I had to create an account just to +1 this. I can’t believe this isn’t a feature, frankly it seems more like a bug!
I vote in favor of making Obsidian the default app for .md files or a drag-and-drop feature without importing.
There are notes that I don’t need inside my vault, and I also don’t want them there, because they only clutter searches and probably make things heavier as well - like lists with hundreds of names. They’re only meant to be stored, not accessed. I find it strange that a robust Markdown editor like Obsidian doesn’t allow opening a .md file.
However, I’m against any technical overengineering that goes against Obsidian’s philosophy, such as searching through “alien” notes. That makes no sense. Anyone who wants something like that should probably rely on plugins that will eventually appear.
My idea is as simple as possible: just allow opening a .md file without importing it into the vault. It could use the configuration, plugins, and CSS from the vault marked as the default for external notes, or at least from whatever vault is currently open.
No unnecessary complexity. One thing that would be interesting, though, is supporting relative paths. If I’m storing that note together with its dependencies, it would be useful to embed an image using a relative path like: .
Nothing more is needed. I think only someone who doesn’t really know how to use Obsidian would create an “alien/arbitrary” note that links back into the vault.
I’d also like obsidian to be a system-wide markdown file editor. I mostly use notepad++ for text files, but for markdown files it doesn’t have syntax highlighting in code blocks and can’t render images.
Many text editors, such as vscode, have similar feature where they have a global setting and a project setting. I imagine a “global vault” for obsidian holding the setting that apply to a file in an arbitrary location. The global app interface won’t have a file tree.
with the six year anniversary of this request coming up, I just decided to use MarkText.
It’s OK. I’m open to other options.
As AIs are more and more ubiquitous, .md files are becoming my go-to file format. I’d love to totally depend on Obsidian, but it can’t open files directly from finder! Help! Please fix this. I really, really, REALLY don’t want to move to (yet) another platform, but my AIs aren’t happy with any other file format.
That doesn’t work on Android mobile. I wish to use Obsidian and reduce as much as possible other apps.
This 
has this… been implemented yet?
i think this will open the whole folder and creates .obsidian/ folder on that directory, is it not?
oh this is the one i need, thank you!
It doesn’t, and I believe there may be a separate request for what you want. If there isn’t, you can start a new one.
will be implemented in version 1.14.2+. It’s current being beta tested in catalyst/insider.
Once it becomes publicly available, you will need to download and reinstall Obsidian from our website to make it work.
Six years later, Obsidian still can’t do the one thing every text editor does — open a file
Obsidian has a full command-line interface. It has open, create, read, append, move, rename, delete. It has eval, so I can execute arbitrary JavaScript inside the app from a terminal. It can take a screenshot of itself on request. There is a Bases query engine, a web viewer, and a developer command set explicitly built so that agentic coding tools can drive the app.
What it cannot do is open a file when the operating system asks it to.
Pass a note’s full path to Obsidian.exe and the argument is discarded. No file opens. No error. No notice. Just an empty “New tab.” This is not a missing capability — the handler already exists and already works. obsidian://open?path= takes the same path, resolves which vault contains it, and opens the note. The path arrives at the app either way. One route is wired up and one isn’t.
The consequence is that Obsidian cannot be the default Markdown application on Windows. Not “it’s rough,” not “there are caveats” — it does not work. Anyone who sets it and double-clicks a note gets a blank tab and reasonably concludes their install is broken. The community workaround is to write your own wrapper that reads obsidian.json, resolves the file against the vault roots, and re-issues it as a URI. Your users are shipping your OS integration layer for you.
And that only covers files already inside a vault. A plain .md sitting on the desktop cannot be opened in Obsidian at all, by any method. That request has been open since May 2020. Six years. In that time the app has gained a CLI, a database engine, a browser, and tooling for AI agents.
Two asks, neither of them large:
- When a bare path argument resolves inside a known vault, hand it to the handler that already exists.
- Provide any way at all — read-only is fine — to open a Markdown file that isn’t in a vault.
If neither is ever going to happen, say so plainly, in writing, so people stop waiting on it and go install something else.
@Tamako There’s no need for the AI-geberated paragraph. If you check the roadmap, it’s being actively worked on.
That doesn’t specify if this will be available on Android.
I would like confirmation if another topic/issue is really needed.
I didn’t open one before because, based on comments and lack of specific tags, seemed implied. It would look like the request is recent and not from 2020.
On desktop, there are more than a couple alternatives.
On mobile:
- current Obsidian workflows, of lots of people, are not only hard but, I think, impossible to replicate in practice.
- Obsidian is missing: Prevent the app from being terminated by the OS while it is in the background (reduce re-startup time) (it makes current topic more needed)
Context/History:
- Export to PDF closed on 2021 and still missing on mobile
- Export to CSV expected on mobile since August 18, 2025 (not public; “Fixed for the next release.”)
- “This topic will close 2 months after the last reply.” and Changelog says “Desktop only” (
)
Please, open a separate FR for that.
Unreasonable. No one is obliged to check the roadmap every day, but a simple online search can yield thousands of posts asking for this exact feature for years.
No one is asking you to check the road map every day. It would make sense to do it before posting a complaint about it not being worked on. Also the post right above your “six years later” post says it’s being worked on, and is marked as the solution to this feature request thread.
You are right, I’m sorry.
It was not clear to me that Obsidian has such a roadmap that most of the other products don’t have. And the post marked as solution was obscure to me: without following all the previous posts and replies, I couldn’t have enough context to understand what the poster was commenting on, e.g. what feature “will be implemented in version 1.14.2+”.