#1

Use case or problem

I use Obsidian as some kind of Zettelkasten. I put extracted information there for later connections and reference. This works great. Thus I want to work in “viewing mode” most of the time. Markdown syntax is distracting in this case. It does not matter nor help in this use case.

But when I review my notes, sometimes I want to fix a typo, extend a note or sentence and so on. Then I have to switch into edit mode (hoover mouse to the pencil), edit and switch back to viewing mode again. That’s unnecessary and takes too much time.

Proposed solution

It would be easier that every note is opened in “viewing mode”. As soon as you double click onto a line or word or start typing, it should automatically switch into edit Mode (maybe just for this line?). When done, scrolling the page or moving the cursor to another line, should switch back to viewing mode.

Current workaround (optional)

See use case / problem.

Related feature requests (optional)

Haven’t found one yet.

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#2

This does seem a bit excessive.

View mode is a parsed markdown code, and does not have strict correlation between its own html code and markdown one. Implementing it would probably be unreliable experience. (on hover you’ll probably have to break paragraph words into spans, get their content, and find it in markdown).

You know you can switch between modes with CTRL + E ?

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#3

Well maybe my description is excessive, sorry for that. I’ve seen other application where it seems to work this way. No need to toggle modes. You just type and the syntax will vanish when you do not need it anymore. Maybe its just better for user experience? I am no expert on this, though.

Anyway: I did not know about CMD + E. Thanks for this. This is a nice workaround and I will get used to it, I guess.

#4

I think what you are describing is WYSIWYG “What You See Is What You Get” This is currently in the long-term roadmap of Obsidian

there’s a trello board here

This is not a workaround, this is the way things currently work, that is the shortcut for changing between edit mode and preview mode.

The app that does what you want the best is Typora, hopefully obsidian will get there soon.

If you are interested to get a work in progress of this working in obsidian, a member of this forum created a css hack for making things work the way you describe them

Clutter free edit mode

However this does requiere some willinness to learn how css code works (not too hard) and a lot of testing and failing.

Hope that helps!

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