Bottom bar with functionality similar to the side bars

Use case or problem

My app window is usually in a portrait like shape (as opposed to landscape), either because my monitors are in portrait mode or because I am using half a widescreen monitor for obsidian. I do this since I find this arrangement better to consume notes (or any text heavy content). I find it better for coding too.

In this arrangement, horizontal space is at a premium.

While the sidebars provide great functionality, they eat into the horizontal space. That makes it difficult to consume 2 notes side by side, or look at the edit and preview versions of the same note.

Expanding and collapsing sidebars also cause the text in the notes to reflow.

Proposed solution

Have a bottom bar with all the functionality as the sidebars.

To clarify, by bottom bar I don’t mean the status bar( that has been called a bottom bar in a few other posts).

Alternately, allow dragging the right sidebar to the bottom.

A complication I foresee is that it needs to be decided whether the bottom bar gets the full width of the app, or the sidebars get the full height. One way to overcome this would be to make it a setting with the sidebars getting the full height being the default.

Current workaround (optional)

AFAIK, there are no full workarounds.

One may split panes horizontally (and populate new ones with graph view, back links and outline) to mimic some of this proposed functionality.

But such an arrangement would not be able to:

  1. show tags, explorer, favorites or search.
  2. be hidden when not required

Related feature requests (optional)

top bar :grin: with similar functionality

seriously though, when using a 24 inch monitor in portrait mode, both the bottom and the top of the monitors are just a little uncomfortable to look at. But they are a great place for a quick look such as a starred list or saved searches.

6 Likes

I also would like this feature.

A great example of an app that has functionality like this is Logic Pro.

It might be better as a plugin rather than a core feature.

Related proposal:

I just thought of this today as I was writing eBook notes side-by-side with the eBook, having an equivalent to the sidebar at the bottom would be convenient rather than crunching my workspace.

Also, this seems like a fitting feature as we already have something similar in the “Backlink in document” feature as part of the COR plugins. I’d greatly prefer a sidebar on the bottom to display that instead of needing to scroll to the bottom of the page to see the backlinks (as an example).