Unified Outliner

日本語

Reorganize heading sections and list subtrees in an Obsidian note without losing sight of the surrounding structure.

Unified Outliner is an Obsidian plugin for structural editing inside a single Markdown note. It lets you move, re-level, inspect, and focus on heading sections and list subtrees through the editor, a dedicated Outline Tree View, and a Partial Edit Pane for editing a focused block.

Current version: see Releases for the latest version and changelog.

Minimum Obsidian version: 1.8.7

Scope: one note at a time. Unified Outliner never moves content between notes.

Why Unified Outliner?

Obsidian's built-in Outline is excellent for navigating headings. List-focused outliner plugins make it easier to work with individual list items. Unified Outliner is designed for the point where both approaches are needed in the same note: reorganizing meaningful heading sections and nested list structures as visible, safe units.

Capability	Obsidian built-in Outline	List-focused outliner plugins	Unified Outliner
Navigate heading structure	Yes	Varies	Yes, with synchronized tree selection
Move a whole heading section with its body and child sections	No	Not the primary focus	Yes
Move or reparent a nested list subtree	No	Often supported	Yes
Display headings and list items together in one structural tree	No	Varies	Yes, optional list display
Edit one selected section or list subtree in a focused pane	No	Varies	Yes, with explicit Apply and conflict protection
Preserve view folding per file	No	Varies	Yes, synchronized across open Outline Tree Views

Unified Outliner does not try to replace search, task managers, Dataview-style aggregation, or AI writing tools. Its purpose is dependable structural editing of Markdown notes.

Install

From Community Plugins (recommended)

1. In Obsidian, open Settings → Community plugins → Browse. Turn off Restricted mode if necessary.
2. Search for Unified Outliner, select it, then choose Install.
3. Enable Unified Outliner in Settings → Community plugins.

You can also open the Unified Outliner Community Plugins page in a browser.

Beta releases with BRAT

Use BRAT when you want to test beta releases or recent development builds.

1. Install and enable Obsidian 42 - BRAT from Settings → Community plugins → Browse.
2. Open the Command Palette and run BRAT: Add a beta plugin for testing.
3. Enter https://github.com/kazdonkai/unified-outliner and confirm the installation.
4. Enable Unified Outliner in Settings → Community plugins after BRAT finishes.

BRAT checks the repository for updates, so use it only when you are comfortable testing changes before a normal catalog release.

Direct download from GitHub Releases

To install a specific release manually, download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from GitHub Releases.

1. In your vault, create this folder if it does not already exist:

   <your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/unified-outliner/
   

2. Copy all three downloaded files into that folder.

3. Open Obsidian and go to Settings → Community plugins, then enable Unified Outliner.

4. Reload Obsidian if the plugin does not appear immediately.

Update

Community Plugins and BRAT manage their own updates. For a direct-download installation, replace the same three files in <your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/unified-outliner/, then reload Obsidian. Keep a backup of your vault as part of your normal update routine.

Example outline note

The screenshot shows Unified Outliner in use on iPad: the Outline Tree View (left) alongside the open Example outline note.md (center) and the Partial Edit Pane editing its Basic Blocks section (right). Try it yourself with examples/Example outline note.md in this repository — open it in your own vault and explore the Outline Tree View's rename, move, delete, and insert operations across paragraphs, headings, lists, callouts, and blockquotes.

1. Open a Markdown note that contains headings or lists.
2. Open the Command Palette and run Open outline tree view, or select the plugin's tree icon in the ribbon.
3. The Outline Tree View opens in the sidebar chosen by the Outline Tree default sidebar setting (right by default; left is also available — see Settings below). Clicking a node moves the cursor to the matching location in the note. Moving the editor cursor highlights the corresponding tree node.
4. Right-click a node to move, indent, outdent, or open it in the Partial Edit Pane.

Opening a Partial Edit Pane while the Outline Tree View is in the right sidebar splits that sidebar so both stay visible together. Placing the tree in the left sidebar instead lets a Partial Edit Pane use the right sidebar on its own, for the three-pane layout — tree, note, and edit pane — shown in the screenshot above.

Enable Show list items in Outline Tree View in the plugin settings when you want list items to appear alongside headings.

Visual guide

Work from the Outline Tree View

The Outline Tree View shows headings and, when enabled, list items beside the source note. Selecting a node locates its matching text, while the current editor position is reflected in the tree.

Right-click a selected node to choose a structural action. The menu exposes block movement, indentation, node-only heading actions, and focused editing from the same place.

Focus on and edit a selected block

The Partial Edit Pane keeps the selected section or list subtree visible while preserving the surrounding outline for orientation.

Apply writes back only after the pane verifies that its original source range has not changed. This protects the note from an accidental overwrite during a concurrent edit.

Short video walkthroughs

Task	Video
Open the Outline Tree View	Watch the 7-second MP4
Collapse and expand a tree node	Watch the 20-second MP4
Follow a selected item in the tree	Watch the 21-second MP4
Move a list subtree	Watch the 14-second MP4
Edit a selected subtree in the Partial Edit Pane	Watch the 49-second MP4

How to use it

Move and re-level structures

Place the cursor on a heading or list item, then use the Command Palette or assign hotkeys in Settings → Hotkeys.

Command	What it does
Move block up / down	Moves the minimal safe unit at the cursor — a heading section, a list subtree, a plain paragraph, or a whole callout, blockquote, fenced code block, or table when the cursor is inside one — before or after its sibling.
Move section up / down	Moves the whole enclosing heading section (heading, body, and any child sections), regardless of where the cursor is inside it.
Indent block	Reparents a list subtree, or safely lowers a heading section's level when the structure allows it.
Outdent block	Promotes a list subtree, or safely raises a heading section's level when the structure allows it.
Delete block	Deletes the current heading section or list subtree.
Insert sibling after current block	Inserts a new, empty heading section or list item after the current one.
Insert child list item	Inserts a new, empty list item as a child of the current one.
Move extended block up / down	Moves a List + Callout or List + Quote group (see Settings → Extended blocks) as one unit, when the cursor is inside it.

The same actions are available from a node's context menu in Outline Tree View. Unavailable operations make no change. Enable Show no-op notices in the plugin settings to see the reason. A block that Move block / Move section just moved is briefly flash-highlighted in the tree, and, if enabled, a short notice names what moved.

Use the Outline Tree View

The tree — in either sidebar — is a working view, not only a navigator.

• Drag and drop sections to reorder section subtrees.
• Drag and drop list items to reorder or reparent list subtrees when list display is enabled.
• Collapse or expand nodes to control the tree's own view state. This state is saved per file and stays in sync across open Outline Tree Views.
• Use contextual commands from the right-click menu. A collapsed section is treated as a subtree; an expanded section can use node-only actions.
• Rename a heading, list item, or paragraph in place: double-click a row (or select it and press F2, or choose Rename from its context menu) to edit its text directly in the tree. Press Enter to commit or Escape to cancel without changing the note.
• On mobile: tap a row to select it, tap an already-selected row again to start renaming it, and long-press a row to open its context menu.
• Section rows and list rows are visually distinguishable by an optional background or edge-stripe highlight, configurable in the plugin settings and further customizable through Style Settings (see below).

Work with paragraphs

Enable Show body paragraphs in Outline Tree View in the plugin settings to display ordinary body paragraphs as read-only navigation nodes (marked with ¶) alongside headings and list items — for top-level and section-direct paragraphs only, not ones nested inside a list item. Once shown, a paragraph row can be renamed in place like any other row, and its context menu adds Move up/down, Move to top/bottom, Move before/after sibling…, Insert paragraph before/after, Delete paragraph (with confirmation), and Edit paragraph…, which opens it in the Partial Edit Pane. From the body editor, Move block up/down also treats the paragraph at the cursor as a movable unit, and the Edit paragraph at cursor command opens the Partial Edit Pane for it directly.

Work with callouts, blockquotes, and extended blocks

A standalone callout or blockquote — one not grouped into an extended block below — appears in the tree as its own node, with a context menu offering Move up/down and Open in Partial Edit (including a popout option), the same focused-editing experience available for sections and list subtrees. Fenced code blocks (including Mermaid) and tables remain read-only in the tree for now; Move block can still move one of these as a whole when the cursor is inside it in the body editor.

List + Callout and List + Quote are two Outline Tree grouping rules (see Settings → Extended blocks). They group a single-line list item that is immediately followed, with no blank line, by a callout or blockquote, into one collapsible unit in the tree. These rules are structural — they do not require an image embed, OCR content, or any particular callout type. Move extended block up/down (Command Palette or the tree's context menu) moves the whole group together, and Delete extended block removes it as a unit — the grouped list item and callout/blockquote are not yet editable together as a group; edit either one individually in the body editor. Disabling a rule does not change the Markdown; the affected list item, callout, and blockquote are simply shown individually again, following their own normal Outline Tree display rules.

For example, this Markdown:

- Note on the source image
> [!note] Transcription note
> Preserve the original spelling exactly.

is shown in the tree as:

◉ List + Callout
  - Note on the source image
  ▣ Transcription note

And this Markdown:

- Quotation from the source text
> The boundary has stood at this point since ancient times.

is shown in the tree as:

❖ List + Quote
  - Quotation from the source text
  The boundary has stood at this point since ancient times.

The callout member gets the same ▣ prefix used for standalone callouts; the blockquote member does not.

Edit a focused subtree

Use Open partial edit pane for current section from the Command Palette, or choose the corresponding action from an Outline Tree View context menu. For a paragraph specifically, use Edit paragraph at cursor (or the Outline Tree's Edit paragraph… context-menu item) to open it here directly.

The Partial Edit Pane opens the selected section or list subtree in a dedicated editor. Make your changes, then select Apply to write them back to the source note. If the source area changed after the pane opened, the pane protects the note by refusing to apply conflicting content. Reload the target and review the change instead of overwriting it.

An ancestor breadcrumb and a Subtree Navigator let you move up to a parent block or into a child block without leaving the pane. The pane can also be popped out into its own window from a node's context menu, and it asks for confirmation before navigating away from unsaved changes.

Node-only heading actions

The commands Move heading label up/down and Indent/Outdent heading level change only the current heading line. They deliberately leave that heading's body and child sections where they are. Use them only when that is exactly the structure you intend; for ordinary reorganization, prefer the block commands.

Settings

Open Settings → Community plugins → Unified Outliner to configure, grouped in the General tab as follows:

• Display language: Auto (follows Obsidian's own language setting), Japanese, or English, for this plugin's own UI text.
• Outline Tree default sidebar: right (default) or left. Only affects where a brand-new Outline Tree View opens — an already-open one (including one you've dragged elsewhere) is never relocated by changing this. Placing the tree in the left sidebar frees the right sidebar for the Partial Edit Pane, for the three-pane layout shown in the screenshot above.
• Show body paragraphs in Outline Tree View: shows ordinary body paragraphs as ¶-marked navigation nodes; top-level and section-direct paragraphs can also be edited, inserted, deleted, and moved from the Tree (see above). Off by default.
• Show list items in Outline Tree View: includes list items in the tree.
• Section background style in Outline Tree: subtle background, left-edge stripe, or off, for telling section rows apart from list rows.
• List row highlight style in Outline Tree: hover-only (default), always-on subtle background, or off.
• Heading prefix in Outline Tree: off by default, or the heading level as "H1"–"H6" or the literal ATX marker count ("#"–"######"). Purely cosmetic.
• List marker in Outline Tree: shows the Markdown list marker (-, *, +, 1., and so on) before each list item, or hides it (default).
• Allow list moves across sections: permits root-level list items to move across section boundaries.
• Preview move target in Outline Tree: briefly flash-highlights the block a move command just operated on.
• Show move result toast: shows a short notice naming what was moved after a move command.
• Normalize ordered list markers to 1.: normalizes ordered-list markers after structural edits.
• Follow keyboard selection into body editor: keeps the body editor synchronized while navigating the tree with the keyboard.
• Sync Outline Tree folding to editor: folding or unfolding a node in the tree also folds or unfolds the matching content in the active Markdown editor. Any node with something to fold gets a toggle — including a heading whose body is only text, a table or a code block, with no sub-heading under it. A heading with an empty body does not.
• Show no-op notices: explains why an unavailable operation made no change.

Settings are organized into two tabs, General (grouped above by category, with dividers between each group) and Extended blocks — the latter enables or disables the plugin's built-in List + Callout and List + Quote grouping rules (see "Work with callouts, blockquotes, and extended blocks" above). Turning a rule off only stops that grouping display; the underlying Markdown, and the list item and callout/blockquote it contains, are never changed.

Customizing appearance with Style Settings

Install the Style Settings community plugin to customize the Outline Tree View's appearance beyond the toggles above, without editing CSS by hand. Under Settings → Style Settings → Outline Tree View – Appearance you can adjust, separately for light and dark mode:

• Font size of the tree's heading labels.
• Background color of the Outline Tree View panel.
• Text color, muted text color (secondary text, such as the empty-state message), and list item text color.
• Highlighted node color (the row matching the body editor's cursor) and keyboard selection background color (the row selected via keyboard navigation).
• Section row background and list row background — the colors used by the highlight styles above.
• Move target preview flash color — the color of the brief flash shown after a move command.

Safe use and current boundaries

Structural changes alter Markdown text. Keep normal vault backups and review an edit if your note uses unfamiliar or highly customized Markdown.

• Unified Outliner works within the active note only. It does not move content between notes.
• Frontmatter is excluded from all structural operations.
• A standalone callout or blockquote can be moved and opened in the Partial Edit Pane directly from the Outline Tree View (see Visual guide above). Fenced code blocks (including Mermaid) and tables are still shown there as read-only nodes. Move block can still move any of these four kinds as a whole when the cursor is inside it in the body editor.
• A list item grouped with its callout or blockquote into a List + Callout or List + Quote extended block (see Settings → Extended blocks) moves and deletes as one unit from the Outline Tree View, but is not yet editable as a group — edit the list item or the callout/blockquote individually in the body editor.
• A focused edit is applied only when the original target has not changed since it was loaded.

Roadmap

Pop-out windows, breadcrumb navigation, Outline Tree inline rename, paragraph display and editing, a configurable left/right Outline Tree sidebar, and move/edit support for standalone callouts and blockquotes and for grouped extended blocks are now available (see above). Fenced code blocks and tables remain read-only in the tree; extending them to the same move/insert/delete support is a later step.

See the concise roadmap for later directions and deliberate non-goals.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome. Please include the smallest reproducible Markdown example, the command or tree action you used, the observed result, and the expected result. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the development workflow and required checks.

Do not include confidential or personal information in a report.

Development

Large parts of this plugin's implementation were developed with the assistance of Claude (Anthropic), under the direction and review of the maintainer.

License

Unified Outliner is released under the MIT License. Copyright © 2026 Kazdon Kai.