Let's be honest—most of us have that one plugin we install and immediately wonder how we ever worked without it. For Obsidian users in early 2025, that plugin is increasingly becoming Notebook Navigator. When I first saw the announcement about version 1.9.3 dropping, I'll admit I thought, "Another update? What could they possibly add now?" Then I actually tried it. And wow.
The numbers tell part of the story: nearly 200,000 downloads in just three months. That's not just impressive—it's borderline ridiculous in the already-crowded Obsidian plugin ecosystem. But here's what those numbers don't tell you: why this particular update matters so much, and how it's quietly revolutionizing how power users navigate their knowledge bases.
In this deep dive, we're going beyond the changelog. We'll explore exactly what makes 1.9.3 special, answer the questions real users are asking (yes, including those from that Reddit thread with 437 upvotes), and show you how to implement these features in ways that'll save you hours each week. Because that's what this is really about—getting back to thinking instead of clicking through folders.
From Niche Tool to Essential Utility: The Notebook Navigator Story
Remember when Obsidian was just Markdown files and backlinks? Those were simpler times, but honestly, they were also slower times. The core appeal of Obsidian has always been its flexibility—you can build exactly the system you need. The problem? Building that system often meant wrestling with navigation. Opening the right file at the right time could feel like searching for a specific book in a library without a card catalog.
Enter Notebook Navigator. It launched quietly in late 2024, and honestly, the first version was... fine. Useful, but not revolutionary. What happened next is what makes this story interesting. The developer—who's been incredibly responsive in the community forums—actually listened. Like, really listened. The feature requests pouring in weren't just being acknowledged; they were being implemented at a pace that put much larger teams to shame.
By version 1.5, it was clear this wasn't just another navigation helper. The pinned shortcuts feature alone changed how people organized their daily workflows. But 1.9.3? This is where it went from "useful tool" to "how did I ever work without this?" The community asked for custom icons based on file extensions and names. They got it. They wanted more control over the pinned area. Done. Spring-loaded folders driving you crazy? Now you can tame them.
That Reddit thread with 437 upvotes wasn't celebrating just another update. It was celebrating a developer who gets it—who understands that productivity tools should adapt to you, not the other way around.
Custom Icons: More Than Just Pretty Pictures
Okay, let's talk about the headline feature: custom icons based on file extension and file name. At first glance, this might seem cosmetic. "Great, now my PDFs have a little PDF icon." But if that's all you're getting from this feature, you're missing about 90% of its power.
Here's what this actually changes: visual pattern recognition. Our brains process images significantly faster than text. When you're scanning through dozens of files looking for that one meeting note from three weeks ago, your eyes aren't reading every filename—they're looking for patterns. With custom icons, you can create those patterns intentionally.
Let me give you a real example from my own vault. I have:
- Meeting notes with a calendar icon
- Project plans with a roadmap icon
- Research articles with a magnifying glass
- Daily journals with a sun/cloud icon depending on my mood that day (yes, really)
The implementation is surprisingly flexible. You can set icons by extension (.md gets one icon, .pdf gets another), but the real magic is in the filename patterns. Want all files containing "TODO" to get a checkmark icon? Done. Files starting with "2025-" to get a calendar icon? Easy. This creates what I call "glanceable context"—you know what type of content you're looking at before your brain even processes the filename.
And here's a pro tip most people miss: you can use this for workflow states too. I prefix active projects with "⚡" and completed ones with "✓", then set icons accordingly. The visual distinction means I'm never accidentally opening last month's completed project when I mean to work on today's priority.
Mastering the Pinned Shortcuts Area: Your New Command Center
If custom icons are the flashy new feature, the resizable pinned shortcuts area is the workhorse improvement. Previous versions had a fixed-width area that, frankly, felt cramped once you had more than five or six shortcuts. The community asked for flexibility, and 1.9.3 delivers.
But here's what nobody's talking about: this isn't just about making things bigger or smaller. It's about creating a true command center for your vault. Think of it as your application dock, but specifically tuned for your current context.
I've experimented with three different approaches, and each serves a different purpose:
The Minimalist Approach: Keep it narrow—just wide enough for icons without text. This works beautifully when you have muscle memory for your most-used files. I use this for my daily driver vault where I know that the third icon is always my weekly review template.
The Contextual Approach: Resize it based on what you're working on. Working on a writing project? Expand it to show all related research files, outlines, and drafts. Doing administrative work? Shrink it down to just the essentials. The ability to quickly resize means it adapts to your workflow instead of forcing you to adapt to it.
The Mega-Dashboard Approach: Go wide. Really wide. Fill that sidebar with not just files but also links to specific searches, embedded notes, even frequently used tags. This turns the pinned area from a simple shortcut bar into a full dashboard. It's overkill for some, but for complex projects with dozens of moving parts, it's a game-changer.
The key insight here—and this comes straight from those Reddit comments—is that different workflows need different setups. A researcher managing hundreds of PDFs needs different shortcuts than a fiction writer tracking character arcs. The resizing feature acknowledges this diversity of use cases in a way that fixed layouts never could.
Taming Spring-Loaded Folders: Finally, Control Over Navigation
Ah, spring-loaded folders. Love them or hate them, they've been a point of contention in file navigators for years. For the uninitiated: hover over a folder, it opens after a delay, letting you navigate deep structures without clicking. In theory, it's brilliant. In practice? Sometimes it feels like your cursor is navigating a minefield.
Notebook Navigator 1.9.3 gives you three levels of control that, honestly, every file explorer should have:
Option 1: Disable it entirely. Some people just want to click. If that's you, now you can turn it off completely. No accidental openings, no waiting for timeouts. Simple, predictable navigation.
Option 2: Custom timeouts. This is where it gets interesting. You can set different delays for the initial expansion versus subsequent expansions. Why does this matter? Because your behavior changes as you navigate. That first hover—you might be deciding whether to enter that folder at all. A longer delay (I use 500ms) gives you time to change your mind. Once you're moving through nested folders, though, you want speed. A shorter delay (200ms works for me) keeps the momentum going.
Option 3: The hybrid approach. Here's my personal setup: spring-loaded enabled, but with a modifier key to temporarily disable it. When I'm deliberately navigating deep structures, I use the spring-loaded feature. When I'm just trying to click on a file next to a folder, I hold Shift to bypass the expansion entirely. It gives me precision when I need it and speed when I don't.
What's fascinating about this feature—and this came up repeatedly in the Reddit discussion—is how personal folder navigation preferences are. Some people navigate entirely by keyboard. Others are mouse-centric. Some have motor control issues that make precise hovering difficult. Giving users this level of control isn't just about convenience; it's about accessibility.
Beyond the Basics: Advanced Workflows You Haven't Considered
Now that we've covered the headline features, let's talk about the combinations and workflows that really make Notebook Navigator sing. Because the magic isn't in any single feature—it's in how they work together.
Consider this scenario: You're working on a quarterly report. With Notebook Navigator 1.9.3, you could:
- Pin all relevant files with custom icons (spreadsheet icon for data, document icon for drafts, calendar icon for timelines)
- Resize the pinned area to show everything at once
- Set up a specific spring-loaded folder timeout that works for your navigation style during intensive work sessions
- Use filename-based icons to distinguish between draft versions (red icon), review versions (yellow), and final versions (green)
But here's where it gets really powerful: context switching. Let's say you need to jump from that quarterly report to planning a team meeting. Instead of hunting through folders, you could have a second set of pinned shortcuts specifically for meeting management. The resizable area means you can expand it when you need those meeting tools, then collapse it back to your report tools when you return.
One Reddit user shared a brilliant approach: they use the custom icons to create a visual Kanban board right in their file list. Files with "TODO" get a red icon, "IN PROGRESS" get yellow, "DONE" get green. Combined with intelligent pinning, they can see their entire workflow state at a glance without ever opening a single file.
Another approach I've seen: using the custom icons to denote priority. High-priority files get a fire icon, medium get a clock, low get... well, whatever icon you never really look at. It's a simple system, but when you're overwhelmed with notes, that visual triage can be the difference between productive focus and decision paralysis.
Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
With great power comes... well, the potential for great confusion if you're not careful. After testing Notebook Navigator 1.9.3 extensively and reading through dozens of user experiences, I've identified a few common stumbling blocks.
Icon overload is the big one. It's tempting to create a unique icon for every file type. Don't. Your brain can only process so many distinct visual signals before they become noise. Stick to 5-7 core icon types that represent major categories. Subtypes can be indicated with color variations or small badges if needed, but keep the main categories broad.
Inconsistent naming patterns will break your filename-based icons. If you're using "TODO" in some files and "ToDo" in others, your icon rules won't catch both. Take the time to establish naming conventions before you set up your icon rules. Better yet, use the Dataview plugin to manage metadata and base your icons on that instead of filenames—it's more flexible in the long run.
Over-pinning is another trap. The resizable area might make you think you can pin everything. You can't. Or rather, you shouldn't. The pinned area should be for immediate, context-relevant tools. If you find yourself pinning more than 10-12 items regularly, consider whether you need better folder organization or if some of those items should be in a different context-specific set of pins.
And here's one I learned the hard way: back up your icon settings. Unlike core Obsidian settings, plugin configurations can be trickier to restore if something goes wrong. Export your Notebook Navigator settings regularly, especially once you've got a system you like. A few minutes of precaution can save hours of reconfiguration.
The Bigger Picture: What This Means for Obsidian in 2025
Looking at Notebook Navigator's trajectory—from new plugin to 200,000 downloads in three months—tells us something important about where Obsidian is heading in 2025. We're moving beyond simple note-taking into true knowledge workspace territory.
The features in 1.9.3 aren't just about finding files faster. They're about reducing cognitive load. Every decision your brain doesn't have to make—"Which folder was that in?" "What type of file is this?" "How do I get back to my main project?"—is mental energy freed for actual thinking.
What's particularly exciting is how plugins like Notebook Navigator are starting to work together. I'm already seeing users combine it with plugins like Dataview, Tasks, and Calendar to create integrated systems that would have required custom software just a year ago. The custom icons can reflect task status from the Tasks plugin. The pinned shortcuts can link to Dataview queries. The navigation controls work seamlessly with whatever other plugins you've installed.
This points toward a future where Obsidian becomes less of a note-taking app and more of a personal operating system for knowledge work. And honestly? That's exactly what many of us need. In a world of fragmented apps and constant context switching, having one place where everything works together—where navigation is intuitive, where your tools adapt to you—isn't just convenient. It's transformative.
So should you install Notebook Navigator 1.9.3? If you're serious about using Obsidian for anything beyond casual notes, absolutely. But don't just install it and forget it. Experiment with the features. Try different icon schemes. Adjust the pinned area for different types of work. Tweak those spring-loaded folder settings until they feel like an extension of your thought process.
Because that's what this is really about: making the tool disappear so the work can happen. And based on what I'm seeing with Notebook Navigator 1.9.3, we're getting closer to that ideal every day.
