# Obsidian File Recovery Obsidian File Recovery is a core plugin built into [[Obsidian]] that periodically takes snapshots of your notes and allows you to recover them in case of accidental data loss, unwanted edits, or corruption. It serves as a lightweight safety net that works entirely locally, without requiring any external tools or services. ## How it works File Recovery stores snapshots of your notes at regular intervals. Each snapshot captures the content of a note at a specific point in time. When you need to recover a file, you can browse through available snapshots and restore a previous version. Key characteristics: - **Core plugin**: Built into Obsidian, no installation required. Just enable it in Settings > Core plugins - **Local storage**: Snapshots are stored locally on your device - **Automatic**: Snapshots are taken at configurable intervals without any manual action - **Per-file recovery**: You can recover individual files, not just the entire vault ## Configuration File Recovery has two main settings (Settings > Core plugins > File Recovery): - **Snapshot interval**: How often snapshots are taken. Default is every 5 minutes. A shorter interval captures more granular history but uses more storage - **History length**: How long snapshots are retained before being automatically deleted. Default is 7 days. Increasing this gives you a longer recovery window at the cost of more disk space ## Recovering a snapshot To recover a file from a snapshot: 1. Open Settings > Core plugins > File Recovery 2. Click "View" to open the snapshot browser 3. Search for the file you want to recover by typing its name 4. Browse through the available snapshots for that file 5. Click on a snapshot to preview its content 6. Click "Copy to clipboard" to copy the content, then paste it where needed ## Limitations - File Recovery is **not a backup solution**. It only protects against accidental edits and local data loss, not against disk failure, device loss, or vault corruption - Snapshots are stored locally, so if your disk fails, the snapshots are lost too - It does not track file deletions or renames, only content changes - The snapshot history is limited by the configured retention period - It does not replace proper backup strategies like [[Git plugin for Obsidian|Git backups]], [[Local backup plugin for Obsidian|local backups]], or cloud backups ## References - https://help.obsidian.md/plugins/file-recovery ## Related - [[Obsidian]] - [[How I synchronize and backup my Obsidian notes]] - [[Local backup plugin for Obsidian]] - [[Git plugin for Obsidian]] - [[Obsidian 2025-01 vault issue post-mortem]] - [[Useful resources for Obsidian]] - [[Version Control]]