Currently (07-2025) you can’t choose which vault to open, before launching Obsidian. Currently you have to launch obsidian, the previous used vault opens and you have to use the vault switcher.
This feature would be a convenient way to directly open the desired vault, at least on windows machines.
Proposed solution
In Microsoft Windows, context clicks on desktop or taskbar icons is supported. Even Electron-based Apps like Spotify support this.
By right-clicking on the Obsidian desktop icon, the user could select the desired vault from a context menu similar to spotify’s context menu. After selecting the desired vault, obsidian would open the selected vault right away. See following screenshot as additional information:
I’m in a complete Apple environment so I have no idea how that would work on the Microsoft side but I open multiple vaults at once, each day, when I launch Obsidian …
I just don’t close their windows when I quit Obsidian (unless I know I won’t need one of them in a near future), at the end of the day and on the next morning, Obsidian re-open the vaults I purposely left open for me …
I switch between these vaults during the day using pretty much what you’re describing: right-click on the Obsidian icon in my dock and select the vault I want to interact with …
Have you tried to open multiple vaults open at the same time ?
(If it’s feasible on Mac, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be feasible on Windows )
I suppose, you leave the vault windows open and quit obsidian via Apples Top-Taskbar (CMD-Q)?
Thats not possible on windows, even if I have multiple vaults open and stop obsidian via Task manager.
The only way to close Obsidian on windows is by closing each Obsidian window (thus each vault) on its own. So when you start Obsidian again, you simply open the vault that has been closed at last.
At the moment, right clicking the Obsidian Icon on windows doesn’t allow you to choose the vault (There isn’t any obsidian specific option available).
If the feature is implemented, there should be something similar like in the screenshot.
Every time you need to open a vault different from the last used, you need to open and close different vaults, slowing the flow of your creativity.
It would be awesome to could only select by right clicking obsidian (or holding the icon on mobile). Also pinning the folders/files/vaults you want and the startup dialog with choice and options would be magnificent.
Proposed solution
I think a selecting menu by right-clicking on pc and another one by holding it on mobile, as aforesaid, would be enough.
Current workaround
I’m actually using the URI to run a bat script to open each vault individually, but a dedicated native option wouldn’t be bad.
Related feature requests
All related (sorry, an alert said i couldn’t post any link)
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