Better hotkey than "Ctrl+O" for your quick switcher

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TLDR: ALT+Q (Q = quick) allows faster access with less hand movement, while avoiding other system hotkeys.

Back when I began to use Obsidian three years ago, “Ctrl+O” for quick switcher gave me a very clunky experience. It was one of the most frequently used hotkey, but to reach it, I either move my left hand across half the keyboard or move my right hand from the mouse (if I wasn’t typing ) and bend my right thumb 90° to press Ctrl.

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I felt left-handed hotkey would be more efficient because my left hand can do it while my right hand was moving from the mouse (same reason why Ctrl+Z/X/C/V was intuitive), so I targeted “QWERASDF”. I also figured that to press Ctrl, my left pinky needed to bend over 150⁰, plus it was already busy (with Ctrl+Z/X/C/V). Moving my left thumb 30° to ALT was much easier. In the end I settled for ALT+Q, which also did not collide any common hotkeys.

Frankly, I don’t expect this discussion to change anything. Established users already have their muscle memory, the default setting won’t change for precisely that reason and the chance of new users finding this is slim. I just want to share this interesting idea.

notes

  • I suppose you can press “Ctrl+O” two-handed, but I found that even less intuitive.
  • I use Windows.
  • My notes are Zettlekastan-like. That is, I try to split everything namable into a page, and replace “Search” with “quick switcher” whenever possible. I now have 14k notes, that’s why efficiency of quick switcher is so important to me.
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Hi.

You are not alone. On my Mac, I have long used CMD Q for Quick switcher.

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:rofl: … I was laughing and all those detailed descriptions of bending and angle measurement … :winking_face_with_tongue: :triangular_ruler: :compass:

A year ago, I came to a similar conclusion. When I try to assign a hotkey, I’m using some logic. OK, trying to.

So Q was for sure on top of the list. I tried for a few days Shift + Q, as it would “shift quick switcher”, but “the angle of fingers” :rofl: was not right. So I come to Alt + Q … which “alternate quick switcher” :wink:

Cheers, Marko :nerd_face:

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For me CTRL+O is perfect, next to CTRL+P. All my letters on the left are for key combos more often used during daily use of Obsidian.

However..
I have long moved to CTRL+SHIFT+O to bring up the Obsidian Quick Switcher and use plain CTRL+O for QuickSwitcher++'s Headings Mode.
Because all my H1 level headings equal my note filenames, I will find my notes as I have would have with the built in switcher, plus I will get any other info (sub-file) I have filed under a H2, H3 heading.

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I experience some hand pain with the keyboard, so I prefer to use opposite hands for hotkeys rather than contort one hand for a multi-key press. Being right handed and quickly doing a lot of copy-and-paste working using one hand for the hotkeys usually means I need to do some hand relaxation afterwards. I’d love to get a keyboard with programmable keys or a mouse with buttons to map to hotkeys (would that be too much for your use case?)

I find that as long as you keep your index finger on the corresponding homerow key, it’s not that hard to return from doing the hotkey press. I also use an ergonomic keyboard, so the angle to press the modifier keys isn’t as bad (which I never considered until now!)