Better Workspaces / Group features - Visual separation

Plugins ideas
1

I like the workspaces features because it allows you to get a “fresh” eye on things you do. For example, I have different projects that I don’t want to see each other when I work on one. Let’s say you have study and work things to do. Now you could have two separate Vaults, but maybe you find cool plugins, reconfigure things etc. - you’d always have to repeat that. Plugins like Make.MD solve this partly but they aren’t perfect. They still let you interfere with both worlds, making it easy to get distracted. So I started using workspaces. Then I wondered why there are no plugins that visually separate things like Workspaces. So my suggestion is:

  • A plugin that allows splitting content in Vaults into workspace-like environments and
  • splitting those environments into sub-environments
  • Ideally both unlimited, e.g. files and folders can easily also be part of multiple of such environments

Say you have this structure:

  • Work
    • Project 1
    • Project 2
  • Private
    • Project 1
    • Project 2

In Workspaces you could visually split to either Work or Private. You could also create workspaces for each project but over time this would simply get too much. I found the plugin vertical tabs which probably “accidentally” almost perfectly solves my problem but with a very big twist and problem: It allows you to view your tabs in a sidebar but also group them. This grouping feature combined with Workspaces would be amazing and perfect for my issue but the problem is that tabs are open in the background and thus eat resources. If they were linked instead and open the files on click while still being separate per workspace, it would be perfect.

So does anyone know of such a plugin where you can create (sub)groups/(sub)workspaces and still visually separate them from each other? The latter part is really important here. There are plenty of features that allow things like groups, bookmarks etc. but they all have one state, not separate e.g. per workspace.

Would be great!

2

Hi @sekev ! I’m the developer of Vertical Tabs. Workspace feature is currently under prototyping and experimenting. Please stay tuned!

1 Like
3

Nice, that would be great! Though without the open tabs as it’s currently the problem? Other than that it worked for me with workspaces so far. I already enjoyed your plugin, but as said, the tabs being open is a dealbreaker.

4

Hi @sekev ! If you updated to the latest version of Obsidian, all tabs are opened as “deferred” by default and will be fully loaded only when you need them. Once these tabs are loaded, the resources should only be released when you closed them (if I’m correct). Currently, Vertical Tabs will not unload tabs for you. I’m still figuring out the algorithm and experimenting if this is possible. One big issue is that Obsidian does not expose any API to revert a fully-loaded tab to a deferred tab (without eating much memory).

5

The “Workspaces Plus” plugin has a beta feature called ‘Workspace Modes,’ which, at least by its description, seems to have some of the features you’re looking for. I’ve never used it, so I’m unsure of all its features, but hopefully, it works for you.

6

That feature is unfortunately broken :sweat_smile: I looked at it already, however, seems like they started working on it again after almost 2 years of silence :grimacing:

7

Isn’t it possible to keep the sidebar feature but simply not load tabs? Like store the tab once it’s opened but keep it saved (not open) as long as either the user removes it or closes the tab. So basically it stores the vertical tabs in a file instead of based on open tabs. But that would probably be a completely different plugin to yours :sweat_smile:

8

Unfortunately, Obsidian does not provide this functionality. I’m trying to implement this in Vertical Tabs.