.

License

This project is licensed under MIT License.