Image Zoom and Popup on Click (Desktop)

Use case or problem

When adding an image into Obsidian (Desktop, Windows), if the Image is quite large it would be useful for me to click the image and have it open in a ‘lightbox’ (don’t know if this is the right term) so that I can see it in a zoomed in, full resolution form, being able to scroll left and right on the zoomed in image etc.

Currently, Obsidian Desktop does not let you do that.

As an example, if I have an image that has a lot of small writing on it, once I paste it into Obsidian, it becomes useless. I cannot zoom in or ‘open it up’ within the note to see the details.

This feature ironically works on mobile (iOS) with a much smaller screen, but doesn’t exist on the Windows Desktop application.

Proposed solution

On Obsidian Desktop (Windows), it would be good to click on an image to have it open in a popup window in full resolution where we can see all the details we need.

Current workaround (optional)

Nothing sadly.

Related feature requests (optional)

2 Likes

You can currently do it by left click to reveal source code then right click Open in default app. Left clicking an image already has a clear purpose: it reveals the image link. You can then right click the image link. Right clicking (local) image offers 6 useful functions:

  1. Open link / Open in new tab
  2. Rename
  3. Bookmark
  4. Open in default app
  5. Reveal in finder
  6. Reveal file in navigation

I don’t think that is a reasonable experience, not to mention the fact that it requires the user to take the experience outside of Obsidian.

I do believe that it is a core feature that Obsidian would be better off implementing natively (to mirror the mobile apps).

1 Like