Universal Cursor Hotkeys

Full cursor navigation for Markdown — whether in tables or out, either on macOS or Windows, be it Emacs keybindings or Vim mode.

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Overview
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Emacs keybindings (Ctrl+P/N/B/F/A/E), Kill & Yank, and Vim key bindings — all finally working inside Obsidian's Live Preview tables, for macOS and Windows.

Overview

Obsidian's Live Preview breaks cursor behavior inside Markdown tables. This plugin fixes cursor navigation around tables — whether you use Emacs keybindings (macOS-style) or Obsidian's built-in Vim mode.

On macOS, cursor shortcuts — Ctrl+P (up), Ctrl+N (down), Ctrl+B/F (left/right), Ctrl+A/E (home/end), and Page Down/Up — work natively in Obsidian. This plugin restores them inside tables too, giving you seamless navigation just as physical cursor keys would — and Shift+Ctrl+P/N/B/F/A/E extend the selection the same way.

Windows users can enable the full set of macOS-style cursor shortcuts throughout Obsidian. The Quick setup assistant assigns all recommended hotkeys in three clicks.

Kill & Yank (Ctrl+K / Ctrl+Y) and Kill Region (Ctrl+W) bring the full Emacs editing workflow to Obsidian — and all three work seamlessly inside table cells, automatically handling newlines and pipe characters. Recenter-top-bottom (Ctrl+L) rounds out the workflow.

If you use Obsidian's built-in Vim mode, this plugin fixes a set of well-known Live Preview table gaps: h/l/j/k/w/b/e/gg/G/gj/gk now work correctly inside table cells, instead of miscounting characters, refusing to cross rows, or landing in the wrong place. See Vim support (experimental) below.

Getting Started

No hotkeys are assigned by default.

Quick setup (recommended): Open Settings → Universal Cursor Hotkeys and click Apply recommended for each of the three command groups — Cursor movement, Editing, and Other hotkeys. Three clicks and you're done.

Manual setup: Go to Settings → Hotkeys, search for "Universal Cursor Hotkeys", and assign keys individually.

Command Reference

For detailed behavior of each command, see Command Details below.

Command Name	Recommended Hotkey	Function Summary	Key Repeat
UP	Ctrl + P	Smart UP: Text/Cell movement, Table & callout entry (from below) & exit (from top).	✓
DOWN	Ctrl + N	Smart DOWN: Text/Cell movement, Table & callout entry (from above) & exit (from bottom).	✓
LEFT	Ctrl + B	Smart LEFT: Move by character or jump to the previous cell.	✓
RIGHT	Ctrl + F	Smart RIGHT: Move by character or jump to the next cell.	✓
HOME	Ctrl + A	Smart HOME: Moves to the visual line edge, content start, or line start in steps; jumps to the previous cell inside a table.	✓
END	Ctrl + E	Smart END: Moves to the visual line edge or line end in steps; jumps to the next cell inside a table.	✓
Kill line	Ctrl + K	Kill from cursor to line end. Consecutive kills accumulate in the kill cache and clipboard.	✓
Kill region	Ctrl + W	Cut the selected region to the kill cache. Table-aware: single-cell only; no-op for multi-row or cross-cell selections.	—
Yank	Ctrl + Y	Paste from the OS clipboard. Table-aware: converts newlines and pipes automatically.	✓
Delete char	Ctrl + D	Forward-delete one character. Stops at cell boundary; joins sub-lines at `<br>` in Live Preview.	✓
Recenter-top-bottom	Ctrl + L	Cycle the view so the cursor appears at the center, top, or bottom of the screen on successive presses. Resets on any other action.	—
Recenter	(None)	Scroll the view so the cursor line is centered on screen.	—
Page down	(None)	Scroll down one page; the cursor stays at the same screen position. Bare PageDown can be set in the plugin's Settings.	✓
Page up	(None)	Scroll up one page; the cursor stays at the same screen position. Bare PageUp can be set in the plugin's Settings.	✓
Select all	(None)	Windows replacement for Select all when Ctrl+A is reassigned to HOME.	—

Settings

Quick setup assistant

Open Settings → Universal Cursor Hotkeys to assign hotkeys without leaving the settings screen.

Apply recommended: Each command group has an Apply recommended button that assigns all recommended hotkeys at once.

Live status: Each row shows the current state of its hotkey:

Status	Meaning
✅Set	Recommended hotkey is assigned.
🟢Custom	A non-recommended hotkey is assigned, with no conflict.
🔵Available	Recommended hotkey is free to assign.
🔵Used	Recommended hotkey is taken; applying it will not displace any command.
🟡Used	Recommended hotkey is taken; applying it will displace one command.
🔴Conflict	A conflict exists: a hotkey is currently assigned to more than one command.

Hotkey chips: Click any hotkey chip to open the hotkeys panel filtered to that key.
Override: When the recommended hotkey is in use, the command(s) currently using it appear inline. Override assigns the hotkey, removing it from any command currently using it.
Open →: Opens the hotkeys panel filtered to this plugin's commands.

Displaced commands: Lists commands that would lose their only hotkey when recommended keys are applied. Each entry has an Assign button to reassign it via the hotkeys panel, and a Restore button to undo the displacement and return the key to its original command.

Special key assignments: Set bare Home, End, Page Down, and Page Up keys — Obsidian's hotkeys panel does not support modifier-free keys.

Behavior Options

Setting	Default	Description
Visual line movement	ON	ON: the first HOME / END moves to the visual line edge. OFF: moves directly to the logical line start / end.
Smart home (standard)	ON	ON: HOME skips leading Markdown syntax (lists, ordered lists, checkboxes, indents, blockquotes) to reach content start — Windows Home / macOS Cmd+← style. OFF: HOME moves directly to the start of the line — macOS / Emacs Ctrl+A style.
Smart home (advanced)	ON	ON: also skips past headings (`#` ), footnotes (`[^1]:` ), and callout type markers (`[!type]`). Requires Smart home (standard) to be ON.
Smart join	OFF	ON: Kill Line join lands at the next line's content start, removing blockquote markers, list markers, and indentation. Pairs with Smart home (advanced) for headings and footnotes. Requires Smart home (standard) to be ON. OFF: joins the next line as-is.
Cross-row navigation	ON	ON: LEFT / HOME at the first cell and RIGHT / END at the last cell wrap to the adjacent row. OFF: stops at the boundary.

Limitations

No Word-Level Navigation: Movement by word (macOS: Option+Left/Right; Windows: Ctrl+Left/Right; Emacs: Meta-F/B) is currently not supported.
Range selection stops at table cell boundaries: Shift+Ctrl+P/N/B/F/A/E extend the selection normally within plain text and within a single table cell. At a cell boundary, they neither cross into the adjacent cell (unlike plain Ctrl+B/F) nor extend the selection across cells (unlike Shift+Arrow keys). Use Shift+Arrow keys for cross-cell selection.
Brief scroll when entering a tall wrapped cell in Live Preview (UP): When pressing UP into a cell whose wrapped content exceeds the screen height, the view momentarily scrolls to the cell start before jumping to the bottom visual line. This is an inherent side effect of the two-step navigation used to locate the bottom visual line within Obsidian's Live Preview table widget.
Multi-cell cut, copy, and paste are not supported (Kill Line / Kill Region / Yank): Kill Line, Kill Region, and Yank are text-level operations; inside a table, they work on the text content within individual cells. Selecting multiple cells and attempting to cut or paste with these commands is not supported. For multi-cell cut, copy, and paste operations, use the right-click context menu instead.
Source Mode table detection is heuristic: In Source Mode, table rows are identified by a simple string check (line starts and ends with |). Unlike Live Preview mode, which uses the syntax tree, this approach may produce unexpected behavior on lines that coincidentally match the pattern but are not part of a Markdown table.
Shortcut Conflicts
- On Windows — OS-level shortcuts not detected by Quick setup: Ctrl+A (HOME) and Ctrl+Y (Yank) override the system Select all and Redo shortcuts respectively. Because these are OS-level defaults rather than Obsidian hotkeys, the Quick setup assistant cannot detect the conflict and will show them as available. The bundled Select all command can be used as a replacement for Ctrl+A — run it from the Command Palette or assign it a custom hotkey. For Redo, use Ctrl+Shift+Z as an alternative.
- Page down / Page up — paste conflict: Assigning Ctrl+V (Windows) or Cmd+V (macOS) to Page down or Page up will break keyboard paste in non-editor plugin views (e.g., Excalidraw). Yank (Ctrl+Y) restores paste within the markdown editor, but cannot substitute for Cmd+V in those views. Right-click → Paste remains available as a workaround. It is recommended to assign these commands to keys that do not conflict with paste.

Command Details

Note: (*) indicates behaviors specific to Live Preview mode.

Cursor UP

Within text: Moves up to the previous visual line, equivalent to physical cursor keys.
From below a callout, image, embed, or thematic break (Live Preview) (*): Enters the block and expands the markdown source, consistent with physical cursor key behavior. For callouts, the cursor must be on the empty line immediately below. For images and embeds (![[...]], ![...](...)), applies when the syntax starts at the beginning of the line. For thematic breaks (---, ***, ___), the cursor lands at the beginning of the break line.
From below a table (*): If the cursor is on the line immediately below a table, it enters the table and moves to the left edge of the bottom visual line of the bottom-left cell.
Within a table cell (*):
- First visual line: Moves to the left edge of the bottom visual line of the cell directly above (same column). For non-wrapped cells, this is the cell start.
- On other visual lines: Moves to the visual line above within the same cell, equivalent to physical cursor keys.
Exiting a table upward (*): If in the top row of a table, exits the table to the line above.

Cursor DOWN

Within text: Moves down one visual line, equivalent to physical cursor keys.
From above a callout, image, embed, or thematic break (Live Preview) (*): Enters the block and expands the markdown source, consistent with physical cursor key behavior. For callouts, the next line must be a callout header (> [!type]...). For images and embeds (![[...]], ![...](...)), applies when the syntax starts at the beginning of the line. For thematic breaks (---, ***, ___), the cursor lands at the beginning of the break line.
From above a table (*): If the cursor is on the line immediately above a table, it enters the table and moves to the beginning of the top-left cell.
Within a table cell (*):
- On other visual lines: Moves to the visual line below within the same cell, equivalent to physical cursor keys.
- Last visual line: Jumps to the beginning of the cell in the row below (same column).
Exiting a table downward (*): From the last visual line of any cell in the last row, moves the cursor out of the table to the beginning of the line below.

Cursor LEFT

Within text: Moves left by one character, equivalent to physical cursor keys.
From below a table, at the line start (*): Enters the table and moves to the end of the content in the bottom-right cell (bottom visual line).
Within a table cell (*): Moves left one character within the cell content.
At the beginning of cell content (*): Jumps to the end of the text in the cell on the left (same row).
In the leftmost cell, at the cell start (data row) (*): Jumps to the end of the rightmost cell in the row above. (→ Cross-Row Navigation setting)
In the leftmost cell, at the cell start (header row) (*): Exits the table to the line above. (→ Cross-Row Navigation setting)

Cursor RIGHT

Within text: Moves right by one character, equivalent to physical cursor keys.
From above a table, at the line end (*): Enters the table and moves to the beginning of the top-left cell.
Within a table cell (*): Moves right one character within the cell content.
At the end of cell content (*): Jumps to the beginning of the text in the cell to the right (same row).
In the rightmost cell, at the cell end (non-last row) (*): Jumps to the beginning of the leftmost cell in the row below. (→ Cross-Row Navigation setting)
In the rightmost cell, at the cell end (last row) (*): Exits the table to the line below. (→ Cross-Row Navigation setting)

Cursor HOME

Moves toward the beginning of the line in up to 3 steps.
- Step 1: Moves to the left edge of the current visual line (if the line wraps and the cursor is not on the first visual line). (→ Visual Line Movement setting)
- Step 2: Moves to the content start, skipping Markdown markers — indentation, list markers (- , * , + ), checkboxes (- [ ] ), ordered lists (1. or 1) ), and blockquotes (>). With Smart home (advanced) ON, also skips heading markers (# ), footnote indicators ([^1]: ), and callout type markers ([!type]). (→ Smart home settings)
- Step 3: Moves to the line start.
Within a table cell, a further step applies:
- At the start of a non-first in-cell line (after  ): does not move further.
- Jumps to the end of the text in the cell to the left (same row).
- In the leftmost column: jumps to the rightmost cell in the row above. (→ Cross-Row Navigation setting)
- In the header row, leftmost cell: exits the table to the line above.

Cursor END

Moves toward the end of the line in up to 2 steps.
- Step 1: Moves to the right edge of the current visual line (if the line wraps and the cursor is not on the last visual line). (→ Visual Line Movement setting)
- Step 2: Moves to the line end.
Within a table cell, a further step applies:
- At the right edge of a non-last in-cell line (before  ): does not move further.
- Jumps to the start of the text in the cell to the right (same row).
- In the rightmost column: jumps to the leftmost cell in the row below. (→ Cross-Row Navigation setting)
- In the last row, rightmost cell: exits the table to the line below.
Within a table cell (Source Mode):
- Cursor inside a   tag: Jumps to the right edge of the next in-cell line, skipping the   tag.
- Cursor before the first | (ch=0): Snaps to the content start of the first cell.

Kill Line

Outside a table:
- Cursor not at line end: Kills from the cursor to the end of the logical line. The killed text is copied to the kill cache and the system clipboard.
- Cursor at line end: Kills the newline and joins with the next line.
- At end of file: No operation.
Within a table cell (Live Preview or Source Mode):
- Cursor not at in-cell line end: Kills from the cursor to the end of the current in-cell line (up to   or |).
- At the end of an in-cell line (before  ): Deletes the   tag, joining the current in-cell line with the next.
- At the end of the last in-cell line (cell boundary): No operation.
Smart join: When Smart join is ON, the join strips everything to the left of the next line's content start — blockquote markers, list markers, indentation, and (with Smart home (advanced) ON) headings and footnotes. Applies both outside tables and inside table cells (  joins).
Consecutive kills: Each successive Kill Line appends to the kill cache rather than replacing it. Any other editing action (cursor movement, typing, mouse click) resets the accumulation.
Interaction with standard copy/cut: Pressing Ctrl+C or Ctrl+X clears the kill cache, breaking the consecutive-kill chain.

Kill Region

Outside a table: Kills (cuts) the selected text and copies it to the kill cache and the system clipboard. The selection can span multiple lines.
Empty selection: No operation.
Within a table cell (Live Preview or Source Mode):
- Single-cell selection: Kills the selected text within the cell. The kill cache stores normalized text (  → \n, \| → |).
- Multi-row selection (spanning multiple table rows): No operation.
- Cross-cell selection (from and to in different cells): No operation.
- Selection including   (Live Preview): The   separator is removed along with the selected text, joining the surrounding sub-lines.
Kill chain: Kill Region always resets the consecutive-kill chain. Killed text replaces the kill cache rather than appending to it.

Yank

Pastes from the OS clipboard at the cursor position. Content copied via standard Ctrl+C / Ctrl+X, Kill Line, or Kill Region is accessible through Yank.
Outside a table: Inserts the clipboard text as-is.
Within a table cell (Live Preview or Source Mode): Newlines (\n) are converted to   and pipe characters (|) are escaped to \| before insertion to prevent breaking the table structure.
Empty clipboard: No operation.

Delete Char

Within text: Deletes the character at the cursor position (forward delete).
Within a table cell (Live Preview):
- Within cell content: Deletes one character forward.
- At the end of a non-last in-cell line (before  ): Deletes the   tag, joining the current sub-line with the next.
- At the end of the last in-cell line (cell boundary): No operation.
Within a table cell (Source Mode): Deletes one character forward without HTML tag awareness. No operation at the cell content boundary (before trailing whitespace and |).

Recenter-top-bottom

Cycles the scroll position on successive presses so the cursor appears at the center, top, or bottom of the screen.
Any other action (typing, cursor movement, mouse click) resets the cycle back to center.
The cursor position does not change.
Works the same regardless of cursor position — plain text or inside a table cell.

Recenter

Scrolls the view so that the line the cursor is on appears at the vertical center of the screen. The cursor position does not change.
Works the same regardless of cursor position — plain text or inside a table cell.

Page down / Page up

Scrolls the view down (Page down) or up (Page up) by one page.
The cursor stays at the same screen position after scrolling.
Works in plain text and inside Live Preview table cells, including soft-wrapped cells.

Vim support (experimental)

If Obsidian's built-in Vim key bindings are enabled, this plugin fixes several native gaps inside Live Preview table cells by making the affected Vim motions table-aware — the same way Ctrl+P/N/B/F/A/E already are. Off by default; enable individual items under Settings → Universal Cursor Hotkeys → Vim support. If you're using Vim mode, you likely won't need the Quick setup assistant above — that manages this plugin's Emacs-style Ctrl+P/N/B/F/A/E hotkeys instead.

Settings

Apply all: Turns on every item below that can currently be turned on in one click — skips ^/I or J if their own Smart home (standard) / Smart join prerequisite is currently off.

Keys	Fixes
`h` `l` `x`	Multi-byte character miscounting and incorrect cell-jumping at line boundaries; `x` at cell boundaries.
`j` `k`	Row-boundary crossing (matching Ctrl+N/P), preserving column position throughout.
`w` `b` `e` (and `W`/`B`/`E`/`ge`/`gE`)	Cell/row-boundary crossing, matching vim's own document-wide word-motion behavior. ASCII words only — see Limitations.
`gg` `G`	Reaches the note's actual first/last line, including exiting a table cell entirely.
`gj` `gk`	Visual-line movement inside table cells (matching Ctrl+N/P), tracking the visual column across wrapped lines.
`$`	Sticky end-of-line goal column when followed by j/k or gj/gk, matching real vim's own behavior. Requires `j`/`k` or `gj`/`gk` to be enabled. `D`/`C` share the same underlying vim.js motion, so this toggle affects them too, but their own behavior is identical either way.
`^` `I`	Reuses Smart home to skip Markdown syntax, not just whitespace. Requires Smart home (standard).
`J`	Reuses Smart join to strip blockquote/list markers and indentation on join. Requires Smart join.

Turning an item off restarts Obsidian to fully restore vim's native behavior (a banner prompts this when needed).

Limitations

A CJK input source can corrupt Vim's own key handling — not caused by this plugin: With a CJK (e.g. romaji-based Japanese) input source active, a single press of a Vim motion key (commonly g, j, or k) can occasionally be misread — e.g. a single g behaving like gg, or j/k moving two lines instead of one. This is a known, upstream issue in Obsidian's underlying codemirror-vim engine (issue #178) and reproduces identically in vanilla Obsidian Vim mode with this plugin fully disabled. Workaround: switch to an ASCII/alphanumeric input source before using Vim motions.
w/b/e cross only one cell/row boundary per count: A count like 5w isn't fully precise once it needs to cross more than one cell or row boundary.
gj/gk do not support count prefixes across a crossing: A count like 5gj correctly steps through multiple visual lines within a single cell, but once the count needs to cross a row boundary or enter/exit a table, it stops consuming the count after that first crossing.
A count-prefixed $ doesn't cross table rows: 3$ stays within the current table cell rather than reaching the end of a line further down, the way real vim would outside a table.
Word motion (w/b/e and related keys) does not segment CJK text: These reuse Vim's own native word classification, which does not distinguish Japanese word boundaries — a run of Hiragana/Katakana/Kanji is treated as one long "word" rather than split at natural boundaries. ASCII text is unaffected.

Acknowledgments

The code and documentation for this plugin were developed with the assistance of AI.

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About

Obsidian's Live Preview breaks cursor behavior inside Markdown tables — whether you use Emacs keybindings or the built-in Vim mode. On macOS, Emacs shortcuts like Ctrl+P and Ctrl+N move the cursor anywhere in your notes — except inside tables, where they skip over them entirely from outside and stop working once you're in. This plugin fixes that — cursor navigation and Kill & Yank inside and outside tables, for macOS and Windows — and it also fixes Vim mode's h/j/k/l/w/b/e/gg/G inside table cells.

Hotkeys Tables Editing

Details

Current version

0.8.0

Last updated

3 days ago

Created

7 months ago

Updates

14 releases

Downloads

892

Compatible with

Obsidian 1.5.0+

Platforms

Desktop, Mobile

License

MIT

Author

shichishima

github.com/shichishima

shichishima

Universal Cursor Hotkeys

Overview

Getting Started

Command Reference

Settings

Quick setup assistant

Behavior Options

Limitations

Command Details

Vim support (experimental)

Settings

Limitations

Acknowledgments

Universal Cursor Hotkeys

Overview

Getting Started

Command Reference

Settings

Quick setup assistant

Behavior Options

Limitations

Command Details

Vim support (experimental)

Settings

Limitations

Acknowledgments

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