Backlinks display "remembered"

Use case or problem

The situation is the following (see images for more obvious explanation)

  • I have multiple panes from multiple notes open.
  • For the currently selected note, I have the backlinks pane open, and for each backlink, I have or have not shown more context (thanks to the buttons to show more context).
  • Then, I click on another note.
  • If I come back to the first note, the backlinks pane is initiated, and all my efforts to design the backlinks pane in the way I want need to be done again

(See an example from the pictures)

I know that it’s possible to pin the note, open its backlinks pane, and then drag and drop it in the right sidebar.

However, when you want to switch between multiple notes and their backlinks pane, it’s not super convenient.

Thus, It would be cool if the backlinks pane remember its “state” when we leave a note so that when we come back, it still shows the same as before.

Proposed solution

(I am not a programmer). The solution could be to store the information for the backlinks or a particular note. If we want the note to be re-initiated (all contexts collapsed), we just click on the “show more context” button.

I understand it’s something that might be super difficult to implement, as the Backlinks pane on the sidebar (surely?) searches for a note’s backlinks and then decides to show the corresponding block, so there (surely?) is no variable that stores anything about the “number of times we’ve clicked on the options to show more context”.

Anyway, its possible to get through this by each time opening more context again, but when we missclick we have to do all this again :confused:

Current workaround (optional)

It’s possible to pin the note, open its backlinks pane, and then drag and drop it in the right sidebar. Thus, it will be static and the layout will be kept.

Related feature requests (optional)

3 Likes

I would also like to see something like this for the backlinks in individual notes, where it feels more natural to me for the chosen display settings to be remembered. In some notes I want to display backlinks alphabetically, in others chronologically. In some I want a collapsed list, in others I want to see context. It would be great if Obsidian could remember these states, just like it remembers if headings are folded or not.