Add setting to enable simple left click link editing in Live Preview Mode

Feature requests
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1

Use case or problem

Since v0.13.25, in Live Preview mode, clicking once on [[wikilinks]] follows the link rather than expanding the link to edit.

This makes it difficult and frustrating to edit links, especially when you’re editing links more than you’re navigating between them (which happens when your links largely make use of placeholder text).

This make things less efficient and ultimately wastes time in my workflow, and I expect a lot of other people’s workflows.

Proposed solution

Implement a toggle setting to re-enable single-click edit access for [[wikilinks]] within Live Preview Mode, along with the different keyboard shortcuts for opening notes.

I imagine these would be configurable in the Hotkeys panel.

This would enable, in Live Preview mode:

  • Single click to expand the link to edit.
  • Ctrl+Click to follow the link within the same pane; and
  • Ctrl+Shift+Click to follow the link in a new pane.

Current workaround (optional)

I’m currently using a CSS snippet to disable following the link within Live Preview mode, switching back to Preview mode when I want to follow links instead.

This doesn’t really reinstate how it worked before, as we’re still missing the Ctrl+Click and the Ctrl+Shift+Click features.

It is, however, better than nothing.

Related feature requests (optional)

Similar feature request suggesting Alt+Click as an alternative.

28 Likes
2

I have at least managed to disable the clicking functionality using this CSS snippet:

.markdown-source-view.mod-cm6 .cm-hmd-internal-link .cm-underline {
    pointer-events: none;
    cursor: text;
}

The only issue is, Ctrl+Click and Ctrl+Shift+Click doesn’t work anymore, so it’s still worse than what we had before.

4 Likes
3

+1
I ran into this same issue when I upgraded to 13.31 today. I’m okay with the change but it would be really nice to be able to toggle this feature and bring back the Ctrl+Click functionality.

1 Like
4

You can use click and drag (the mouse) or right-click (which we are gonna improve).

5

There’s some extra discussion on this topic over on the r/ObsidianMD subreddit:

6

For anybody coming here from reddit.

This change was made to:

  1. Make editor and reader behave in the same way.
  2. Since you likely write or edit the link a few times but visit it more times, we opted to facilitate the most frequent usage pattern.

You just need to select a character in the link. If you have reproducible steps of this not working in the help vault, please open a bug report.

1 Like
7

I would say that you’re right in that visiting links is probably more common, though in my case I always did that in Reading Mode.

If the update is meant to change it so that clicking through links in Live Preview Mode is the new best-practice workflow, making it so ideally you’re not having to switch between the two, then it disappoints in this regard—visually, this doesn’t look very appealling the way it works at the moment.

Sure, I was just able to reproduce this in the help vault just now so I’ll likely submit a bug report of this not working in the next week.

It’ll include a short video of me selecting link characters in the help vault and having it mostly working as intended, though sometimes clicking through regardless. It’s not exactly something I can discern why it happens as it’s inconsistent, though you’ll be able to see it happening in the video.

8

right-click could go into the editing mode straight away.

  1. either the right-click menu would open under the text, not obstructing it as it is now.
  2. the right click menu would not open, but would open on a second right click. (extra click, not that good)
    currently:
    image
    image911×80 11.6 KB
2 Likes
9

+1. i keep accidentally opening external links in live preview when i try to edit them.
it would be good if normal click didn’t open the link, but only ctrl click did as was suggested here. (ctrl + shift + click in new pane, again, as was suggested here)

10

we added ctrl-alt-click in 0.14 to edit only.

2 Likes
11

I downloaded 0.14. I appreciate you adding this functionality but it is still a pain to edit links which I do a lot. Can you add the ability to have a single key modifier? Something like Ctrl - Click?

12

One more thing. My old workflow was:
Open an existing note E.g., Daily Note > Type out link to new page E.g. [[thislink]] > Ctrl + Click to create new page and simultaneously open the link.

That last step no longer works either. So I have to click out of the brackets then go back and click on the link. For someone who does this many times a day this has made the ability to create new links in a note and then follow them significantly harder.

13

In that case, Use alt-enter or alt-shift-enter and don’t touch the mouse at all.

14

Just tested it. Alt-Enter does not do anything on my machine.

Can you just add in a setting to allow people to switch it back to the way it was before? It was dead simple before and now I have to train myself on two different keyboard shortcuts for things I previously did with a click or a ctrl click.

1 Like
15

Another option would be to flip it to be the opposite way from how it was before. Click on a link and it opens the link. Ctrl click the link and it edits it. Unless it is already being edited in which case it opens the link.

16

Alt enter when the cursor is on the link works.

17

Alt is not a good one, plz add Ctrl+click back to open links

2 Likes
18

Or options to configure this. Can it be done in a plugin?

19

Hi @WhiteNoise. Unfortunately, clicks of links in a vault and links to the WWW are not consistent. For the former, you do ctrl+click, and for WWW, just click.

Links are links.

There should be a way to configure this.

Edit

Oh, sorry. I realize now both work in the same way, one click with no easy editing possible. :cry: :sob: I’ll give a try to see if I get used to ‘alt’ to edit.

20

I just spent some time refining and improving this feature request to better describe the functionality I’m looking for.

This changes the language from the removal/reversal of a feature to the positive addition of a new set of features: a set of supporting configurable options to reinstate single click expanding within Live Preview Mode.