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Run Obsidian from the system tray for customisable window management & global quick notes

Tray is an Obsidian plugin that can be used to launch the app on system startup and run it in the background, adding global hotkeys and a tray menu to toggle window visibility and create quick notes from anywhere in your operating system.

Configuration

Window management

Option Description Default
Launch on startup Open Obsidian automatically whenever you log into your computer. Disabled
Hide on launch Minimises Obsidian automatically whenever the app is launched. If the "Run in background" option is enabled, windows will be hidden to the system tray/menubar instead of minimised to the taskbar/dock. Disabled
Run in background Hide the app and continue to run it in the background instead of quitting it when pressing the window close button or toggle focus hotkey. Disabled
Hide taskbar icon Hides the window's icon from from the dock/taskbar. This may not work on Linux-based OSes. Disabled
Create tray icon Add an icon to your system tray/menubar to bring hidden Obsidian windows back into focus on click or force a full quit/relaunch of the app through the right-click menu. Enabled
Tray icon image Set the image used by the tray/menubar icon. Recommended size: 16x16
Tray icon tooltip Set a title to identify the tray/menubar icon by. The {{vault}} placeholder will be replaced by the vault name. {{vault}} | Obsidian
Toggle window focus hotkey This hotkey is registered globally and will be detected even if Obsidian does not have keyboard focus. Format: Electron accelerator CmdOrCtrl+Shift+Tab

The Relaunch Obsidian and Close Vault actions can be triggered from the tray/menubar context menu, or with the in-app command palette (search for "Tray: Relaunch Obsidian" or "Tray: Close Vault"). Hotkeys can be assigned to the commands via Obsidian's built-in hotkey manager.

Quick notes

Option Description Default
Quick note location New quick notes will be placed in this folder.
Quick note date format New quick notes will use a filename of this pattern. Format: Moment.js format string YYYY-MM-DD
Quick note hotkey This hotkey is registered globally and will be detected even if Obsidian does not have keyboard focus. Format: Electron accelerator CmdOrCtrl+Shift+Q

Installation

Obsidian Marketplace

  1. In Obsidian, navigate to SettingsCommunity plugins.
  2. Press the Browse button beside the Community plugins option.
  3. Search for Tray in the Filter text input.
  4. Select Tray and press Install.
  5. Once the plugin has finished installing, press Enable.
  6. Press the Options button.
  7. Configure the plugin as you wish.
  8. You're done! 🎉

Manual

  1. Download this repository.
  2. Copy it into your vault's .obsidian/plugins directory.
  3. In Obsidian, navigate to SettingsCommunity plugins.
  4. Press Turn on community plugins if you haven't already.
  5. Find Tray in the list of Installed plugins and toggle it on.
  6. Press the ⚙️ button beside the toggle you just used.
  7. Configure the plugin as you wish.
  8. You're done! 🎉

Disclaimer

This plugin is provided as-is and is designed for personal use. It has not been tested on every platform and may not work as expected with all future updates. If you notice something is not working as intended, please open a bug report or pull request so it can be fixed.

The Obsidian logo is distributed with this plugin as the default image for the system tray/menubar icon, intended to be used within Obsidian. This logo remains the property of the Obsidian project and is not under the same license as the plugin's source code.