Desk Sidebar

A pane in the sidebar where you can put notes temporarily while you are writing in your current note of focus.

Usage

Open the pane with the ribbon icon or the Desk Sidebar: Open pane command, then:

• Create a note — select the + button at the top of the pane, or run Desk Sidebar: Create new note. An empty note named "Untitled" ("Untitled 1" and so on, if taken) is created in the Inbox folder and opens in a new tab with its title selected, so you can name it right away. It joins the top of the desk, folded; while the desk is grouped by color, the top of the notes without a color. While the color filter is on, the new note stays hidden until you give it one of the selected colors.
• Add the inbox — select the inbox button at the top of the pane, Add notes from inbox on an empty desk, or run Desk Sidebar: Add notes from inbox. Every note directly in the Inbox folder joins the top of the desk, newest first (by creation date); while the desk is grouped by color, the top of the notes without a color. Notes in its subfolders stay off the desk, and notes already on it keep their place. Adding more than 10 notes asks first, since the inbox is the whole vault root unless you set a folder.
• Move a tab onto the desk — drag a note's tab from the editor area into the pane. The tab closes and the note joins the list where you drop it. Dropping onto the sidebar's tab icons still docks the tab in the sidebar, as usual.
• Move a note back into the editor — drag a note out of the pane into the editor area. It opens as its own tab in the tab group you drop it on, and leaves the desk.
• Add a note without closing anything — drag it from the File Explorer, drag link text into the pane, or run Desk Sidebar: Add current note.
• Add a heading or block — right-click a heading or block in the editor and select Add heading to desk or Add block to desk, or run Desk Sidebar: Add current heading or block. You can also drag a link like [[Note#Heading]] or [[Note#^block]] into the pane. The card shows only that heading's section (up to the next heading of the same or a higher level) or that block, with its note's name above. It goes to the top of the desk, and sits beside the whole note and the note's other headings and blocks. A block without an ID gets one, the same as with Copy link to block: ^ and six letters and digits at the end of a paragraph or list item, or on a line of its own after a table, quote, callout, code block, or math block. That is the only time Desk Sidebar changes a note. If the heading is renamed or the block's ID removed, its card shows that it's gone.
• Add a note from its context menu — right-click a note in the File Explorer, its tab, a link to it, or the graph and select Add to desk, beside Open in new window. The note goes to the top of the desk and stays open wherever it was; selecting several notes in the File Explorer adds them all. Notes already on the desk don't show the entry, so it never reorders the desk.
• Reorder — drag a note's title row up or down within the pane.
• Remove — hover a note and select its × button, or right-click it and select Remove from desk.
• Fold and unfold — select a note's title to collapse it to its title, or expand it to read a preview. A card grows with its preview up to the Maximum card height setting; longer previews scroll inside it.
• Resize a card — drag its bottom edge up or down. A card never grows past its note or the Maximum card height setting. It keeps the height you drag it to, also while it's folded, filtered, or grouped; drag it all the way open, or right-click it and select Reset height, to fit it to its note again.
• Open a note — right-click it and select Open note, or drag it into the editor area. A heading's or block's card opens its note scrolled to it.
• Add cards to a canvas — select the canvas button at the top of the pane, or run Desk Sidebar: Add cards to canvas, to put every card on a canvas; while a filter is on, only the cards it leaves visible. For a single card, right-click it and select Add to canvas.... Then pick a canvas, or create one the way the quick switcher creates a note: type a name and select Create new canvas, or press Shift+Enter. A name with a / is a path from the vault root; without one, the canvas goes where Obsidian puts new canvases. The cards go on in desk order, showing their note, heading, or block, and keep their colors (blue and pink, which Canvas has no preset for, as custom colors). A new canvas gets them in a grid; a canvas with content already gets the grid to the right of it. Cards the canvas already has are left out. The canvas then opens, or comes to the front if it's open.
• Collapse all, expand all, clear the desk — use the buttons at the top of the pane. Clearing asks first, and only takes the notes off the desk; they stay in your vault.
• Filter the desk — select the search button at the top of the pane and type. Only notes whose title or text contains what you typed stay visible (case doesn't matter). Select the button again to hide the field and show every note.
• Color a note — hover a note and select the dot next to its × to pick one of your theme's named colors, or No color.
• Group by color — select the group button at the top of the pane, or run Desk Sidebar: Toggle grouping by color, to sort the notes into one block per color under headers. Notes without a color come last. Changing a note's color while grouped moves it to its new block; dragging a note out of its block ends the grouping. Select the button again to remove the headers and keep the order. Hover a header and select its button to collapse or expand all notes in that group. Select a group's name to rename it, type, and press Enter (Escape cancels); clear the name to go back to the color's. The name stays with its color: the color menu and the color filter use it too, and it returns with the group.
• Filter by color — select the palette button at the top of the pane to list the colors in use with their note counts. Select colors to show only their notes; this combines with the search filter. Select a color's pencil button to rename it, the same as renaming its group, or its × to take that color off all its notes, or Remove all colors to clear every color. Select the palette button again to hide the list and show every note.

The list, its fold states, card heights, colors, grouping, and group names persist across restarts.

Settings

• Add new notes folded — whether a note arrives showing only its title, or already unfolded.
• Maximum card height — how tall a card may grow, as a share of the pane's height, from 20% to 100% (50% by default). Open panes follow the slider as you move it.
• Inbox folder — where notes created from the pane go, and where Add notes from inbox takes them from. Leave it empty, the default, for the vault root. A folder that doesn't exist yet is created with the first note.

A CSS snippet still overrides the setting, if you want a cap in other units: .desk-view { --desk-card-max-height: 400px; }.

Known limitations

• Drag and drop needs a mouse or trackpad, so it does nothing on touch screens. The commands and the right-click menu (Open note, Move up, Move down, Remove from desk) cover the same ground.
• Moving tabs onto the desk relies on parts of Obsidian that aren't part of its plugin API, so an Obsidian update could break it until Desk Sidebar is updated. When that happens, tabs dropped on the pane dock in the sidebar again; everything else keeps working.
• Only Markdown notes can be put on the desk.
• Previews are read-only, and are rendered when a note is unfolded — edit the note by opening it.
• A list item's card shows the item without the items nested under it.
• A heading's card stays with the heading's text. Rename the heading and the card shows it's gone, until you add the heading again.

Development

This project follows the conventions described in AGENTS.md — read that first.

• Node.js 18+ and npm.
• npm install — install dependencies.
• npm run dev — build in watch mode.
• npm run build — type-check and produce a production main.js.
• npm run lint — lint with eslint-plugin-obsidianmd's recommended rules.

Testing in Obsidian

Copy or symlink this repo into <Vault>/.obsidian/plugins/desk-sidebar/, then enable Desk Sidebar under Settings → Community plugins in that vault.

If your Obsidian install is sandboxed (Flatpak, Snap), a symlink outside the sandbox's exposed filesystem may not resolve. For Flatpak, check flatpak info --show-permissions md.obsidian.Obsidian for its filesystems= entry, and either widen it (flatpak override --user --filesystem=home md.obsidian.Obsidian) or copy the built files into the vault instead of symlinking.

Releasing

See the "Versioning & releases" section in AGENTS.md.