Overview

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.

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

Community plugins (not supported yet)

1. Open Obsidian → Settings → Community plugins
2. Disable Safe mode if prompted
3. Click Browse and search for Heading Outliner
4. Click Install, then Enable

BRAT (beta testing)

1. Install the BRAT plugin
2. Open BRAT settings → Add Beta Plugin
3. Paste: https://github.com/tgrrrr/heading-outliner

Manual

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release
2. Create folder <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/heading-outliner/
3. Place the three files inside that folder
4. Reload Obsidian → Settings → Community plugins → enable Heading Outliner

Keyboard 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

1.0.0

• 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 (F1-F5)