I run Obsidian with two linked panes - on the left is editing mode, and on the right is reading mode, for the same page. I also have a hot key which runs “Daily notes: Open today’s daily note”.
When I press the hot key, both panes switch to the current day’s daily note, with both panes in editing mode.
How do I make the right pane stay in reading mode? I don’t need two panes editing the same document.
Things I have tried
Searched through the settings with in the app
Searched through this forum, the closest thing I found was this question which seems to be saying that there’s an un-documented “feature” where any time a daily note is jumped to, it also changes to editing mode.
This is irritating, especially because it’s not consistent with how Obsidian behaves for other pages. When I jump to another page by clicking a link, or by selecting it from the tree view at the far left, both panes change to the new document, and both panes keep whatever view (editing or reading) they were already in. This includes manually selecting today’s daily note from the list - it only happens when I use the hotkey.
Set the hotkey to “Open Daily Note in Current Pane” for the left pane (editing mode).
Then, you can manually set the right pane to reading mode after opening.
The closest hotkey function I can find is “Daily notes: Open today’s daily note”. There is no “in current pane” option. If you can provide more detailed directions I can certainly try it.
Manually setting the right pane to reading mode is what I’m already doing, and what I want to not have to do.
I’m trying it now. It’s weird, sometimes it works but sometimes it doesn’t. In particular, it seems to work in my “personal” vault (where I don’t really use the Daily Notes functionality) but not in the work vault (where I rely on Daily Notes heavily). I’ll need to play with it some more and see what I can figure out.
Whether it works or not, I still think that the action either shouldn’t force the tab into editing mode, just leave the tabs in whatever mode they happen to be in. Or, add a preference item to allow the user to choose whether it forces the tab into editing mode or not - and have the item’s “help text” explain that when the setting is on, it will force ALL tabs which show the daily note into editing mode.
I don’t really use workspaces so I don’t really know if that’s a bug or not.
I just thought of a slightly “over-engineered” way you could do that. Instead of having a workspace with the same note open twice, you create a second note, embed the Daily note via ![[link]]
and set that note with the embed to be part of the saved workspace. since it’s embedded it’ll automatically be in preview mode.
I tried enabling the “Workspaces” plugin and creating a workspace, with the two panes set up the way I want them. (At least, I think that’s what I set up.) I’m getting inconsistent results - sometimes it keeps the panes set up the way I want them, other times it doesn’t. It’s really weird.
Also, your other suggestion, something about an embedded note, doesn’t make any sense to me. I think I need to read up on what “workspaces” are and how they work.