Hint mode

Hint mode provides Vimium-style keyboard navigation for the entire Obsidian interface. When activated, the plugin identifies clickable elements in the viewport and overlays them with unique character labels. Typing a label triggers an action on the corresponding element, such as clicking a button, focusing a pane, or navigating a link.

Non-editor view actions

When a non-editor view is focused (such as the Graph view, a PDF, Canvas, or the File Explorer), the following bindings are available:

Key	Action	Behavior
f	Activate	Click buttons, focus panes, navigate links, or focus inputs.
F	Open new	Open a link, pane, or file explorer item in a new tab. Uses Ctrl+click for generic targets.
yf	Yank	Copy the URL for links, the note path for tabs, or display text for other elements.
df	Close	Close the targeted tab or pane.
gf	Context menu	Open the right-click context menu on the targeted element.

Count support

Hint actions support count prefixes. For example, 3f allows you to activate three targets sequentially, with the hint overlay re-appearing after each selection. Similarly, 3yf yanks three URLs in succession. When using a count with F (e.g., 2F), each target opens in a new background tab while focus stays on the original view, allowing you to continue selecting labels for the remaining count.

Editor context

In the Markdown editor, hint mode is triggered via <leader><leader>h or a configured global hotkey.

• Activate: Type the label to click or focus the target.
• Open in new pane: Hold Ctrl (Windows/Linux) or Cmd (macOS) while typing the final character of the label.
• Context menu: Hold Shift while typing the final character of the label to open the right-click context menu on the target.

Note

Yank (yf) and close (df) actions are not mapped to editor key sequences to avoid conflicts with native Vim operators. Use the Obsidian commands to trigger these actions from the editor.

Target types

The plugin classifies targets during discovery to ensure context-appropriate behavior:

• Panes: Workspace leaf content. Activating (f) focuses the pane. Opening new (F) duplicates the pane into a new tab.
• Tabs: Workspace tab headers. Can be closed via df.
• Links: Wikilinks, Markdown links, and external URLs. Opened via Obsidian’s internal link resolver.
• Inputs: Text fields, textareas, and dropdowns. Activating focuses the element.
• Buttons: UI buttons and clickable icons.
• Generic: Any other clickable element identified by the plugin.

Smart label assignment prioritizes the home row. Single-character labels are used when few targets are visible, while two-character labels are generated for denser views.

Keyboard behavior

• Filtering: Only visible elements within the current scroll container are labeled.
• Correction: Press Backspace to reset the first character of a two-character label if you mistype.
• Cancellation: Press Escape to exit hint mode without taking action. In embedded editors (textarea vim overlays, Oil explorer, table cell editors), Escape only dismisses the hint overlay — it does not exit the embedded editor.
• Modifier keys: Pressing Ctrl, Shift, Alt, or Meta alone does not dismiss the overlay. These keys are ignored until a label character is typed. Hold Ctrl/Cmd while typing the final label character to open in a new tab. Hold Shift to open the context menu instead.
• Modal interaction: Hint mode remains active in modals, allowing you to navigate settings or the command palette.

Note

While hint actions work in modals, standard navigation keys (like j/k) are suppressed to prevent interference with modal controls.

Link handling

Internal links are navigated via Obsidian’s link resolver, ensuring that “Open in new tab” settings and vault-relative paths are respected. External URLs (http:// and https://) are opened in the system browser via window.open().

In the editor (both Live Preview and Source mode), links are rendered as <span> elements without standard href attributes. The plugin resolves these links by converting the DOM element to a document position via CodeMirror’s posAtDOM() API, then extracting the link target from the raw markdown text using regex matching. This works for all link types:

• [[Target]] — plain wikilinks
• [[Target|Alias]] — aliased wikilinks
• [[Target#heading]] — heading and block links
• ![[Target]] — embed wikilinks
• [text](Target) — markdown links (internal)
• [text](https://...) — markdown links (external)
• https://... — bare URLs

Hint labels appear regardless of cursor position — both when the cursor is on the link’s line (where links render as expanded .cm-hmd-internal-link or .cm-link spans) and when the cursor is elsewhere (where links render as collapsed .cm-underline spans). Source mode is fully supported.

In Reading view and frontmatter properties, links render as standard HTML elements with href or data-href attributes and are handled directly.

Obsidian commands

The following commands are available in the Command Palette for custom hotkey assignment:

• vim-motions:show-hint-labels: Trigger standard hint mode.
• vim-motions:hint-open-new-pane: Trigger hint mode to open targets in a new pane.
• vim-motions:hint-yank: Trigger hint mode to yank link URLs or text.
• vim-motions:hint-close: Trigger hint mode to close tabs or panes.
• vim-motions:hint-context-menu: Trigger hint mode to open the context menu on a target.

Configuration

Adjust hint mode behavior in Settings → Vim Motions → Jump navigation:

• Hint characters: The characters used for generating labels (default: home row).
• Global hotkey: Assign a hotkey to trigger hints from any context, including modals.
• Font size: Customize the size of the hint labels for better visibility.

Tip

Configure a Global hotkey in settings to allow triggering hint mode even when focus is inside a modal or a non-editor view that doesn’t support standard Vim bindings.

Info

Hint mode fully supports popout windows. Labels will appear on elements within the active window.

See known-limitations > Workspace & hint mode for detailed technical limitations.