Configuration

Time Machine requires Obsidian 1.13.0 or later. Its settings pane is built on the declarative settings API introduced in 1.13; on an older version the plugin does not load at all.

File Recovery settings

Time Machine reads snapshots from the File Recovery core plugin. To configure it, go to Settings -> Core plugins -> File Recovery and adjust:

Setting	Description	Default
Snapshot interval	How often File Recovery saves a snapshot	2 minutes
History length	How long snapshots are kept before being deleted	7 days
Maximum file size	Files larger than this are not snapshotted	2 MB

Plugin settings

Time Machine has the following settings, accessible via Settings -> Community plugins -> Time Machine:

Git integration

Setting	Description	Default
Enable Git integration	Show Git commits as snapshots on the timeline (desktop only)	On
Maximum Git commits	Maximum number of Git commits to fetch per file (slider, 1-200)	50

Note: Git integration only works on the desktop app. On mobile, these settings have no effect and no git operations are attempted.

When enabled, Time Machine automatically detects whether the vault is inside a git repository and, for each file, fetches its commit history. The git commits are merged with File Recovery snapshots into a single chronological timeline.

The plugin never creates commits, pushes, pulls, or modifies the git repository in any way. It is strictly read-only.

External and bare Git repositories

On desktop, Time Machine also supports a vault-root .git file pointing to an external Git directory, including a bare repository. This is useful when LiveSync syncs the vault while Git repository data stays in a sibling folder.

For example:

Obsidian/
  Obsidian-Vault/
    .git
    Note.md
  Vault.git/

The .git file can contain a relative pointer:

gitdir: ../Vault.git

An absolute path is supported too. Use your existing Git setup; Time Machine does not create or convert repositories. No extra plugin setting is needed beyond Enable Git integration. The vault must have its own valid .git entry for bare-repository support, and notes must exist in the repository’s HEAD to be treated as tracked when there is no index.

Normal repositories, vaults nested within a normal repository, separate Git directories and linked worktrees remain supported. A bare repository directory by itself is not a note vault. Time Machine supplies work-tree context to its read commands without changing core.bare, repository configuration, commits or the index. This support applies to the timeline, past view, and Markdown history export/freeze.

Past view

Setting	Default	What it does
Enable past view	On	Shows the past view’s command, ribbon icon and menu items
Open showing changes	Off	Opens the past view on the diff rather than the old version
Run code in old versions	Off	Lets dataviewjs and Dataview blocks in an old version run when rendered

Run code in old versions

Leave this off unless you have a specific reason.

Rendering an old version normally executes any code it contains – against your vault as it is today, and including blocks you have since deleted from the note. While the setting is off, those blocks are shown as plain source instead, and the pane tells you how many it skipped.