Canvas - remember scroll position of notes

Use case or problem

Canvas often refreshes itself - when zooming out and then back in, or I think even changing tabs and coming back.
When this refresh happens, all the notes in the canvas are refreshed and scrolled back to the top.

If we go to a real world analogy, if the canvas is my “desk” or “vision board” with multiple documents/notebooks open on it to certain pages, every time I step away from my desk or step a few feet back to “zoom out”, someone is “cleaning up” and closing all my notebooks/booklets so I have to go re-find and flip back to the pages I was on before. That’s not motivating to pick up where I left off.

Proposed solution

An option to remember cursor position, or some concept of a “bookmark”.

Similar to “Narrow to section”, a “Scroll to section”?

This would be useful not only on a per file level, but on a per-tab level. Often we have multiple tabs open scrolled to different parts for a good reason, and this includes canvas in the mix now.

Current workaround (optional)

n/a

or never use notes that require scrolling

The Remember Cursor Position plugin does not work with canvas at all. It also is per-file not per-tab, and hit or miss at working as expected.

Related feature requests (optional)

There are lots of FR for remembering cursor position. At least for regular notes you can use the outline to quickly navigate. Not so for notes on canvas; using the outline opens a new tab.

6 Likes

This is a good FR, assuming it isn’t a glitch. Can you share your OS, version, and installer version please?

I have one long process one, where I definitely want to remember where I am.

Just to clarify, does it ever happen spontaneously while you’re viewing or editing? I’ve never noticed that personally.

(But I can’t recreate this with a short test. Switching tabs or restarting Obsidian doesn’t do it for me, so I can’t test it right now. Maybe it’s just once in a while. I’ll keep my eye out for it.)

1 Like

One way that consistently refreshes for me is, zoom out until the note looks like this

then zoom back in. It will be scrolled to the top

OS: Arch linux with the community package

SYSTEM INFO:
Obsidian version: v1.1.9
Installer version: v1.1.9
Operating system: #1 SMP Wed, 01 Feb 2023 09:32:49 +0000 5.15.91-1-lts
Login status: not logged in
Insider build toggle: off
Live preview: on
Legacy editor: off
Base theme: dark
Community theme: none
Snippets enabled: 3
Restricted mode: off
Plugins installed: 0
Plugins enabled: 0

RECOMMENDATIONS:
Custom theme and snippets: for cosmetic issues, please first try updating your theme and disabling your snippets. If still not fixed, please try to make the issue happen in the Sandbox Vault or disable community theme and snippets.

I joined the forum for this feature request. I think a decent work around is “Narrow to Section” because I can add a “canvascard” subsection that I can narrow to. It’s not optimal due to having add an artificial section. And also the title of the narrowed card gets only the section title appended, not the whole hierarchy. So that five narrowed artifical subsections on a singel note will all get the same title. But that might be another feature request?

But if this feature with “Locking scrolling” is realized it’s important to specify the behavior when the note is edited in another tab. Should the scroll be saved relative to the top or just the closest section/subsection-heading so that edits “above” doesn’t affect the saved viewport. But then what happens if the heading for that section is removed? Should the kept scroll position just be reset whenever a note is edited outside the current canvas view? What if the note is present in multiple canvases with saved scrolls?

I think it’s pretty complicated and I would be happy if the bug/behavior when zooming out until the content gets replaced is fixed. The issue zerkshop describes (And I can reproduce that without issues on a Windows 10).

2 Likes

I just started using canvas and I’m also hoping for this to eventually be incorporated into the functionality. It would be useful to save the scroll position for webpages as well.