Hotkey to "Focus on last active pane"

Please, add customizable command/hotkey that navigates between panes just like Alt+Tab navigates between windows in Microsoft Windows.
Purpose: switch between two actively used panes by keyboard without mouse.
keywords: activate, navigation, toggle
Advanced possibilities: Show list of windows / pane titles after clicking Tab first time, navigable by keyboard arrows, clickable, confirmed by Enter

Related feature requests:

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related request already fulfilled by commands “Focus on pane to the left”, “Focus on pane to the right”: Fluid tab navigation via ctrl-tab, ctrl-shift-tab

Edit: “Focus on pane to the right” also allows to activate recently opened note in new pane because the new pane opens on the right side of the active one (at least in Andy mode).

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Hi @malecjan, have you tried setting these hotkeys? I missed the second post. I’m not sure I understand what would be the difference between the hotkeys you suggest and the available ones?

Example: I have (in Andy mode) sequence of panes A,B,C,D,E,…
I want to navigate repeatedly between two specific panes temporarily, e.g. between B and D, without desire to reorder panes by dragging.
Having set hotkey1 (Ctrl+Shift+Tab) to “Focus on pane to the left”, and hotkey2 (Ctrl+Tab) “Focus on pane to the right”,
Every time to go from D to B I need to press hotkey1, hotkey1. To go from B to D I need to press hotkey2, hotkey2.
With “Focus on recently active pane” I would press just the “hotkey” once, to go from D to B or from B to D. Without thinking about relative position of active pane and the other relevant pane among other panes.

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Got it! I don’t use Andy mode, so it wasn’t obvious to me why the left/right combo wouldn’t work. A question about that, is there a way to reorganize the order of panes in Andy mode? e.g. so you could do left/right a bit more easily? (At least as a workaround in the meantime)

I made a small edit to the title to clarify things a bit (recently -> last), let me know if you think that doesn’t make sense.

I am not native English speaker so thanks for improvement that is not obvious to me.
Tested 2020-12-29: reordering is not perfected yet as documented in Improvements for Andy mode (aka Sliding Windows)

In Windows I have a single key (without modifiers) dedicated to Alt+Tab functionality via AutoHotkey which is very fast/ergonomic and I am looking forward to expand this luxury to Obsidian itself.

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Convenience is even more obvious since introduction of dedicated Sliding Panes (Andy Matushcak Mode) Plugin
which scrolls activated pane automatically into view. The requested hotkey would allow to switch between two very distant panes quickly.

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Maybe is my plugin https://github.com/phibr0/cycle-through-panes helpful. I can add the setting to only switch the two recent panes too. Just tell me.

2 Likes

@Vinadon So far I used “Focus on pane to the left”, “Focus on pane to the right”, I see your plugin closes the cycle by allowing to go from right-most pane to left-most pane, which is useful.
If you manage to add customizable hotkey to switch between two last active panes (distant, activated by mouse), or even implement this request completely, definitely let me know here.
Thank you

The current api method for this is broken, but got already fixed. When a new obsidian release is out, I will add this.

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Ok I used a complete different methode, but a new release is out. I hope it workes like you expect. Remember to set a hotkey for this command youself.

im not OP, but i had the same problem and i cant thank you enough. very well done!