It really materially improves my flow if I can navigate through the various modes & states of the app with the keyboard and not have to reach for the mouse. Very few note applications get this right! I would love it if Obsidian could do it but I imagine it will take careful consideration of the various parts that need to be reached from each other and what the states can be (edit vs preview).
Some examples:
(1)
When editing a file, need shortcut to take me to edit the filename.
At the moment, it seems that i need to press Control+E to go into Preview mode and then hit TAB to move to the filename. This is cumbersome.
(2)
When editing a file, how do I escape out of the edit pane and into the file explorer OR search pane (if that is currently active instead of the File Explorer) to choose another file to view and/or edit?
(3)
The general common pattern that needs to be made easy is being able to (a) browse though a subset of files quite simply in preview mode (b) choose one to edit quickly and then be able to hope back to scrolling through the filtered list of files.
I think that this is so important. I am somewhat obsessed with keyboard usage in all apps. I go so far as to use a tiling window manager on Linux and Amethyst on MacOS. Being able to navigate backlinks, graph nodes, even notes in a file tree is so key to maintaining flow. It even is frustrating when I open settings with a keyboard shortcut and then focus stays in the editor.
Remember that keyboard shortcuts are not only great for people like me, but are a critical part of a11y.
As @dregar pointed out, the latest versions do have Hotkeys options to navigate to a specific pane. But I believe we still need better solutions on keyboard usage. Something more in line with what @cognociente and @anthonybullard are saying.