[TIP] hiding PDJS folder from showing in Obsidian and some other plugins (macOS/iOS/iPadOS and iCloud)

[andrewcrook]

I didn’t like to see the PDFJS folders in my vault under Obsiden I like things to be clean as possible.

I also had some Obsidian plugins which used to process PDFJS folders generating content from its asset files e.g. icons.
So I found a way to hide them, this works for macOS and iOS/iPadOS. My vault is in iCloud and called Main

1. Have a working markmind setup
   you should have PDFSJS folders under iOS and macOS folder (or just plain PDFS folder for desktop, but I prefer macOS) inside the vault.
2. backup
3. find your obsidian vault under finder iCloud Drive obsidian e.g use finder->iCloud drive -> Obsidian
4. open the vault folder
5. create a new folder e.g extra
6. move iOS and macOS PDFJS folders into the new folder
7. rename extra to .extra you may have to do this in the terminal

     cd /Users/XXXXXXXX/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~md~obsidian/Documents/Main/
      mv extra .extra

8. obsidian -> markmind settings and modify the paths for macOS and iOS should be a matter of inserting .extra/
   between vault and iOS and macOS folders

PDFS Path: /Users/XXXXXXX/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~md~obsidian/Documents/Main/.extra/macOS/pdfjs
macOS Path: /Users/XXXXXXXX/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~md~obsidian/Documents/Main/.extra/macOS/pdfjs
iOS path: /private/var/mobile/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~md~obsidian/Documents/Main/.extra/iOS/pdfjs

obsidian

TIP: Also add these directory paths for absolute paths up to .extra or relative path /.extra in various plugins which have exclude options this will make sure anything in the .extra folder is excluded. Most plugins ignore dot files anyway. Whether you use absolute or relative paths may depend on individual plugins.

Note: Android should be similar (different paths), Windows different paths can hide folder as well, other cloud services different paths.
Note: I had to setup the normal PDFJS path because the macOS one doesn’t seem to work at the moment I believe this is a bug.

[kennygokh]

Hi @andrewcrook

Thanks for the great tips. I managed to setup in my MacBook Pro. It works well. However, I am not able to get it work in iPad. I do see that pdfjs folder is properly setup as there is no error that pdfs is not found. Also, I could see Annotate PDF option in the ... menu. Unfortunately, the pdf is not loading (empty page) after I clicked Annotate PDF option. It works in MacBook Pro but not in iPad. Any idea what could be wrong?