Using Obsidian with Microsoft PowerToys

I just noticed that the latest Microsoft PowerToys play very well together with Obsidian.

First, make sure that the Obsidian vault (and the .md extension) is included in your Windows Search - see here for the configuration options.

Now you can search for document titles in your vault using the Alt+Space
key combination used by “PowerToys Run”. The advantage is that you don’t need to have Obsidian running to do that, and the search includes also all the other indexed files on your PC.

After finding an Obsidian document in PowerToys Run, you can either open it or click on the door icon to open the parent folder in the Windows explorer. If you enable the file preview in the Windows explorer, you will also see a nice preview, since PowerToys include an explorer add-on that can display Markdown. Nifty, isn’t it?

6 Likes

Can we also create a new Obsidian note with Run? Would be great!

@Cito, as far as I know, Windows Search also indexes content as well, on file types that are specified to be included in the windows search options setup, and so wouldn’t the search you reference include results from CONTENTS of md files, as long as the user makes sure they are included?

Also, I assume the results would be displayed in windows explorer, the native file manager? If so, it would be an easy way to find md files with certain content, and then act on them (move, delete, etc) – something that you can’t do inside Obsidian

Yes, you can use Windows Search to search for content, too. But for this to work you must make sure that the indexing options for the .md extension are set to also index content. For PowerToys Run you only need to index the file properties.

The PowerToys Run Alt-Space Hotkey is more like the Ctrl-O Hotkey in Obsidian. Except that you don’t need to have Obsidian open and you will also see non-Obsidian files.

Would be cool if it was possible to run obsidian commands from PowerToys

Sorry for getting this topic up again but I just discovered PowerToys and found this topic.

And I found a solution to be able to run Obsidian commands from PowerToys Run.
Here is how I do it:

  1. you need the Obsidian Advanced Uri plugin.
  2. Create a URI for the command you want to open from PowerToys Run.
  3. In some folder on your PC, create a new shortcut and paste the URI. Name the shortcut like the command or whatever you like to better find it later.
  4. Open PowerToys Run and type your shortcut name, enter, and voilà: Obsidian should open and execute your Command.

Downside: you need to make a shortcut for each command (or put the command pallette as shortcut to open it from everywhere and then search your commands…)

2 Likes