obsidian-bases-timeline-view

timeline view for obsidian bases.

Features

• Custom Fields Support: Define timeline items using custom fields in your notes. You can specify start, end, content, startLabel, and endLabel fields, or use Bases formulas to dynamically calculate these values. The plugin automatically falls back to default values (note.start, note.end, etc.) when custom fields are not specified.

• Group Support: Organize timeline items into groups using Bases' group-by functionality (requires Obsidian 1.10 or later). This allows you to categorize and visually separate timeline items based on any field in your notes, making it easier to view related events together.

Example

Basic Usage

to draw the timeline view, you need to add some properties to your obsidian file, for example:

start: 2025-01-01
end: 2025-01-04
content: title of the item
tags: - moment

then you can use the bases and add a timeline view.

filters:
  and:
    - file.tags.contains("moment")
    - and:
        - file.ctime >= "2025-01-01"
        - file.ctime <= "2025-12-31"
views:
  - type: timeline-view
    name: moment of 2025

and the result may be looked like this:

if you want to use the default properties, here is a quick look of the default properties:

Here is the explanation of the properties that we used:

Property	Description	Required	Example	Remark
start	the start date of the item	no	2025-01-01
end	the end date of the item	no	2025-01-04
content	the content of the item	no	title of the item	if not set, it will use the file name
startLabel	custom label for display start date	no	start
endLabel	custom label for display end date	no	end

Custom Field

if you don't want to use the default properties, you can use the custom properties to define the timeline items. for example:

filters:
  and:
    - file.tags.contains("moment")
    - and:
        - file.ctime >= "2025-01-01"
        - file.ctime <= "2025-12-31"
views:
  - type: timeline-view
    name: moment of 2025
    startField: note.startData
    endField: note.endEnd

Make sure that the properties you used are defined in your obsidian file.

Group

if your Obsidian is 1.10 or later, you can use group by to group the timeline items. for example:

Tips

• basically, start and end should be Date type, but if your start is something unusual, for example "2025" or "2025-01", you should use String type

Installation

Three ways to install:

• Install from Obsidian Community Plugin（Not released yet）
• Manual install
  • Download the latest release from GitHub Releases
  • Create a new folder named bases-timeline-view in your Obsidian plugins folder(.obsidian/plugins/)
  • Move the downloaded files to the new folder
  • Reload Obsidian
  • Enable the plugin in Settings → Community plugins
• Install from BRAT(Currently Recommended)
  • Install BRAT if you haven't installed it yet.
  • Enable BRAT in Settings → Community plugins
  • Open Command Palette(Ctrl+P) and type BRAT: Plugins: Add a beta plugin for test to open the Community Plugin Manager.
  • input the plugin repository url: https://github.com/xjiaxiang/obsidian-bases-timeline-view
  • select the latest version
  • click Add plugin button to install the plugin.
  • enable bases-timeline-view plugin in Settings → Community plugins if it's not enabled automatically.

Others

• Thanks to vis-timeline and obsidian timeline