I am relatively new to Obsidian - a refugee from Evernote. To get started I exported/imported all my notes from Evernote into Obsidian. Everything works just fine on the Windows app. On the Android mobile app, however, I am unable to perform a very basic task: namely, open a pdf in an external pdf reader (such as Adobe Acrobat). This issue has been discussed elsewhere on this forum but I haven’t seen a definitive answer. In view of the 3 billion Android users and 1 million Obsidian users, I feel certain I’m not the only one with this problem.
Can anyone help me?
Things I have tried
I have tried clicking on the pdf preview image, as well as long-clicking. This would be the most sensible way to launch the default pdf viewer (in my case this is Acrobat) but it does nothing at all. A more clunky solution might be to “share” the pdf with another app, but among the many apps offered (Viber, ChatGPT, Gmail, etc) there isn’t a pdf reader among them.
One “solution” I won’t consider is manually adding or editing the tag in each note containing a pdf (bc there are about 20,000 such notes). In my view, something is wrong in the design here.
Thanks, WhiteNoise. That works, but only sort of. To explain:
Long-pressing on the filename brings up one of two menus depending on where exactly one presses. 1) If one presses almost anywhere on the filename, what comes up is the Android general options for selected text (“Cut Copy Paste Select all …”) which of course is not useful here. 2) If one presses more precisely on the “.pdf” part of the filename, then an Obsidian context menu appears with “Open link, Open in new tab, Edit link, etc”. Pressing “Open link” opens the pdf, not in an external pdf viewer but rather in another Obsidian window with a frameless preview. From this window, one can indeed open the pdf in an external viewer by pressing the 3-dot menu, then Share, then Adobe Acrobat. In my view, this incredibly roundabout path could/should be reduced to simply “click on the pdf preview and the default external viewer will launch with the pdf opened.” Why not?
Your second option doesn’t work for me at all, although maybe I don’t understand what you mean by the “menu in the pdf”. In the Obsidian pdf previewer, there is no 3-dot menu at all. The 3-dot menu for the note itself (as opposed to the pdf) has the options “Close, Backlinks in document, Reading view, Pin, etc” but nothing that suggests opening the pdf externally.
Hi WhiteNoise. Thanks for sticking with me. But I am still confused. Perhaps an example will pinpoint the source of my confusion.
Let’s start with the Windows app. Here is a screenshot of the Windows app opened to a note containing a pdf. There are two 3-dot menus (red and blue circles). Both menus have an item “Open in default app”. The red menu refers to the note itself and so clicking that link tells the app to look for a default app that can render markdown. The blue menu refers to the pdf and so it looks for a default app that can render pdf. Clicking it opens my default pdf reader, as expected and desired.
Now let’s turn to Android. Here is a screenshot of the same note opened in the Android app. There is only one 3-dot menu (yellow circle). It contains the following choices: Close, Backlinks in document, Reading View, Pin, Rename…, Move file to…, Bookmark…, Merge entire file with…, Add file property, Find…, Copy Obsidian URL, Open version history, Open local graph, Share, Delete file.
When you say “long press on the filename in file explorer” that makes me think you are talking about Windows not Android, because Android doesn’t have a native file explorer. Or perhaps you mean “file explorer in Obsidian”. But in that case I can tell you that long pressing on “2017-02-11 doorbell” brings up the Android context menu for selecting text, for which the choices are View, Cut, Copy, Paste, Select All, Read aloud.
I am still hoping you will reply to my last post. I did not understand in detail your last post. Thanks.
In particular, I find there is a difference between embedded pdfs that do (or do not) contain “.pdf” as part of their filename. Clicking on a filename without the suffix does absolutely nothing.
Sharing the PDF for me is very fast, but my PDF app of choice comes up in the menu.
Are you on Android? My share menu has the option for Android System Share. That lets me select a program the first time. After that it’s now in my share menu for that file type.
To be able to quickly pull up the Share menu, you can pin the Share command to the Command palette core plugin Quick Action list.
You invoke it as follows…
Open the local PDF file in Obsidian.
“Pull down” from the top of the app, similar to how you would pull to refresh on social media apps.
If you pinned the Share command, it will be at the top, otherwise, type “Share”
Thanks for helping out, FsOver2. I am still struggling to get this to work, however. Let me explain.
First, yes, I am on Android (Pixel 7a recently updated to Android 15).
Second, I was unaware of the “pull down” action. When I tried this just a few minutes ago, I was presented with a lengthy menu of options. After trying a few selections, the pull down action has now stopped working and I cannot get it working again. Any idea what I did? Or how to get it working again?
Update: I figured this out and reset the pull down action in the Settings. But I still cannot share a pdf. Perhaps my problem is that some of my pdfs are attached to markdown (this is the case for notes exported from Evernote) while others are not (this is the case for pdfs I simple drag/dropped into an Obsidian folder on Windows. On the Android app these look a little different: the former appear in a relatively narrow pdf preview window, while the latter appear in a wider pdf preview window.
For the latter type (pdfs not attached to a markdown note), using the pulldown offers a number of sharing options. Choosing, say, Gmail indeed opens Gmail with the pdf attached, which is useful.
But for the former type (pdfs attached to a markdown note), the pulldown and share operates on the markdown (.md) rather than the attached pdf. That is by far the majority of my pdfs and is not at all useful. How can I “detach” the pdf from the markdown and then do something with it?
I looked closer at your posts and see that you’re working with embedded PDFs. I just tried this out, and I have to say that it’s definitely a painful interface on mobile. The pull down option won’t work in this mode.
To get to a useful menu, I ended up clicking on the 3 vertical dots you circled in "blue’ in your previous post, which I have on my mobile app. On your post with the “yellow” circle, it doesn’t show the 3 dots previously circled in blue. It appears to me that maybe your font is so large that it’s chopped off the three dots from your display. You can slide the PDF menu header to the left and it will show you the 3 dots you’re missing. Just press and hold the area with the two magnifying glasses and slide the header to the left.
Once you have access to your missing 3 dots, you can click it and see “Open Link” and “Share”. If you open the link, you’ll then have the full screen PDF view in Obsidian.
I think my problems may all be due to not realizing these menus spill off the screen and need to be slid left to become fully visible. I can’t think of any other mobile app that uses this design.
Once again, thank you for all your help. It’s greatly appreciated.
I’ve had the same problem with other menus. It’s especially confusing if you aren’t familiar with the menu to know something’s missing in the first place. Obsidian could definitely benefit from a UI change that provides hinting to indicate hidden items.
