Obsidian Hot Corner Preview

A lightweight macOS menu bar app that brings your Obsidian notes to your fingertips-just like “Quick Notes” with active screen corners. Select any .md file in the settings, then hover your cursor over one of the screen’s corners. A floating preview window renders your Markdown document on top of all other windows, and a single click opens the note in Obsidian.

Demo

Hover into the corner → preview appears → click to open in Obsidian.

The pencil icon in the menu bar opens the settings panel.

⚙️ Settings

• Markdown File: Choose your .md file via the standard file picker.
• Preview Lines / Width: Adjust how many lines are shown and the width of the preview window.
• Hot Corners: Enable one or more corners (top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right).
• Click to Open: Open the note in Obsidian using the obsidian:// URL scheme.
• Keyboard Shortcut: Assign a custom shortcut to toggle the preview on and off.
• Launch at Login: Enable “Open at Login,” implemented via a Launch Agent (~/Library/LaunchAgents). The app will appear in System Settings → General → Login Items (you can disable it there).

🍺 Homebrew (macOS)

Install:

brew install --cask nbox/tap/obsidian-hot-corner-md

Uninstall:

brew uninstall --cask --zap obsidian-hot-corner-md

Download

Releases: https://github.com/nbox/ObsidianHotCornerMD/releases

Install from DMG:

1. Download the latest .dmg from the Releases page.
2. Open the .dmg to mount it. You will see ObsidianHotCornerMD.app and an Applications shortcut.
3. Drag ObsidianHotCornerMD.app onto the Applications shortcut.
4. Eject the mounted DMG.
5. Launch the app from Applications — the menu bar icon will appear. Open Settings, choose your Markdown file, enable desired corners, adjust width/lines, assign a hotkey, and (optionally) enable launch at login.

macOS Gatekeeper

⚠️ macOS may block unsigned builds downloaded from GitHub. If you see a warning that the app can't be opened because it isn't signed and macOS offers to move it to the Trash, use one of the options below:

Option 1: Allow in System Settings -> Privacy & Security

• Try to open the app.
• Open System Settings -> Privacy & Security.
• Under the warning about Obsidian Hot Corner Preview, click Open Anyway.
• Confirm by clicking Open.

Option 2: Remove the quarantine attribute, run:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/ObsidianHotCornerMD.app"

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

Build from source

• Xcode: 16.1 or newer
• Swift: 5.x (as provided by Xcode)
• macOS target: 12.4+ (configurable in the project settings)

Steps:

• Open ObsidianHotCornerMD.xcodeproj in Xcode.
• Select the ObsidianHotCornerMD scheme and a “My Mac” destination.
• Build and run.

Release (archive):

• In Xcode, Product → Archive (Release configuration).
• Alternatively, push a tag vX.Y.Z to let GitHub Actions build and attach a .dmg to the corresponding Release.