Many iOS apps allows you to search for and open their files via the home screen Spotlight search. This can speed up finding and opening a file by quite a lot (for instance, no need to find and open to respective app first).
As of now this feature seems to not be implemented for Obsidian.
(Though, yes, Obsidian’s files do appear if you search for them in Spotlight, but this is via the Files app, not via Obsidian; If you “click” them they don’t open in Obsidian but some other built-in plaintext viewer)
Proposed solution
Allow iOS Spotlight to search within Obsidian and open files
Agreed! I came here to suggest the same thing. Once Obsidian is open the built in search is excellent, but it indisputably quicker to access a note directly from Spotlight or Siri.
This would encourage users like me to use Obsidian for a lot more small notes that I otherwise put in Drafts or Apple Notes because they’re faster to retrieve. Currently, there is a significant trade off: Obsidian is the equivalent of filing something in the filing cabinet, Drafts or Notes is like leaving a sticky note on my desk. Adding Spotlight integration would make Obsidian fast and well-connected.
For some context, read the existing threads requesting Obsidian to open Markdown files in general or it least its own files from the system file manager.
Is this on the roadmap for iOS? I only see 2 features on the Obsidian roadmap currently.
Also: would it be possible to write an extension that works in iOS to allow iOS to search the notes in a vault or is that too low-level? (I’ve never written any iOS code)
The path from “idea!” to getting the file open that I need has a bit of friction sometimes. I migrated here from Craft and while I have my issues with them, one thing they nailed was the speed to editing a note. Their native iOS spotlight search helped a lot.
This is my #1 request. I have used Obsidian for a couple of years, opening the app dozens of times every day with my first action being searching for the file I want to add a thought to or reference. Would absolutely love this.
This should be prioritised like crazy: Apple Intelligence will work out of the box with any app that is “lending” information to the system through the Spotlight API. Apple Intelligence integration would make Obsidian 10x more useful and also give it an unbelievable competitive advantage over popular web apps such as Notion, Roam etc, that cannot implement it because they are locked inside a browser window.
I miss being able to swipe down on my iPhone lock screen to open search, enter a few characters and get to my desired note in Apple Notes, all in a span of a few seconds!
