Recipe Box

Gallery View

5 min read

The Gallery is a browsable grid of every recipe in scope - image, title, and badges at a glance - with search, filtering, and sorting to find what you’re looking for. Unlike the Recipe View, which shows one recipe at a time, the gallery is a persistent pane you can leave open and return to.

Run the Open recipe gallery command from the Command Palette, or click through from the Dashboard (the “Total recipes” card, the “New recipes” section’s “View full gallery →” link, or a search).

Cards

Each card shows:

  • The recipe’s hero image (see Recipe View > The Image Card for how it’s resolved).
  • Title and star rating (read-only here - change a rating from the recipe itself, not the card).
  • A badge row using the same badges configured for the recipe view header, capped to fit the card.
  • An ⋯ actions menu in the top-right corner: Add to meal plan, Share recipe, Add to grocery list. Each opens the same dialog you’d get from the recipe view itself.

Clicking anywhere else on the card opens the recipe in the normal Recipe View.

Filters

All filters combine with AND - each one narrows further, and leaving a filter unset doesn’t exclude anything.

  • Search - matches recipe titles and ingredient names, filtering live as you type.
  • Folder - a dropdown of folders that contain in-scope recipes. Selecting one includes its subfolders too.
  • Tag - filter to a specific tag.
  • Minimum rating - hide recipes below a star threshold.
  • Favorite only - show only recipes you’ve favorited.
  • Never cooked - show only recipes with no cook history yet.
  • Diet / allergen exclusion - hide recipes matching diets or allergens you choose (the same data used for the allergen warning banner, applied here as an exclusion instead).

Property filters

Beyond the fixed filters above, + Property filter lets you filter on any frontmatter property your recipes actually use - season, cuisine, difficulty, whatever properties you’ve defined - not just the built-in ones. Each filter row has three parts, in order: the property, a comparison (equals, contains, is one of, between, before/after a date, within the last N days, and more, depending on the property’s type), and the value.

  • Add as many property filters as you like; like everything else in the panel, they all combine with AND.
  • For is one of on a property with a manageable number of distinct values (e.g. a season property with spring/summer/fall/winter), you get a checkbox for each observed value instead of typing them out - this is how you filter to, say, season “summer” and type “salad” at once.
  • For typed comparisons like “equals” or “contains,” the value field suggests values it’s actually seen used for that property as you type.
  • A property filter with no property chosen yet does nothing (it’s ignored, not treated as “must be blank”) - so adding a blank row never empties the grid; pick a property to make it active.

Sorting

Title (A-Z or Z-A), date added, last modified, last cooked (recipes never cooked sort last; requires cook history to be enabled), rating (high to low), or times cooked (high to low). Defaults to title A-Z.

Remembering Filters

By default, every filter (search and sort excepted) resets to its default the next time you open the gallery fresh - from the ribbon, a command, or a folder click. If you’d rather your filters stayed put between sessions, check Remember filters in the filter panel (top-right, next to Clear); from then on, whatever filters are active when you close the gallery are what you’ll see next time you open it.

Going back to the gallery after opening a recipe from it is a separate case and always restores your filters as they were, regardless of the “Remember filters” setting - that’s Obsidian navigation history, not a fresh open.

Clear resets every active filter back to its default (search stays as-is) and only appears once you actually have a filter active.

Results Summary

A row above the grid shows how many recipes matched (“12 recipes found”), a chip for each active filter (e.g. “favorites only”, “rating ≥ 4”), and the current sort (“sorted by title asc”) - a quick way to see at a glance why you’re seeing what you’re seeing.

You can set Recipe Box to open the gallery, pre-filtered, whenever you click one of your recipe folders in the file explorer - instead of just expanding/collapsing it. This is opt-in and off by default, under Settings → Recipe Box → Recipe library:

  • Open gallery when clicking a recipe folder - master switch. When on, clicking a configured recipe folder’s name opens the gallery filtered to that folder. Folders you’ve enabled this for are marked with a distinct underline in the file explorer so they stand out from ordinary folders.
  • Also apply to subfolders - when on, clicking any subfolder beneath a recipe folder opens the gallery filtered to that specific subfolder too. Off by default.

This works with both Obsidian’s built-in file explorer and the Notebook Navigator plugin, if you use it. Clicking the expand/collapse arrow (rather than the folder name) always behaves normally, regardless of these settings.

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