Option to create new daily notes when on next/previous exists

[evanm]

It would be great if there was an option for Obsidian to automatically create new future daily notes when you hit the “open next daily note” hotkey and there is no next note.

Currently, when you do this you get a toast like this:

I often have occasion to add TODOs or notes a few days out and this feature would reduce the friction I currently face in doing so (manually creating new notes, naming the file to match the daily note format, and copy/pasting my daily note template).

[rigmarole]

I think this might need to be carefully reconsidered. (I like the idea that it should be easier to make Daily Notes with arbitrary dates.)

Right now, Open next daily note and Open previous daily note navigate between existing notes, skipping any empty days. This assumption was discussed here: Hotkeys to go forward or back a day in the daily notes folder

If those commands created empty notes, then it would make navigating between sparse daily notes harder.

Perhaps an alternate command should exist. Such as Create previous daily note and Create next daily note

Some other ideas would be an integrated create command that brings up a date-picker that would then format according to your Daily Notes plugin settings.

There is already some other discussion about plugin ideas to add a calendar widget to Obsidian. Example: Calendar view for daily notes

In the meantime, there have been some hacks to mimic calendar functionality, which you might find useful: Calendar and tasks for daily notes

[evanm]

Thank you for the context, @rigmarole. I agree that the right thing to do is to consider a more holistic rethink of how Obsidian lets users navigate daily notes, rather than taking this feature request at face value.

By comparison, in Roam Research, it’s easy to create notes for future dates that get seamlessly integrated into the flow of daily notes.

[Remus]

I have a very similar use case. I often plan a week in advance and my daily notes have a checklist of goals/tasks.

I agree that simply creating previous/future daily notes when they don’t exist may not be ideal.

Instead I would prefer a hotkey to create a daily note for any date, and be able to select that date from a calendar modal for example.

[aviaryan]

Use case or problem

Currently, when I select the option to “open next daily note” it doesn’t work if no such file is created. I propose it should be created when that happens.

Why?

Sometimes I have a task in my daily note. Now if I can’t do it today, I will like to move it to tomorrow. But I am unable to create the next day’s daily note easily.

Proposed solution

Create the next daily note if it doesn’t exist, and open it.

---

Thanks.

[malecjan]

There is no risk of creating unintended empty notes when dialogue is displayed, allowing to cancel the operation.

Proposed dialogue structure:

 There is no daily-   //
note after this one.  //
  Create new one?     //
[|                  ] // ← option: start typing with autocomplete to specify date e.g. in natural language
2020-12-24 (Thursday) // ← Display processed daily note filename corresponding to input from above or from below on hover
[↑tomorrow] [↑Monday] // ← option: Click one of chronologically ordered shortcuts to fill the input field above. 
                      //
[<] [Dec 2020] [>]    // ←↓ option: select from date picker to fill the input field above. 
29  30  [ 1] [ 2] ... //
 <date picker here>   //
... [30] [31]  1  2   //
                      //
 [Create]   [Cancel]  // ← Click on "Create" or press "Enter" to create and open specified daily note. (Just open when already exists.)

Then, do automatic setting of appropriate mode: When creating a new note, it should always be in "Edit" mode
Related request: Natural Language Date Processing

[eliveikis]

The “Create new one?” dialog would be perfectly fine solution in my use case, however it would still conflict with the alternate workflow raised by @rigmarole’s, where a user doesn’t want to create missing consecutive notes but instead quickly skip to the next available valid note.

Would a toggle in the plugin to control whether new notes should be created if they are missing be acceptable?

[Moonbase59]

Maybe this could be interesting: REAL Daily Notes previous/next navigation. It could surely also be modified to handle creation/showing of non-existant Daily Notes.