Workspace Switcher Drop Down Menu (mockup)

[Johnny]

I just switched to the new safari web browser and found the tab group quick switcher to be very useful. As far as I’m aware, there are currently no signifiers that indicate which workspace you are in inside Obsidian, so my idea is to have a workspace switcher drop down menu in the titlebar which says the name of the current workspace you’re in. The default behavior of selecting a workspace from this menu would be to save and load another workspace.

I’m currently working on my UX/UI skills so if any developers would be interested in co-working on this feel free to contact me! I’m aware that this mockup isn’t 100% accurate to Obisidan’s design system but, with that said, if anyone has any suggestions, feedback, or related ideas I would love to hear them. Thanks

[veradrawer]

I like this, quite unobtrusive. Are you thinking of a dropdown in the top right corner Adobe-like?

[Johnny]

I’m not familiar with the way Adobe approaches this, could you provide a screenshot or name of the product you’re referring to? Regardless, I could see this menu occupying either side of the title bar.

[veradrawer]

Oh really? I’m surprised, as Adobe had been the standard for so long.

Adobe solves it like this on the top right corner, and the navigation is exactly as Safari does while adding a separator and the options to create a new workspace or delete an existing one.

Pardon the spanish. The last three say “Restore {{this workspace}},” “Save as new workspace” and “Delete a workspace.”

And while I agree either space of the bar could be used for this. Yet for me the left corner is currently in use with Quick Explorer, a quite popular plugin.

Regardless, I agree that workspaces are criminally underused because of how little accesible they are.

[Johnny]

Great! Thanks for sharing the screenshots! “Save as new workspace” and “delete a workspace” (maybe as an “x” button next to the workspace label in the drop down menu triggering the “are you sure you want to delete this workspace?” prompt would be very useful additions. I imagine an option in the plugin settings menu to select which side the menu appears on would be nice as well. I will continue to refine the mockup and interactions, so that if a dev comes along and is interested to work on this, the design can be ready for handoff. Thank you for the feedback

[pjeby]

After my experiences adding things to the title bar (in the Quick Explorer and Pane Relief plugins), I would suggest actually implementing this in the status bar. Status bar items are easier to read and have less problematic interactions with theme CSS than putting items at the top.

[veradrawer]

Partially agree. Currently there is no native way to choose what plugins get to appear on the left, so I sometimes feel like someone else is chosing how my desktop will look like. If you pardon the analogy.

Having things in front of us is easier to see them until they are not. I would vote for offering both affordances and letting people choose.

(btw big fan of quick explorer. Thank you for the plugin)

[pjeby]

When you say, “appear on the left”, are you talking about status bar items, sidebar panels, or the title bar?

While most plugins add their views to the left sidebar panel, they are generally draggable to other panels or even to the main workspace area. (As for status bar items, they can be ordered and positioned using CSS.)

[Johnny]

This plugin idea has been developed and you can download it from the community plugin browser or from Github! For any feedback feel free to respond to this forum post, tag me or the other developer on Discord, or make an issue on our Github repo.

[veradrawer]

Congratulations on the plugin, really good work!