Switcher and palette
Two modal lists, both fuzzy, both opened with a key and dismissed with Escape.
The quick switcher
Ctrl + O (switcher:open)
Type part of a note's name and press Enter to open it. The switcher matches against three things, so you do not have to remember which one you know:
- File names — the usual case.
- Aliases — from the
aliasesproperty, so a note titled RFC 8259 also answers to JSON spec if you said so in its frontmatter. - Paths — so
arch/decfindsarchitecture/decisions.md.
Recently opened files come first. Below the matches, targets that do not exist yet are
listed too — the [[Names]] other notes link to where no file has been created. They are
marked as not created, and pressing Enter on one creates the note, which is often the
quickest way to start the note you have been meaning to write.
Pressing Enter on a name nothing at all matches also creates a note with that name, in your
newFileLocation folder. See managing notes.
How fuzzy matching ranks
The query's characters have to appear in order, case-insensitively, but not adjacently. Beyond that, three things raise a candidate's score:
- Matching at the start of a word (
qsbeatsuqsfor Quick Start). - Matching consecutive characters rather than scattered ones.
- Being a short candidate, so an exact short name wins over a long one containing it.
The command palette
Ctrl + P (command-palette:open)
Type part of a command's name and press Enter to run it. The order is Obsidian's:
- Pinned commands, from your vault's
command-palette.json. - Commands you have run this session, most recent first.
- Everything else, in registration order.
Fuzzy matching is over command names, the ones you see — Toggle reading view, not
markdown:toggle-preview.
The palette lists only the commands Scoria can actually run — 34 of them today. This is the same way Obsidian hides a command whose check callback fails, and it means the palette never offers you something that does nothing. Every command id is still listed in Settings' Hotkeys tab, so you can see and keep bindings for features that are not implemented yet.
What is in the palette today: the palette and switcher themselves, Search, the graph and local graph, toggling reading view and source mode, save, find and find-replace, add cursor above and below, back and forward, Settings, both sidebar toggles, Files and reveal-active-file, new note (three variants), new folder, move, make a copy, rename, delete, and the four right-dock panes.
The full list of ids, names and default keys is in commands and hotkeys.