VaultDex

A retro-styled, relevance-scored full-text search engine for your Obsidian vault — inspired by the classic web search engines of the early internet.

Search your personal knowledge vault

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Screenshots

Home page

Search results

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Overview

VaultDex brings a fast, Google-style search experience to Obsidian. It opens as a full workspace tab, indexes your entire vault on load, and returns ranked results with highlighted snippets, breadcrumb paths, and clickable tags. Results can be filtered by PARA category and sorted by relevance or date.

The aesthetic is intentionally retro — think AltaVista meets your personal knowledge base.

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Features

• Relevance-scored search — title, tag, header, and body matches are weighted and ranked
• Highlighted snippets — matching terms are highlighted in context in each result
• PARA category sidebar — filter results by Projects, Areas, Resources, Archive, and more with one click
• Clickable tags — click any tag on a result to browse all notes with that tag
• Sort by Relevance or Newest
• I'm Feeling Lucky — opens a random note from your vault
• Folder-scoped search — restrict results to a specific folder with FolderName:search terms syntax
• Phrase and AND search — supports quoted phrases and multi-word AND queries
• Theme-adaptive — uses Obsidian CSS variables; works with any community theme in light or dark mode
• Fast — index builds on vault load with no noticeable delay
• Mobile-compatible — isDesktopOnly: false

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Installation

From Community Plugins (recommended)

1. Open Obsidian Settings → Community Plugins
2. Disable Restricted Mode if prompted
3. Click Browse and search for VaultDex
4. Click Install, then Enable

Manual

1. Download main.js, styles.css, and manifest.json from the latest release
2. Copy them into .obsidian/plugins/vaultdex/ in your vault
3. Enable the plugin under Settings → Community Plugins

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Usage

Open VaultDex from the eye icon in the ribbon, or run Open VaultDex search from the Command Palette (Ctrl/Cmd+P).

VaultDex opens as a full workspace tab. Your vault index builds automatically in the background — the note count on the home page confirms when it's ready.

Home page

Element	Action
Search box	Type a query and press Enter or click Search Vault
I'm Feeling Lucky	Opens a random note from your vault
Note count	Shows how many notes are indexed

Results page

Element	Action
Logo	Click to return to the home page
Category sidebar	Click a category to filter results to that PARA folder
All results	Click to clear the category filter
Result title	Click to open the note in a new tab
Tag chip	Click to browse all notes with that tag
Relevance / Newest	Toggle sort order

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Search Syntax

Syntax	Example	Description
Single word	firewall	Matches notes containing the word
Multiple words	linux firewall	All words must appear (AND)
Exact phrase	"ssh key"	Matches the exact phrase
Folder scope	Snippets:music	Restricts results to folders matching "Snippets"
Partial folder name	Electronic:ambient	Matches "Electronic Music" folder
Combined	Resources:"ssh key"	Folder scope with phrase search

Note: The folder name must appear at the start of the query followed by a colon. It is case-insensitive and matches any folder whose name contains the given string. The legacy folder:Name search syntax is also still supported.

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Settings

Open Settings → VaultDex to configure:

Setting	Default	Description
Max results	50	Maximum results returned per search. Set to 0 for no limit.
Excluded folders	(none)	Comma-separated list of folders to skip during indexing

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Credits

VaultDex is inspired by the retro aesthetic of early web search engines. The scoring model is adapted from a custom TF-IDF-style ranker built for personal knowledge management.

Built with the Obsidian Plugin API.

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License

MIT — see LICENSE