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🛡️ NameGuard

🛡️ NameGuard

🛡️ NameGuard

Section titled “🛡️ NameGuard”

Keep every note name unique — and stop Obsidian from silently rewriting your links.

Section titled “Keep every note name unique — and stop Obsidian from silently rewriting your links.”

Main Obsidian plugin Obsidian minimal version License

The problem

Section titled “The problem”

With Settings → Files and links → New link format set to Shortest path when possible, Obsidian keeps your [[wikilinks]] short only while a note name is unique. The moment a second note with the same name appears anywhere in the vault, Obsidian rewrites your existing links to keep them pointing at the original file:

[[Foobar]]
[[notes/Foobar]]

You never touched those notes — yet your links changed, your git diff is noisy, and a careless undo can leave links resolving to the wrong file.

The fix

Section titled “The fix”

NameGuard treats a note name as a vault-wide unique key. When an operation would introduce a duplicate name, NameGuard blocks it before the file is created — so the rewrite never happens.

🔑 Pre-existing duplicates are left untouched. NameGuard only guards new collisions.

Feature
🚫Blocks duplicate creation — new notes, “create from link”, and templates all run through one guard
🔀Guards moves & renames — renaming a note into a name that’s already taken is blocked too
🎯Shortest-mode aware — only acts when it actually matters (configurable)
📝Markdown-first — guards .md by default; opt in to every file type
🧩Zero config — sensible defaults, with a settings tab when you want control
🔒100% local — no network, no telemetry

How it works (in one breath)

Section titled “How it works (in one breath)”

Obsidian’s MetadataCache.fileToLinktext falls back to a full path once a name stops being unique, and FileManager rewrites the affected links right after a create/rename. NameGuard wraps the vault’s create / createBinary / rename and rejects the operation when the new name already resolves to an existing note — so the trigger never fires.

📖 Full write-up in docs/how-it-works.md.

Install

Section titled “Install”

Manually

  1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release.
  2. Copy them into <your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/name-guard/.
  3. Reload Obsidian, then enable NameGuard under Settings → Community plugins.

From source

Terminal window
bun install
bun run build      # bundles main.js

Settings

Section titled “Settings”

NameGuard works with its defaults. Settings → NameGuard exposes only file-type scope and release note preferences; see the settings reference for details.

Documentation

Section titled “Documentation”