[UX] Launch Obsidian with specific note in new tab if not already open in recent layout

Request mostly pertains to phone (my case android) but can apply to desktop as well to some extent. My goal is to have a frictionless productive routine as much as possible. I have two vaults (personal and work) each with its own TODO note. Till now, on phone, I basically had to open app → see that it opens last opened note → click tabs → scroll across the tablist (yes i have many open since i need quick back and forth) → click TODO note. This is too much friction considering that my TODO note is simplified down to being just a simple checklist on purpose so I can only focus on the work.

Last night I found out Obsidian has a “Open note from bookmarks” widget on android which is great. I now have each of the two TODOs on my home screen. But then I realized Obsidian actually opens that note on the recently open tab instead of opening the tab where TODO already exists.

This ruins my tab order since I will have to reopen the tab I already had last opened. To avoid this problem, I will have to always switch to the TODO tab or a dummy tab every time I exit Obsidian, so that when I click the widget, the TODO opens in that dummy tab. But then this defeats the purpose since at that point I am already making the TODO note my last opened tab.

Proposed solution

From my estimation, the load order on launch is basically recent vault -> recent workspace layout -> recent note (where the cursor becomes active).

Obsidian should check if the specific note is already in a tab in the layout and (if yes) open that instead. If it doesn’t exist in a tab, it should open it in a NEW tab instead of the recently opened one.

This also applies to the “Default file to open” setting where the options are Last open/New note/Specific file.

When set to Specific file Obsidian should check if the file is already open in a tab and make that active. If no, it should open it in a new tab.

Related thread