Stacked tabs on big screen phones

Feature requests
1

Stacked tabs work very well on my phone’s screen size

On the Obsidian phone app, the way to switch tabs is through pressing the tabs button and selecting a tab, which I find a bit slow and unclear which tabs are open.
On tablet I can scroll sideways between notes, which is very clear, quick, and easy.

I keep only 2-3 tabs open at a time on my phone, and instead I switch tabs more frequently than on PC. I find that stacked tabs work well on my phone’s screen size (6,0")
Obsidian’s stacked tabs feature is an incredibly useful and convenient feature, and I am hoping you could bring back the stack tabs command to mobile devices.

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2

… in case they don’t bring it back you can implement it yourself …

On Android Mobile the setting …

… has now disappeared from my Android phone.

… is still there on my Android Tablet and Chromebook.

[… so screen size rather than mobile per se seems to be the deciding factor of this change]

However I can make it reappear on my Android phone by making Android “think” that I have a tablet …

For this you need to have enabled developer options.
(… Tap “About Phone/Build number” seven times.)

In developer options scroll down to Smallest width

e.g. on my Android phone I have

Smallest width:
411 dp

On Android the pivot figure is 600 dp.
… anything below Android thinks you have a phone.
… anything above Android thinks you have a tablet.

So I set it to 610 dp (from 411 dp)
[EDIT: I had to set it to 801 for it to work in landscape mode]

Now when I reload Obsidian(no need to reboot the phone) …

… it has a tablet layout with tabs on top and …

ctrl+p toggle stacked tabs
ctrl+shift+s (my personal hotkey)
stacked tabs icon

… are all back
… split right & split down also reappear.

This developer setting needs to be set each time you reboot the phone …
i.e. you can try it and you’ll be back to normal after a reboot.

CARE: this setting affects everything on your phone … e.g. your Android browser will also have a tablet layout.

PS:
… you can alternate between the two layouts by changing the dp in developer options and reloading Obsidian without needing to reboot.
… I’ve used the opposite on my small 8.4" Android tablet in the past when I wanted my browser to have a phone interface by setting the dp below 600 at 590.

4

Why did they remove the command to do it? I get not having the space for a button, but making a decision for the user about what they want seems like a bad move for an app that by design selects a userbase of power users. There’s a big difference between creating a “default” experience without making them customize, and completely removing their ability to do so.

The existing method of tab switching is slow and clunky and desktop can both stack tabs and also place tabs in that right sidebar I never use, so really there ought to just be a toggle for desktop functionality for those that want it

2 Likes