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Overview

Like Quiet Outline, but louder! Loud Outline shows each note's headings, tasks and lists as expandable/collapsible rows directly inside Obsidian's native file explorer — the same interaction as a folder expanding to reveal the files inside it, except a file expands to reveal its own outline.

The file explorer with a note expanded to show its nested headings, tasks and lists, alongside the matching note content

No separate outline pane to open, position, or keep in sync with the active file. The file tree already is the file tree — Loud Outline just teaches it to go one level deeper.

What you could use it for

  • Jumping straight to a specific section of a long note from the sidebar, without opening it first or hunting through a separate outline pane.
  • Getting a feel for a note's shape — how many sections, how deep, how much is task-shaped — just by glancing at the tree, collapsed by default so it stays out of the way until you want it.
  • Treating a note's own root-level checklist as a quick-reference task list, expandable right next to the file that owns it.
  • Skimming a folder of meeting notes or project docs where the interesting structure is in each note's headings and checklists, not in more files and folders.

How it works

  1. Every markdown file with at least one heading (or, if enabled, at least one list/task item) gets a small collapse arrow next to it in the file explorer — exactly like a folder.
  2. Click the arrow to expand the file and reveal its outline: headings nested by level, with any tasks and lists nested underneath whichever heading they actually sit under in the note (or directly under the file, if they're above any heading).
  3. Click a heading, task, or list row to open the note (if it isn't already open) and jump the cursor straight to that line.
  4. Everything starts collapsed, the same as a fresh folder — expand only what you're looking at.

Where to go next