The new floating and auto-hiding mobile navigation bar is a significant regression in usability.
The previous full-width, permanently visible bottom bar was highly functional and predictable. The new rounded, floating design that disappears while scrolling creates friction in basic navigation. I now frequently have to tap into text areas just to make the bar reappear, which interrupts reading, editing and switching between tabs.
I prefer to work with a stable, built-in setup and would rather not rely on custom CSS or UI modifications, especially on mobile. Therefore, I would strongly appreciate an option to restore the previous fixed bottom navigation bar or at least a setting to keep the mobile navigation permanently visible.
Thank you for your work on Obsidian and for considering this.
P.S.:
One of Obsidian’s great strengths, and in my view one of its unique selling points, is its focus on functional, text-based work and linking rather than visual design.
That is why I value Obsidian so much and have been using it daily and intensively for four years on multiple devices via a sync subscription, both for my daily work and for organizing my everyday life and all the information that comes my way.
For me, it is primarily an extremely practical environment for noting, linking, and storing knowledge, so stability is more important than visual refinements.
An optional “pure” or stability-focused interface mode would be highly appreciated.
I had already checked the settings several times, but couldn’t find such an option. Apparently, the automatic update hadn’t run yet.
Now I’ve updated Obsidian manually and… Hurray! That’s exactly the switch I was looking for!
I know you mentioned you don’t want to use any CSS snippets, but after changing those settings, you can adjust things a bit (reduce the height of the now fixed to the bottom nav bar, etc.) with some CSS.
Thanks for pointing that out!
I’m fine with the default settings in principle. (Or rather, I’ll adjust to them.)
I’m a bit cautious about doing my own CSS tweaks because of earlier experiences when I used to run WordPress blogs. In the beginning, there was just the core system and everything worked nicely. Over time, more and more features and customizations were added. Yes, you could do great things with CSS and plugins… but then an update came along and suddenly things didn’t play well together anymore.
I know CSS is relatively harmless since it doesn’t change the core mechanics. But it still takes time and attention, and I honestly don’t have much of that. I’d rather use that time to write and link in Obsidian, which, after four years, already takes up a “little” part of my working life (but makes me happy when I rediscover older notes connected to a keyword that has become relevant again).
I really do love Obsidian.
Thank you for your work and effort.
