obsidian-continuous-mode

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Usage
  1. Basic Example
  2. Contextual Menus
  3. Opening Multiple Items
• Commands
• Other Functions
• The Settings Window 5. Maximum number of items to open at one time 6. Allow single click to open File Explorer folders in Continuous Mode
• Continuous Mode and other Plugins
• Troubleshooting

Introduction

A plugin for Obsidian that displays all open notes in a tab group as if they were a continuous scrollable document (sometimes called “Scrivenings mode”). Continuous Mode is available for notes in the Main Split and panes in the Sidebars. The plugin also allows keyboard navigation between notes, and provides several ways to open multiple notes at a time from the File Explorer, search results, document links, or dataview/query blocks.

Usage:

Basic Example

With multiple notes already open, you can use the contextual menu to toggle Continuous Mode in the active tab group and to toggle visibility of note headers; you can scroll notes into view by clicking the tab or making the note active:

Contextual Menus

This plugin adds a “Continuous Mode” menu item to the contextual menus available in various parts of the Obsidian UI. The position of the menu item and the available options differ according to the...er...context.

Basic Functions

These menu items are available in the Tab Group Menu, File Menu, Selected Tab Menu, and Editor Menus.

Change sort order submenu

Opening Multiple Items

In other contexts, the menu will include options to allow you to open multiple items in Continuous Mode.

This menu will show “file,” “document links,” “query block links,” “search results” instead of “folder contents” depending on the context. You can:

• Open items in a new split (left, right, up, down).
• Open or append items in the active tab group; files will not be duplicated if they are already open.
• Replace files in the active tab group with files from the selected folder (i.e., close all open notes in active tab group and replace with folder items).

See the Settings for options to:

• Filter (include or exclude) the folder items that are opened by type (e.g., markdown, images, canvas, etc.), extension, or file name;
• Set the number of items to open at one time;
  – Set the sorting order when opening multiple items.
• Open File Explorer folder contents with one click.

Notes:

• Opening folders is not recursive—only the top level notes in the folder will be opened.
  – You can select multiple non-consecutive files (but not [yet?] folders) in the File Explorer (Alt/Opt + Click) and open them via the context menu.
• Sort order of the source (e.g., File Explorer, Search Results) is respected when opening multiple items. Once opened, sort order does not dynamically update when it is changed in the file explorer; reopen the folder in Continuous Mode to accomplish this or change the sort order via the tab group menu. In the Settings you can choose the default sort order when opening multiple items.
• Similarly, after opening multiple files, the tab group will not dynamically reflect any changes you make to the folder structure in the file explorer. If you do make any changes (e.g., move, create, or delete a note), you'll have to reopen the folder to see the updated structure.

Commands

Many of the above functions can be invoked via the Command Palette.

Keyboard navigation in and between notes

You can navigate between notes with the up and down arrow keys, and with the left and right arrow keys if the cursor is at the beginning or end of the note.

• In pdfs, the left and right arrow keys will jump from page to page.
• In HTML files, the left and right arrow keys will scroll the page.
• In an active canvas leaf, click the background to deselect any active node and use the up and down arrow keys to navigate to the adjacent note.
• In an active graph view, similarly use the arrow keys to navigate to the adjacent note. Use shift + arrow keys to move the graph around.
• While editing notes, the insertion point will scroll so as to remain more or less in the center of the screen, similar to “typewriter mode”; this behavior can be disabled in the settings.

Other functions

• Notes will scroll into view when you click the tab header. Note: this may fail when clicking tab headers for the first time after start-up, and before the note has been scrolled into view at least once. This appears to be an issue with Obsidian.
• You can reorder notes in a tab group by dragging and dropping the tab headers.
• Automatically save and restore continuous mode tab group settings when shutting down/starting up Obsidian.

The Settings Window

Continuous Mode and other Plugins

The Continuous Mode menus are available or compatible with the following third-party plugins, which add to or modify the File Explorer or provide new file views:

• “File Tree Alternative” plugin.
• “Outliner.MD” plugin.
• “Longform” plugin. Basic support: Files are opened in their project or scene order (i.e. not alphabetically); however, tab order is not automatically refreshed when the project order is changed, nor are new files automatically opened when new scenes are created. While technically feasible, there are too many variables to make this work predictably. Instead, open the project again in Continuous Mode using the "replace" option.

If you find that Continuous Mode interferes with or doesn’t work properly with a particular plugin, please let me know.

Troubleshooting

• “No readable files found”: If you know that there are readable files in the source you are trying to open, check the plugin settings to make sure that the “Filter file types” are set to include the file types. If you are attempting to open document or query block links, check that the links are valid and point to existing files.