+1 for this feature. My brain is trained to expect documents to open in a new tab, so I’m often a dozen or so documents in before realize that none of the documents I thought I was opening were opened.
Then I’m hitting the back and forward button to navigate between documents and open them in a new tab. There has to be a better way!
How did this happen? Which other apps open have this behavior?
Can’t believe such an obvious and simple feature still doesn’t exist in Obsidian. I’m a new user and this is the only thing that’s annoying me. There ought to be an option in the settings to automatically open links and notes in a new tab without having to use keyboard shortcuts or other extra steps.
Doesn’t need to be Obsidian’s default behavior, but at least give us the option to enable this behavior in the settings ffs
+1 to this issue from me
New user here who created a forum account to comment on this issue. Definite QoL improvement to address this issue. It would be great if users could select their preferred UX based on the list compiled above.
My vote is for the VS Code behavior where the file shows up in preview / as a temporary tab until it is edited. This most often captures my intent with editing / previewing documents.
VSCode would be #1 for me - I was shocked today to learn that obsidian doesn’t have this (probably really simple) option. It’s making it really frustrating to switch between programming and note-taking… and I feel like I keep on “accidentally” closing windows.
This feature request has been open for 3 years, clearly there is a lot of demand, and it seems like it shouldn’t be that difficult… please please !
vscode has a completely different way of managing tabs, it’s really not just about opening notes in a new tab (see the corresponding FR )
+1, please add this option
I see some are saying they can open a new note in a new pane via hotkeys (CTRL + SHIFT + N) but unfortunately this is not what the OP was saying nor what many others are adding onto.
The intention is to Open a New Note in a New Tab, preferably with a hotkey. So, instead of typing CTRL + N and having a new note open on top of the current note, the same CRTL + N hotkey combo could/would be assigned to open the new note in a new tab.
I also saw someone asked for the QoL (Quality of Life) benefit for having this implemented natively in Obsidian. Speaking for my use case…
The solution, which is easy for me to say because I don’t need to write it, is combine the functionality of New Tab (CTRL + T) and New Note (CTRL + N) into a single new hotkey choice.
patleeman’s plugin seems to do the trick for me but that would be a great feature to add natively, just like Spark706 mentioned.
To be honest, I am really confused by this thread. You folks seem to think that at @patleeman implements this FR. But it’s not correct. Tab reuse is what @patleeman’s plugin attempts to do (there are other plugins like no-dup-leaves and mononote) .
As I have pointed out several times, “try to reuse an already open tab” is different from “always open in new tab”. There is a separate FR for that case here
I am now inclined to think that a sizable portion of users in this thread (perhaps a majority) actually want “tab reuse” and maybe are not familiar with how IDEs operate so there is a difficulty in expressing what they want.
I think people are overcomplicating things on this thread. Eliminate all the keywords such as “IDE”, “default”, …, etc. No need to be pedantic.
All we ask is an option to open a note in a new tab and have it focused on that tab, if the “Open notes in new tab instead of existing tab” option is selected in settings. That’s it.
Not sure why isn’t there such an option already and obsidian is forcing “everyone”, and not “only people who want it”, to use the same tab when a note is opened.
It is quite ridiculous that this thread has been going into it’s 4th year now, people are building spaceships in that time, and no action is taken by anyone, positive or negative.
The two things are different. Very different. So at very least we need to understand what you want and why you want it. That’s why I am being pedantic.
We never comment of which FR will be implemented unless it is on the roadmap.
1+
I used to have this feature as a bug - so I never thought it might be missing.
Until I used “Close all” once - now I am here with all others 
Give us an option to decide if
I was so used to open as new tab, that I closed files without realizing, just by open files.
Here’s what I think most people want when clicking on an internal link:
If that note is already open on another tab, switch to that tab. Leave the current tab open where it is.
If that note isn’t already open in another tab, create a new tab to open that note and switch to that tab. Leave the current tab open where it is.
This is the behavior I and most other people are used to in IDEs and I would love to see it in Obsidian. This way, you never change your current tab. Links always open in a different tab (whether an already open tab, or a brand new tab)
Right now, when you click on a link Obsidian opens the link in the current tab which is super annoying.
Dang, more than 3 years on this. Please implement this! This is a multiple-times-a-day pain for me
I’m using Obsidian for mathematics, so I frequently like to refer to other notes while writing a new one. Sometimes I have to search around for the note I want, e.g. looking for a particular comment about a specific theorem, or looking for a note about an object. The fact that the default is to open in your current tab keeps making me lose my place and is pretty disruptive for me. I’m not used to locking tabs or holding down CTRL, which would fix this issue. Perhaps I could learn the muscle memory, or whatever.
Fortunately, searching “open in new tab” in the community plugins yielded two plugins to do exactly this, but neither works on search results, which doesn’t help me much.
Perhaps it’s time to learn how to develop Obsidian Plugins 
@WhiteNoise You folks are doing an amazing work!
I would love to see the following options in the settings as a dropdown.
=== Tab Behavior ===
These are one of my biggest pain points in Obsidian. I hope you can add it to your roadmap soon.
Please let us know what we can do as a community to make sure this gets on the roadmap.
Many thanks! 
+1
I need this feature too.
+1 Would also love to see this feature live!!
+1
This would be a big relief. The implementation described by @dreams above seems like all I’d need. Thanks, devs!