Photo maps

Advanced Maps can place a supported photo because the photo is a direct Base result or because a matched note links it. In both cases, only a readable GPS tag creates a location; the plugin never invents one.

Map a whole photo folder

Start with the complete atlas recipe in Getting started, or add a photo-folder branch to an existing Base:

- file.inFolder("assets/onedrive/Pictures")

JPG, JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, HEIF, and AVIF files participate directly. A photo with GPS gets a dot even when it has no usable embedded thumbnail.

Put a OneDrive or other external album inside the vault

The photo bytes do not have to be copied into the vault. Create a directory link inside the vault, let Obsidian index it, then use that linked vault path in the Base filter.

macOS or Linux:

mkdir -p "/path/to/MyVault/assets/onedrive"
ln -s "/path/to/OneDrive/Pictures" "/path/to/MyVault/assets/onedrive/Pictures"

Windows PowerShell (a directory junction avoids the administrator requirement that symbolic links can have on some systems):

$vault = "C:\Users\you\Documents\MyVault"
New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path "$vault\assets\onedrive"
New-Item -ItemType Junction `
  -Path "$vault\assets\onedrive\Pictures" `
  -Target "$env:USERPROFILE\OneDrive\Pictures"

Reload the vault and use the linked vault path in the Base.

Caution

This is a desktop filesystem setup. Create an equivalent link on each desktop that should see the album; mobile devices cannot reuse a desktop link. Keep cloud files available offline and avoid link loops. The source directory is still outside the vault, so check whether your backup and sync tools follow the link instead of assuming the photos are covered. Advanced Maps reads the photos but never modifies them.

Map only photos linked from matched notes

Keep photo folders out of the Base filter and match notes only:

filters:
  and:
    - file.inFolder("places")
views:
  - type: map
    name: Places
    coordinates: coords
    trackWeight: 4
    trackOpacity: 85
    fitMaxZoom: 16

Then link photos from a matched note:

---
coords: 30.2600,120.1500
---

[[IMG_1234.jpg]]
[[IMG_1235.heic]]

Normal body links, embeds such as ![[IMG_1234.jpg]], and file links in frontmatter all count. Each resolved photo participates once. The Base does not need to include the attachment folder, and an actual embed is needed only when you also want the image visible in the note.

Coordinates and display

Photo coordinates remain WGS-84 in the vault. At the map boundary they follow the same tile-datum conversion as note markers and tracks. Photo coordinate system can force WGS-84 or GCJ-02 when an unlabelled camera wrote something non-standard.

Zoomed out, colliding thumbnails thin to a stable subset instead of piling into an unreadable stack; every mapped photo still has a dot. Zoom in and eligible thumbnails return. Show photos and Show photo thumbnails can disable the two layers independently.

Open a photo or its note

Hovering a photo shows the owning note when it has one, with the photo itself previewed inside that popup so a dot on a crowded map can be identified without opening it. Clicking opens the photo at full size without replacing the map, with an Open note row below. Ctrl/Cmd-click opens the image file in a new tab.

On a phone a tap goes straight to that full-size view, so the preview popup is one step you do not get. Nothing is lost on the way to the note: Open note is inside the photo you just opened.

Set coordinates from a photo reads the same GPS tag into the current note’s coords property.

Photo index and file reads

The first pass reads at most the first 64 KiB of each photo. Derived coordinate, time, orientation, and thumbnail-availability metadata is cached, so later sessions can place a large album without reopening every unchanged file.

Clear the photo index discards this reconstructible cache. Maps keep working and metadata is read again as needed; photo bytes are never modified.