Search Your Workspace with Quick Search (Cmd+K)
Published April 14, 2026 · Last updated April 14, 2026 · 3 min read
Use Quick Search to find any artifact, document, thread, or file in Obvious without navigating menus — just press ⌘K on Mac or Ctrl+K on Windows from anywhere in the app.
The search overlay opens at the top of the screen, ready for you to type. Results appear immediately and cover everything in your project, including full text inside documents and presentation slides. You can also expand the scope to search across your entire workspace in the same overlay.
Open Quick Search
Press ⌘K (Mac) or Ctrl+K (Windows) from any page in Obvious. You can also click the search bar at the top center of the screen — it shows the keyboard shortcut when idle.
Start typing as soon as the overlay opens. Press Escape to close it, or Escape again to step back from a sub-view to the main search results.
What Quick Search covers
Inside a project, Quick Search searches:
- Artifacts — workbooks, documents, presentations, dashboards, kanban boards, and every other artifact type, matched by name
- Document and presentation content — full text inside documents and individual presentation slides; Quick Search locates the specific paragraph or slide that contains your query and takes you directly to it when you open a result
- Files — uploaded files attached to the project
- Folders — folder names
Open Quick Search without typing anything and you'll see recent artifacts, so you can jump back to recent work without a query.
Navigate results with the keyboard
Once results appear:
- Press ↓ to move to the next result and ↑ to move back up.
- Press Enter to open the highlighted result.
- For document results, Obvious navigates to the matching paragraph — not just the top of the document.
The footer of the overlay also shows navigation arrows and an open button if you prefer the mouse, but the keyboard is faster.
Expand to workspace search
Quick Search defaults to your current project. You'll see the project name as a badge inside the search input — that's your scope indicator.
To search across your entire workspace:
- Click the × on the project badge, or press Backspace with the query field empty.
- The badge disappears and Obvious searches all projects you have access to.
To return to project-scoped search, close Quick Search and reopen it from within a project.
Jump to any page with Go to...
Press Ctrl+G from anywhere in the app to open the Go to... navigation view — no need to open Quick Search first.
From Go to..., you can jump directly to any main section:
| Page | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Home | Ctrl+1 |
| Projects | Ctrl+2 |
| Templates | Ctrl+3 |
| Shortcuts | Ctrl+4 |
| Skills | Ctrl+5 |
| Tasks | Ctrl+6 |
| Artifacts | Ctrl+7 |
| Workspace Settings | Ctrl+8 |
These shortcuts work from anywhere in the app — you don't need to open Quick Search first.
Note: The navigation shortcuts above always use Control, even on Mac — Control+G, Control+1, and so on. Opening Quick Search itself uses ⌘K (Command+K) on Mac. The two modifiers are different.
Switch projects, workspaces, and threads
A few more shortcuts for moving around Obvious:
- Ctrl+J — Open the project picker to jump to a different project
- Ctrl+W — Open the workspace picker to switch workspaces
- Ctrl+T — Open the threads list for the current project
- Ctrl+S — Go directly to Settings → Personalization
These same actions appear as items in Quick Search when you open it with an empty query.