Search is invaluable and i like to see search results in context so that is all good.
On the file list, i often want to be able to FILTER the file names, much like nvAlt and probably other tools. I am not looking to find content, i am looking to quickly navigate to a file that i know exists – like a project name, a person’s name. A quick filter will return a very short list for me and I can get right in.
This could be a plugin possibly or an core feature that can be shown or hidden via settings.
Have you tried using the Quick Switcher? It is a core plugin that is enabled via toggle in the settings. The default hotkey is ctrl + o. It allows for quick navigation between files.
I could see this being useful. While there are no direct ways to achieve this AFAIK, you could use the expander plugin which will render the files matched by your search terms within the current note.
Thanks for the suggestion, it is not so much toggling between a set, but more quickly accessing a given project (out of 20-30) or a given person (out of 40-50) to add a note.
If you have a mac, you can run nvAlt on your same MD files and see what I mean. It is super fast (but more single focused). I often use nvAlt or its successor nvUltra for quick notes and would like to fully use Obsidian.
The plugin is still in heavy development and is not yet in the official community plugin browser but can be installed via the BRAT plugin by adding the beta repository “nothingislost/obsidian-bartender”