New Tab Behavior Confusing - Not in Help But I Figured It Out

Things I have tried

What I’m trying to do

I was surprised by the 1.0 update. I thought something was borked in my configuration until I realized there had been an update. Suddenly having Andy’s Mode (Sliding Panes) not working was a shock.

I figured out how the tab groups work. I couldn’t find it on the Obsidian site. (Drag one tab onto another tab creates a Tab Group.) My trouble was that every document I had left open was created as a new tab and each individual tab was it’s own group when I clicked the stacked tabs option.

Combined with displaying the path in the title bar and defaulting to NOT showing the way Andy’s Mode (Sliding Panes) did it was a mess.

I had to close a lot of documents to get enough space in the title bar to drag tabs into a single tab group so I could stack them. The Recent Files plugin made keeping track of the closed files easier.

Now the way files open by default (i.e. Left-Click a link) - they open in their own tab and group. One has to right-click then select “Open To The Right” to open in the current tab group. (A big change from how it used to work with Andy’s Mode.) But this only works from links in that tab group. All other methods open in a new tab group.

It makes more sense to me to open all documents in the current tab group. A was for the user to control this would be good. If it exists, I haven’t found it yet.

It doesn’t handle screen space the same way as before. Having two tab groups isn’t as smooth and doesn’t display a new tab (document) conveniently. Using a single tab group was better but still not optimal use of the screen as it was before, IMO.

The trick seems to be limit the number of pinned documents.

So without buying a newer & bigger monitor, I have to change how many documents are open and be careful of how they are grouped.

I don’t think any community plugins are causing issues. Time will tell…

The help is way different and doesn’t have some things, or doesn’t explain them. For example, tab groups are mentioned in the release notes, but doesn’t explain how to create them. It isn’t in the help either. Nothing comes up under “tab groups.”


[I had a shock of the update changing the appearance of Obsidian when I opened my campaign vault over my lunch break.

I had just been in it this morning before work and it looked as I expected.

Now that the shock of this unexpected change has worn off I’m getting my vaults back to close to my desired work flow.

Had I known this headache was coming, I would have figured out how to avoid the frustration. I am OK with program changes, I just prefer to know about it BEFORE I have to struggle to revise how I handle my workflow.

I also signed up here, so hopefully I get a heads up on such major changes in the future.

I would make a big fuss before my day job pushed out such a change as it would swamp us with support tickets from users complaining that everything is changed. If they can push out the update, they can push out an FYI that alerts the user before they commit All prior updates have been small incremental changes so I wasn’t concerned with having auto-update enabled.]

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But you did have auto update enabled. When you open Obsidian the first time after an update, now it prominently shows the release notes. Most of your questions, including addressing the andy’s mode plugin are in there.

If you closed the release notes before reading them, you can get them back from the command pallet: search for release notes.

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I’m having a lot of problems with tabs and tab groups too (compared to using Andy’s mode)… here are some examples of problems:

  • CMD-clicking a date in my CALENDAR plugin opens the date in a new tab group instead of a new tab

  • CMD-clicking a file in my RECENT FILES plugin also opens the file in a new tab group instead of a new tab

  • FILE menu, CREATE NOTE (CMD-N) opens a new tab in the same tab group (as expected), but FILE, CREATE NOTE IN NEW TAB (CMD-SHIFT-N) actually opens the new note in a new “tab group” not a “new tab” so that menu item is labeled incorrectly

  • If I am in a current note and I right click a link, I see an option to “Open to the Right” - but this feels mis-labeled as what it actually does is open the link in a new “tab group”.

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  • Calendar and recent files plugins are third-party.
    They will likely be updated soon to normalize on the built-in conventions. Liam mentioned Calendar in discord in context of click behaviors as needing updated.

  • “open to the right” is the same action that used to be called “split”; I think there were quite a few discussion on the pros and cons and how to name the action appropriately. Naming is hard. I’m sure we will get used to the new names.

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  • Calendar need to Update the behavior of Ctrl + Click to open in a “New Tab” instead of opening in a “New Group Tab” => Shortcuts are made to ease the workflow not to make it harder
  • And also I was worried to see such a well knows plugin with few tweaks to have in the section of “Hotkeys”
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