I have a different preference but suggest a similar solution.
Prior to Obsidian 1.15.0, (un)indenting a list line using (Shift) Tab only affected that line. Now with Obsidian 1.15.0, with “Smart Lists” enabled, it affects all children of this list. This could be useful for some workflows, but needs a toggle setting, if only because of what I would call transient/dynamic effects (there’s probably a better word, but let me explain…) Let’s say you have the following list:
- foo
- bar
- a
- b
- c
Then you unindent b, whether accidentally or on purpose. Now c is a child of b, and if you press Tab again on b to indent it back to where it was, now c (and any of its children) are now indented one tab further than they should be. Again, this behavior could be useful, but we already had a way to do this - just select the lines you want to indent. This can be done using mouse or keyboard so it’s nearly as efficient. At the very least, this should be separated into different hotkeys/keybinds, so that we can use one or the other (or better yet, both on different binds). Speaking of which, I tried assigning Tab and Shift+Tab to the “Indent list item” and “Unindent list item” hotkeys, but 1. I cannot assign Tab without a modifier to a hotkey; and 2. this did not change the behavior (I would perhaps expect it to exhibit the pre-1.15.0 behavior).
Now, this whole behavior can be disabled and returned to pre-1.15.0 functionality by simply disabling smart lists. The problem with this, as gleam pointed out, is that this also disables automatic insertion of a bullet (or other list element, etc.) at the appropriate indentation level on the next line when you press Enter. These two behaviors need to be separated, or at the very least explained more clearly in the settings menu.