Vault questions from a newbie

Help
1

Hi there. I’m trying out Obsidian for the first time. Two vault related questions:

  1. Is it possible to quickly open a specific vault, rather than have to open the vault switcher?
  2. Is there a way to truly switch vaults? Rather than opening an additional one.

What I’m trying to do

  1. Instantly open a specific vault. 2) Switch to a vault, replacing the current one rather than opening an additional one.

Things I have tried

Reading docs; searching this forum.

Nada.

2

Vaults works somewhat like app instances… two separate things.

I’m afraid you have to manually open the new one and close the previous. Just a couple of questions:

  1. Why not minimise the vault you’re not using?

  2. Why not keeping the two vaults always open?

  3. You sure you need another vault? You could store all “second-vault” related things in a separate folder, and you can also use the workspaces plugin to effectively switch from one group of notes to another.

    ie: first vault is business related and you have x y z notes opened, second vault is university related and you have a b c notes opened. With workspaces plugin you can select which profile you want to use and effectively close all notes related to the first field and open the notes you’re previously using on the second field… Just like using two separate vaults and achieving your desired result.

Hope this help.

3

For number 1), you could use an Obsidian URI like obsidian://open?vault=my%20vault

I have a few of these that I trigger with my OS quick launcher to quickly open a vault. Depending on your OS, you could click the URI link in Obsidian or another text app, double click a desktop icon you’ve made, run a shortcut, etc.

For 2), yeah, not sure. What ironhak said: vaults are separate. On macOS, at least, if I’m in one vault and I open another vault, there are now two vaults open. It would be unexpected for the first vault to automatically close when opening another.

1 Like
4

Thanks for the answers! I guess I’m looking for a hierarchy akin to OneNote, where there’s a top level container that can represent something akin to a general topic, there’s visual focus (you only see stuff related to the current topic) and effortless XOR switching. Just the quirks of how I like to work. It seems Obsidian has a slightly different organizational/workflow concept.

(If the next question is “Why not stick to OneNote?”… it’s clunky and its Mac app doesn’t feel like a Mac app.)

5

I’ve never used OneNote, so I wouldn’t know on that front. Hopefully others have some more ideas or suggestions to add.