# Shimmering Obsidian: an Alfred workflow that searches a mirror of your vault > Shimmering Obsidian is an Alfred 5 workflow that turns Obsidian into a keystroke-driven system, adding a search over notes, aliases, folders and headings plus OCR screenshots, a scratchpad, vault and workspace switching and a backup command. It works from a metadata mirror rather than from your files, so a note you created a minute ago is not in the index yet. **chrisgrieser/shimmering-obsidian** — Alfred workflow with dozens of features for controlling your Obsidian vault. - Repository: https://github.com/chrisgrieser/shimmering-obsidian - Website: https://alfred.app/workflows/chrisgrieser/shimmering-obsidian/ - Stars: 1,040 · Forks: 48 - Language: JavaScript - License: MIT - Published: 2026-10-19 · Updated: 2026-10-19 · Language: en - Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/chrisgrieser-shimmering-obsidian ## It is an Alfred workflow, and the whole design follows from that Shimmering Obsidian is an Alfred workflow for controlling an Obsidian vault, and the repository describes it as having dozens of features. It is featured in the Alfred Gallery, and the project page is on alfred.app. The value proposition is speed through a launcher rather than through the Obsidian window. The core of it is described as an Alfred based quick switcher, which the README compares to Obsidian's own Quick Switcher core plugin but enhanced. The `o` keyword searches all your notes, aliases, folders and headings together, and the result is a list you act on with modifier keys rather than a modal you type into. The audience is narrow and the project does not pretend otherwise. It needs Alfred 5 with Powerpack, which is a paid add-on to Alfred, so this is a workflow for people who have already paid for the launcher they are using. It is also macOS only in practice, since the feature set leans on Finder integration, Quick Look and Obsidian URIs. The repository is mostly data. Alongside the README and the licence there is a data/ directory, icons/, a scripts/ directory, a Justfile, a .build-and-release.sh script and an info.plist, which is the shape of a workflow project that packages scripts and data into an .alfredworkflow file. ## The search reads a metadata mirror, not your notes The mechanism behind the search is the single most important thing to understand, and the README states it directly. None of the search features search your vault directly. They use the metadata created by the Metadata Extractor plugin on a regular basis. That has an obvious consequence. By default the metadata is refreshed every 30 minutes, which means recently created notes, recently renamed notes and recent tag changes are not picked up at once. The refresh rate is configurable in the Metadata Extractor plugin settings. For a workflow that exists to save keystrokes, a stale index is the sharp edge. If you create a note and immediately search for it, it may not be there, and the natural reaction is to assume the workflow is broken. It is not, it is the index. The README also notes the flip side, which is that the search can be triggered without Obsidian running, in which case it opens Obsidian with the selected note, and much of the operation is fast precisely because it is querying a small index rather than walking a vault of Markdown files. There is a second consequence worth knowing: the search respects Obsidian's Excluded files setting, so ignored files and folders stay out of the results, although the README is explicit that regex filters in that setting do not work. ## Smart queries are how you narrow a deliberately fuzzy search Because the main search mixes notes, aliases, folders and headings in one list, it needs a way to disambiguate, and that is what the smart queries are for. You add a word to the query and the result set changes. Adding filename or title restricts the results to files and drops aliases, folders and headings, so `o obsidian filename` shows only notes with obsidian in the filename. Adding canvas filters for canvases, which the README ties to Obsidian 1.1. Adding starred or recent filters for those files. And adding a tag with a hash sign, for example `o foobar #moc`, shows only notes named foobar that also carry the tag. It is a small syntax and it is the part of the workflow you will use most after the plain search. The default, matching everything at once, is fast to type and occasionally ambiguous, and the smart queries are what turn a list into a result. The workflow also searches for notes by their tags, for bookmarked files, for recent files and for attachments, and one variant searches all external links in the entire vault, which is a way of answering the question of what the vault points at outside itself. ## The modifier keys are where the workflow earns its keep Once a result is selected, the workflow offers a set of actions bound to modifier combinations, and this is where the difference from Obsidian's own switcher shows. Return opens the file in Obsidian. Command plus Return opens it in a new tab, and the workflow settings can change that to a new window or a split instead. Option plus Return reveals the file in Finder. Control plus Return copies the Obsidian URI for the selected file, which is how you hand a reference to another application. Shift plus Return browses the links of the selected note, outgoing links, backlinks and external links, and opens a list rather than the note. Two of these are less ordinary. Function plus Return appends content to the selected note, prompting for text or clipboard content, which turns the switcher into a capture tool rather than a navigator. And Shift, or Command Y, previews the selected note through the macOS Quick Look feature, with the same key press closing the preview again. The preview has a dependency the README states plainly. It requires QLMarkdown or Peek to be installed, because Quick Look cannot render Markdown on its own. That is a separate piece of software for one feature, and it is the kind of thing that is easy to miss until the preview opens as plain text. ## Installation drags two Obsidian plugins into the deal The installation is a short sequence, and the first steps are about Obsidian rather than about Alfred. First, install the Obsidian plugins Advanced URI and Metadata Extractor, and enable both. Then download the latest release from GitHub and double-click the.alfredworkflow file to install it. Finally, set your vault path in the workflow configuration. The Metadata Extractor side has its own configuration, and the README is precise about how little you should change. In the plugin settings you enable Write JSON files automatically when Obsidian launches, and you set Configure frequency for writing the three JSON files to however often you want the metadata updated, with a value like 30 minutes described as reasonable. The instruction is not to change any of the other settings, and then to restart Obsidian. That last warning is not a detail. The plugin writes three JSON files, and the workflow reads them. Changing other settings in that plugin changes the shape of the output the workflow expects, and the search will quietly stop matching what you think it should. The Alfred side is a configuration panel of its own, with settings for appending and opening notes, and the workflow configuration is where the vault path and those opening behaviours live. ## Beyond the switcher: scratchpad, OCR, backup and vault switching The quick switcher is the headline, but the feature list in the README is much wider, and the utility section is where the workflow becomes a control panel. There is a create new note command and a scratchpad, which is a scratch note you can summon and append to from anywhere. The screenshot features include OCR screenshots, which turns an image of text into something you can put into a note, and a plain image screenshot. The utility commands cover a workspace switcher, a vault switcher, back up your vault, the CSS files Obsidian uses, opening various folders, and updating plugins and metadata. There is also a management section for plugins, themes and settings, and a pair of documentation searches, one for the official Obsidian documentation and one for plugin developer documentation, both of which are the kind of thing you need exactly when you cannot remember where something was written down. Two of these deserve a caveat. The OCR screenshots feature depends on the system being able to recognise text in an image, and the README lists the requirement rather than explaining the accuracy you should expect. The backup command is a workflow action rather than a backup strategy, and a vault that is important to you still wants a separate, scheduled copy somewhere else. ## The release gap between the tag and the commits The repository is not archived and the last push was on 2026-10-01, so the project is being worked on. The published releases tell a different story. Version 4.14.0 came out on 2025-05-18, alongside 4.13.5 the same day, and before that 4.13.4 on 2025-04-25. So the last tagged release is from May 2025 while the branch has moved since. The README itself points people at the latest release on GitHub, and the download step in the installation instructions is the release file, not the branch, so what you install is the 4.14.0 build unless the maintainer publishes a newer one. The licence is MIT, which covers the repository contents and the workflow as distributed. The cost of the project is not the licence but the dependencies: Alfred 5 with Powerpack for the launcher, the two Obsidian plugins, and QLMarkdown or Peek if you want the Quick Look preview. The build tooling is visible in the repository if you want to see how the artefacts are put together. There is a Justfile, a .build-and-release.sh script, a data/ directory of the data the workflow ships, scripts/ for the JavaScript that does the work, icons/ and an info.plist, and a set of .rumdl and .typos configuration files that keep the Markdown and the spelling consistent. ## Conclusion Shimmering Obsidian fits an Obsidian user on macOS who already lives in Alfred, wants to open and append to notes without waiting for Obsidian's own switcher, and treats a scratchpad and screenshot OCR as part of the same flow. It does not fit someone on a platform Alfred does not run on, someone unwilling to run two Obsidian plugins in the background, or a vault where a thirty minute index delay is unacceptable. Verify three things before you install it: that you have Alfred 5 with Powerpack, which is a paid add-on and a hard requirement rather than a suggestion, that the Metadata Extractor plugin is writing its JSON files on the interval you expect, and that the version you download actually corresponds to the workflow features you want, since the last published release is 4.14.0 from 2025-05-18 while the repository itself was pushed to on 2026-10-01. ## FAQ ### What does Shimmering Obsidian require before it works? Alfred 5 with Powerpack, plus two Obsidian plugins that you must install and enable yourself, Advanced URI and Metadata Extractor. In the Metadata Extractor settings you enable Write JSON files automatically when Obsidian launches, set the frequency for writing the three JSON files, leave the other settings alone and restart Obsidian. Finally you set your vault path in the workflow configuration. ### Why does the search not find a note I just created? The search features do not search the vault directly, they use the metadata written by the Metadata Extractor plugin, which by default refreshes every 30 minutes. Recently created notes, renamed notes and tag changes are therefore not picked up immediately, and you can change the interval in the plugin settings. ### How do I search only files and not aliases or folders in Shimmering Obsidian? Add filename or title to the query, for example o obsidian filename, which displays only notes and drops aliases, folders and headings. You can also add canvas to show only canvases, starred or recent to filter those files, and a hash sign with a tag name such as #moc to require that tag. ### What can I do with a note once the search finds it? Return opens it in Obsidian, Command plus Return opens it in a new tab, Option plus Return reveals it in Finder, Control plus Return copies its Obsidian URI, Shift plus Return browses its outgoing links, backlinks and external links, and Function plus Return appends content to it. Shift or Command Y previews the note with Quick Look, which requires QLMarkdown or Peek to be installed. ### Is Shimmering Obsidian free to use? The project is MIT licensed and free, but the workflow requires Alfred 5 with Powerpack, which is a paid add-on to Alfred. The Quick Look preview also needs QLMarkdown or Peek installed, and the workflow depends on the Advanced URI and Metadata Extractor plugins for Obsidian. ## Sources - [chrisgrieser/shimmering-obsidian on GitHub](https://github.com/chrisgrieser/shimmering-obsidian) - [License: MIT](https://github.com/chrisgrieser/shimmering-obsidian/blob/main/LICENSE) - [Project website](https://alfred.app/workflows/chrisgrieser/shimmering-obsidian/) - [README](https://github.com/chrisgrieser/shimmering-obsidian/blob/main/README.md) - [Releases](https://github.com/chrisgrieser/shimmering-obsidian/releases) --- Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/chrisgrieser-shimmering-obsidian