I would like to be able to open a note in Obsidian, with a pre-defined key press, and for it to float on top of the interface, allowing me to drag it to any spot where I have free screen real estate, or closing it once I have made a quick amendment.
Is this something that’s possible? Love the tool, thank you for all your work x
You don’t actually have to put your vault in an empty folder. You can soft link your current folder in an empty folder as well. A new .obsidian file will be created when you open the new vault.
You can soft-link(Symlink in windows, soft-link Mac/Linux) the individual files inside of the .obsidian new vault configuration files (except for workspace) back to your original .obsidian vault if you want to sync themes, snippets, etc between the two.
This seems to work for me. So far so good. Thank you.
Yes!!! thanks, this is an awesome thing you’ve created.
(another +1)
The comment I’ve replied to seems to have laid out a way to make this work and I don’t believe anyone has refuted it. Is there any particular reason this doesn’t work? I’m willing to use the sym-link workaround for now but I’d be devestated if this wasn’t of at least some priority to the devs. It is a real use-case breaker for me and I’d love to see this added.
(I’m aware this thread is very old and trodden but you never know 
).
Electron limit. Not much themselves can do.
Sorry, I’m no electron expert and from what I’ve seen in the thread they do want to implement this and I really appreciate what the devs have done. I just meant that there does appear to be workarounds as described in the comment I linked. Then again I have no idea whether that is accurate or not.
I actually worded by comment really badly. I didn’t mean I’d be sad if they didn’t care about it, I really meant I’ve put a bunch of time into customising obsidian and I don’t know if I’d continue to use it long-term if this feature could never be added so I’d be pretty sad haha.
but I’d be devestated if this wasn’t of at least some priority to the devs
By at least some priority I meant “it would be implemented if it could be in future”. Again very badly worded pahaha.
Edit: Spelling
I’m unaffected since I’m set up entirely in a nested vault system, but I appreciate your frustration.
Floating windows are possible in Electron. The issue is that it’s a difficult and time-consuming feature to implement.
VSCode, for example, is aware that floating windows are possible, but are limited by the amount of work required to implement them. See this comment: Allow for floating windows · Issue #10121 · microsoft/vscode · GitHub
I would not say that this is technically impossible but what I can say is that this feature request is both very challenging because of the UI impact and because of the fundamental change it requires to each aspect of what we have today.
So how many coders do VSCode have?
This might already be common knowledge, but I just stumbled on this technique for adding multi-window support in an Electron app and wanted to make sure everyone here is aware that there’s a well-documented way to do so (and allegedly VS Code uses roughly this approach): Multiple Window Electron App. Easily open multiple windows similar to… | by Jason Sturges | Medium
For my 2 cents, Obsidian already kicks a$$ but having multi-window support would greatly expand my comfort using the app for my full knowledge system. Currently there’s portions of my notes that I keep in DynaList because I frequently need to compare notes across 2-4 rearrangable windows.
the ability to use the same Obsidian vault on all three of my monitors at the same time.
no idea, idk how the obsidian coding works.
open multiple vaults and use it monitor by monitor. then copy the files over the desired vault later. Highly un-ideal.
Nesting these vaults would work much better than thus.
Most of the time, I only need to open some topics for reference, and editing only occurs in the main window. Therefore, the floating window does not need to have all the functions of the main window, just preview.
Press and hold a modifier key in the main window to open a new floating preview window. The link in the floating preview window opens a new floating preview window by default. Press and hold a modifier key to open it in editing mode in the main window.
I haven’t tried this myself, but possible workaround (?): If you have Obsidian Sync, run a second instance of Obsidian in a virtual machine on your second monitor.
Wait!!! i can nest Vaults!!!
what? how ?
teach me oh wise one.
serisly tho how do you do this?
Put your vaults in another folder (using the OS file manager, not Obsidian), then open that folder as a vault.
SOO…
hypothetically if i have my vault nested twice,
and the top two nests i used as Read only second monitors and the bottom one as the edit vault then i shouldnt encounter any issues.
because im mainly wanting to use it to DM in DND
You should have no problems with this.
You could have problems in use if you have more than one edit vault and duplicate file names.
I have over twenty vaults with a hierarchy seven deep in places (still growing). I edit in all vaults and I edit and move files outside of Obsidian Too. But I never duplicate file names and am very careful with links and attachments (I keep them as local as possible); I think the key is to know what a given vault cannot see, but might exist. I have never had a problem, and I’ve been using this system virtually from the beginning. I find it a very helpful data structure for access by other programs.