Installing Beta Releases

Breadcrumbs ships beta builds before they reach the Obsidian Community Plugins store. Beta releases let you try new features early and help find bugs before a stable release. This guide walks you through installing them with BRAT — the Beta Reviewer’s Auto-update Tool.

Betas are pre-release

Beta builds may contain bugs and breaking changes. Back up your vault before installing one, and don’t run betas in a vault you can’t afford to lose.

Steps

1. Install BRAT

BRAT is a community plugin that installs and updates beta plugins from GitHub.

1. Open Settings → Community plugins.
2. Click Browse, search for BRAT, and install it.
3. Enable BRAT in the installed plugins list.

2. Add the Breadcrumbs beta

1. Open the command palette and run BRAT: Add a beta plugin for testing.

2. Enter the Breadcrumbs repository:

   michaelpporter/breadcrumbs

3. Choose which version to track:

   • Latest version — tracks the newest release, including betas.
   • Specific version — pins to one release tag.

4. Click Add Plugin. BRAT downloads the build and enables it.

If you already have the stable Breadcrumbs installed, BRAT replaces it with the beta build under the same plugin ID — your settings and graph data carry over.

3. Keep the beta updated

BRAT checks for new beta builds on Obsidian startup. To update manually, run BRAT: Check for updates to all beta plugins from the command palette.

To see what’s installed, open Settings → BRAT — it lists every beta plugin BRAT manages and the version each is on.

4. Return to the stable release

When you want to go back to the store version:

1. Open Settings → BRAT and remove breadcrumbs from the beta plugin list.
2. Disable and uninstall Breadcrumbs in Community plugins.
3. Reinstall Breadcrumbs from Browse in the Community Plugins store.

Reporting issues

Found a bug in a beta? Report it on the Breadcrumbs issue tracker. Include the plugin version (shown in Settings → BRAT) and steps to reproduce. See the Debugging page for collecting logs.