Right Sidebar Button on Phone

Feature requests
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1

On smartphone, the left sidebar has a dedicated menu button in the upper-left corner. However, the right sidebar has no button, and can only be accessed via swipe.

For less tech-savvy users, this essentially renders the right hand sidebar non-existent to them unless they already knew about it. Or worse, they could become confused or upset if they accidentally open it and it unexpectedly opens without them knowing it would.

I would potentially suggest either adding a button to open the right sidebar (like on tablet/desktop), or merge the contents of the right sidebar into the left sidebar on smartphones specifically. Thanks.

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long press the vertical dots.

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Didn’t even know that was a thing; I would argue that it only further validates my point: there is no visual indication that you should or could long-press the button for a secondary function.

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I understand this is probably a compromise to make everything fit in the top area, but I think having no visible control for a major part of the interface is a bad idea. I’ve seen questions from people who don’t know it’s there. And I totally forgot about the long-press — probably because it’s surprising, plus swiping feels faster to me (there probably isn’t much time difference).

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You are right. The team should improve it, at least there should be some instructions about how to toggle right sidebar on mobile in the official Obsidian Help site. There is not everyone would know to swipe or long press the vertical dots. Especially when they didn’t use Obsidian for Desktop at first, so they don’t know the existence of right sidebar or status bar.

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I will echo this sentiment, I had no idea that this feature was available on mobile. This thread seems to be the only place it is mentioned, so I submitted an issue to the GitHub obsidian-help repository to add the language myself. I believe it belongs on the Use the mobile app page.

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Since my last post I have seen at least another handful of people who didn’t know the right sidebar on mobile exists.

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I’ve submitted the pull request here, I’m happy to receive feedback on the language used. Feel free to contribute too if you’d like!

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OMG I just went searching for this and you totally CAN get the right menu bar to appear.

Amazing.

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It’s likely this person is on mobile:

how do i use the calendar plugin? it says it should appear in the right sidebar but there is no right sidebar (Discord)

I’ve seen three different helpers specify how to open the right sidebar when they mention it (presumably having learned from experience that some people need that info):

  • “install → open right sidebar (swipe to left) → hold on a date → create <@1329929775766044782>” (Discord)
  • “Calendar works on mobile, defaults to the right sidebar (swipe right to left)” (Discord)
  • “If you wipe from right to left to open the right sidebar, there is a sync status icon there.” (Discord)

Nobody should need to be told this.

Obsidian’s documentation does now say how to open the right sidebar on mobile, tho it doesn’t mention the long-press of the three-button menu, and it could use a little reorganizing (I’ve submitted a pull request to address those issues). Sidebar - Obsidian Help

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