Navigate search results without using the mouse

I only just discovered today, the community plugin “Core Search Assistant” can navigate search results via keyboard, with shortcuts you can remap. (ctrl+N and ctrl+P by default. ctrl+enter to open the note.)

It can also show card previews of your search results, which is pretty cool for seeing context, including images!

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As you said It is possible to do a search without using the mouse.

This issue is about the fact that without the mouse it is not possible to:

  • Open the files found by the search
  • Leave the search pane
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This feature is absolutely needed

Guys… GitHub - qawatake/obsidian-core-search-assistant-plugin: An Obsidian plugin to enhance built-in search: keyboard interface, card preview, bigger preview

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Just installed and tested a bit:

  • does NOT work with the build-in quick switcher
  • works with Quick Switcher++
  • doesn NOT work with the dropdown menu from Tasks

For auto-completion I use obsidian-various-complements-plugin which provides shortcuts for selection.

and The Oscar goes to “Core search assistant plug-in” :smile:

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Overall increase full keyboard navigation. This in particular:

After typing in a search team, allow up and down arrows to move through search results, and ENTER to select one to open.

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Seconding this! It would make my workflow so much more efficient! Plus maybe an option to have a little pop-out preview of each one and then actually open it and put the cursor at the bottom of that note when enter is pressed. That way people wouldn’t accidentally switch to the wrong note.

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+1 It would make my workflow so much more efficient too.

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+1 :+1:

Because I access my notes in another apps primarily through searching, I got used to navigating my search results by arrow keys and Enter so much, that searching in an app, which does not support it feels SOO WEIRD :upside_down_face:.

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Related feature requests:

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@moderators Great list of duplicate feature requests — should all be merged to the master thread:

Pressing tab after a search via ctrl + shift + F moves the cursor to the header of the leftmost panel (I believe). I would expect it to move to the search results so that it is possible to navigate between them with up & down keys.

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Giving my +1 vote to this. Dramatically slows down productivity / efficiency when you have to take your hands away from the keyboard to select what you’ve searched for.

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I’ve been having this issue a lot recently. +1 the suggested fix. In the meanwhile, does anyone have advice on working around this?

Thanks in advance.

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Another month, another bump on this since it shouldn’t be difficult to implement and would really, really make the app smoother to use with the keyboard.

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Same remark here -)

While we’re asking for stuff, it’d be nice if after tabbing from the search to the results, tab from the search results went to the editor pane with the edit cursor on the current search result (if in edit mode).

It’d also be nice if there were a hotkey that jumped me back in the pane with the selection where I left it, so I could continue to arrow down.

I actually use the searches for file navigation in my rapid logging journal, launched from a page of search URL scheme links that I have parked in the left sidebar.

So I have a link to a regex search that displays the list of all unhandled tasks in that journal, for example, and I walk down it at the end of the day. In my ideal world that’d be with a keyboard, bouncing back and forth to the file it’s found (the only file currently tagged #Journal).

Right now nothing about search is keyboard capable, and I have to actually make sure I click on the right line, etc. Tab twice actually does take you to the editor, but nothing moves your cursor so you’ll end up modifying some line offscreen.

I came from nvAlt where this flow worked really well, and I’d love to reproduce it more easily here.

On a side note, being able to put a note in the sidebar as a tab is a lifesaver now that there are search URIs and embeds. You can roll your own saved search tabs now, either driving the real one or displaying inline. That solves one of the huge problems I had using Obsidian, so I’m really happy to have that functionality now.

Will be implemented in v0.15.0

5 Likes

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