Ctrl-Tab to switch between recently-used notes

I hope I’m not duplicating a request here, but in my searches I seem to only find requests about cycling through panes, but I’m not interested in panes, I work in one pane at a time, on one note at a time, but from time to time I’ll click on a link and end up in another note, or switch to another note, then I have to go looking through my notes list on the left and try to figure out or remember which note I was last working in.

I’ve since noticed that I can go Ctrl-O and get a list of the recently used notes, which works, but it’s slow and awkward compared to a key combination (like Ctrl-Tab in Firefox) that would cycle through the last-used notes in the order that they were used.

So with the Ctrl-Tab functionality as described above, I could, for instance, quickly switch from one not to the other, cut/paste stuff between them, or do a Ctrl-Tab-Tab to go to the note previous to the previous one, etc.

Most web browsers work the same way, don’t they, so you can quickly switch from one tab to another?

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Yeah, but tabs are (in a way) like panes. Wouldn’t like to see the usage metaphor changed, to be honest.

Then again, you can set hotkeys for “Navigate back” and “Navigate forward”—maybe that fits your use case?

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Oh I wouldn’t want to change anything about the functionality of Obsidian that people have got used to, just want to be able to very quickly change between notes just like tabs in a browser, so a different key combination could be used which wouldn’t interfere with the way things have always been done.

No idea about this Navigate Forward or Back, lemme try to see if I can figure out how to do that, sounds like it might actually do just what I was looking for… brb…

Just go Settings → Hotkeys then filter on Navigate and click the little asterisk button to redefine the keys.

Beautiful, I don’t need to change the key, Ctrl-Alt-<- and Ctrl-Alt- → does exactly what I was looking to do, it switches me between recently-used notes :smiley:

Thank you very much!

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You’re welcome, anytime! :slight_smile:
Obsidian is just crazily customizable, at all levels.

(I can’t use the predefined keys here—Ctrl+Alt+ switches virtual desktops on my machine (Linux).)

You might want to mark a solution, so others know this is solved.

Indeed, love it so far!

Yep, I’ve already marked your first reply as the solution, your suggestion of using Navigate Forward. After you mentioned that, I went into Obsidian, pressed Ctrl-P, typed Navigate in the search box, saw the Forward and Back keys were already set to Ctrl-Alt-<- and Ctrl-Alt- →, tried them, and Bingo! (channeling Christoph Waltz), I was switching between my recently used notes :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

One happy camper here now!

Bloody hell! This is irritating, this is the second time today, when I quote you, I expect that my post is a reply to you, and then once I’m done, and I post, I notice that my post is not a reply to your post that I quoted from.

Thinking about it, I understand why this is not so, but it’s going to take me maybe another time or two to remember how this works (or doesn’t), so that I won’t forget to click on the Reply button first, in the future.

Yep, I’ve already marked your first reply as the solution, your suggestion of using Navigate Forward. After you mentioned that, I went into Obsidian, pressed Ctrl-P, typed Navigate in the search box, saw the Forward and Back keys were already set to Ctrl-Alt-<- and Ctrl-Alt- →, tried them, and Bingo! (channeling Christoph Waltz), I was switching between my recently used notes :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

One happy camper here now!

It’s fortunate that some things turn out to be real easy, due to thoughtful creation in the first place.

Love Obsidian for it’s flexibility, but even more for it’s usability. Easy of use is key, I think.

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Well as you say, due to its thoughtful creation to begin with, Obsidian’s flexibility/customizability means that everyone can customize it to work in the ways that they are used to doing things, which can mean consistency of work flows/methods, and not requiring to re-learn a whole new system or way of doing things. That is very significant.

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Note to fellow Linux users:

I’ve been thinking a while which keys I should use on my Linux system to navigate back and navigate forward in Obsidian, since Ctrl+Alt+ and Ctrl+Alt+ are taken by the OS for switching between virtual desktops.

I found that Firefox uses

  • Alt+ to navigate back, and
  • Alt+ to navigate forward

through the history, so I adopted these and am quite happy with them.

It’s also a good usage metaphor for me:

  • and to move by character (in the editor),
  • Ctrl+ and Ctrl+ to move by word (in the editor),
  • Alt+ and Alt+ to move by page, and
  • Ctrl+Alt+ and Ctrl+Alt+ to move by desktop.

Usable and easy to remember—perfect for me.

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