yeah, this is on our list!
that’s already how it works, but using a tag as a workspace just filters all your notes by that tag. If those notes also have other tags attached, you’ll still see those in the sidebar, and that’s by design.
Yes, but this is not a bug, it’s how it should behave (right or wrong, that’s a different issue). We’ll think a bit about that and see if we should change it.
if you’re using quickopen, holding ⌘ while selecting a tag will make it the current workspace.
You might need to hit ⌘⇧0 first to clear the current workspace, since tags outside it won’t show up in quickopen.
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In my opinion, there are two good reasons why ALL notes should ALWAYS be displayed when selecting the main section within a workspace:
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In the general “Notes” workspace, the display of the main section is NOT dependent on “Hide Subtags.” So why should it be in other workspaces?
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With “Hide Subtags” enabled, you would lose the ability to view all notes in the notes list and search within it.
It makes sense that in the normal main view „Notes“, the sections aren’t dependent on “Hide Subtags”: A section isn’t a tag and a subsection (Today, Locked, ToDo, etc.) isn’t a subtag.
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Let me complete the argument. The focused tag appears two times in the sidebar: as main section (1) and as tag (2). So when “Hide Subtags” is enabled you anyway could choose the tag to see a note list where notes are hidden because of their subtag. It doesn’t make sense to double a feature just to loose the ability to have a notes list with all notes from the workspace.
we don’t really see it as complicated, the concept is simple: you’re just filtering your notes down to a smaller subset, defined by a tag.
this has a bunch of advantages:
- it reuses the organization you already have (no need to create separate workspaces and move notes around)
- it’s easy to search inside a workspace, or across all your notes
- it doesn’t change how sync behaves, so no potential issues there
what does feel complicated to you, specifically?
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I can understand that some users would like to have separate workspaces because that’s a very clear and well known model. I was also dissatisfied when this new feature was presented in an older thread. But in the meantime I think “Focus on Tag” is actually more than just a replacement for workspaces. It’s not just about separating areas, but about being able to view the same set of notes from different perspectives. Depending on your needs a tag can be an area, a project, a topic, an attribute or any other perspective. That’s why the display ofexternal tags (which was under discussion) are so incredibly important. Actually everything can become a workspace, even a small tag like #bookmark. To truly appreciate this feature, you have to look beyond the boundaries of ordinary workspaces.
A lot depends on how you’ve set up your system. If you’ve been collecting notes for many years “Focus on Tag” can be a new way to view your existing collection. If on the other hand you’re just starting from scratch with Bear, you can structure your tags from the beginning the way you want, for example with categories like “Work”, “Personal” or “Home” and then simply use “Focus on Tag” as your own workspaces. In that case you will rarely work in the “Notes” workspace or have those external tags. Older users like you and me will surely adapt to the new possibilities and make a few changes to their tag structure.
The feature however is really simple in my eyes.
I agree, “Hide subtags” should not filter the notes in the “main” section. I just encountered a bug, or at least, a weird behavior with this:
- Suppose I have two notes, with a single tag each: Note 1 with
#work/tag1and Note 2#work/tag2. My current workspace isworkand I have “Hide subtags” enabled. - I navigate to
#work/tag1and open Note 1 - I hit CMD-O, type Note 2 and hit enter
- The “main” section gets selected, but it’s empty. The note I selected doesn’t open and I get a blank screen.
Here’s a recording of what happens with this example.
It would make much more sense for me that the “Hide subtags” work in the tag list, but not in the “main” section.
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I vehemently disagree with you, no offense. If I have a note that is relevant to my writing, work, personal knowledge, and/or education, I don’t want to have three instances of it in order for it to be present within the writing, work, personal, or school top-level tags. Bear’s implementation of workspaces is perfect for my needs.
I may be missing something, but I don’t understand what is complicated about it. Select a tag as a workspace, and…that’s it. It’s like selecting a tag from the sidebar, but more permanent, less chance of “leakage” if I need to focus on one domain or another, and comes with the benefit of all features like search being constrained to that tag aka workspace.
Edit to add:
Thinking about this more and it gets even better. I have spent almost all of my career working in one particular field, but my role has shifted from data analyst to data scientist to research specialist. All my notes in work are relevant to that field, but the nature of those notes has shifted dramatically.
Being in work allows me to focus on work without seeing the writing notes for my novels or medical notes for myself. But going further, I can use work/research projects to focus only on the notes for my current role. I wouldn’t want to archive the old work/data analysis notes from my prior role, because they are still relevant within the broader work domain (I’m often called back to help train new data analysts on models I built over the years, for instance).
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I hope I’m not being an annoyance by following up and asking if you have made a decision as the official release of 2.9 arrived today. In my opinion this isn’t just a minor flaw, but a serious issue. How am I supposed to search through all the notes in a workspace when “Hide subtags” is enabled?
The current design seems to me as completely illogical. On the one hand the subsections (Today, ToDo, etc.) aren’t affected at all by it. But since the subsections are intended to be subsets of the main section and are therefore visually presented as subgroups, it’s almost absurd to display only a portion of the notes of the subsections or even nothing in the main section. @Mykiel’s video shows clearly that showing all notes is the natural function of the main section. The main section was always meant to show all notes that are not in archive or in the trash. And the “Hide subtags”-option was always related just to tags as the name already suggests.
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I think I agree. It’s a little strange and unexpected to be in the “root” of the workspace and see nothing while Hide Subtag Notes is enabled.
On the other hand, since “Hide Subtag Notes” makes the note list act more like a directory tree, it makes sense that it’s empty if there are no notes that belong in the root.
Maybe it would make more sense if that setting remembered its state per tag, or if Notes List Search still worked. But at least it’s accessible via Menu and, by extension, via a custom keyboard shortcut or cmd+shift+/.
It doesn’t even make sense because the root is not a tag but a section with its subsections. That is a crazy construction: An empty section but subsections with content. Does that make sense? 
If I want to see the focused tag with hidden subtags I just have to select it inside the tag tree where it can act like a directory. The big function of the root was always to show ALL notes, f.e. to search through them
This looks really awesome. I am using Bear for a number of things, with a LOT of notes. This helps tremendously in cleaning things up to focus on what I am working on. Good job.
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Hi! I’m SO excited about this update! I stopped using Bear for anything other than my personal journal because having personal and work notes in one app without something like this was too much. I’m running into one friction point that I want to ask about. I work off a Daily Note that is the source of all truth for that day for work and personal items. I plan, execute, and review off that note. And, often collect things that at the end of the day or week I process to the right place in my system. Is there a way to have this Daily Note exist “above” the workspaces? I’d like to be working out of it when I’m working, but be able to do the same when I switch to dealing with personal items. And vice versa. I’ve been experimenting with how to do this, but I haven’t figured out how to if it’s possible. If it’s not available, it sure would be a great tweak to the super way you’ve implemented this. And, it seems like it would be pretty easy to have it persist across all workspaces in Today or Pinned.
If I’m not mistaken, with the Bear’s workspaces, you can achieve this by tagging the note with all the tags where you want the note to appear.
An alternative solution on macOS is detaching the note.
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I can’t believe I didn’t think of this! Yes, that works perfectly. Thank you for the suggestion!
Not an annoyance at all, thanks for following up. Good news: it’s already fixed in the current internal version, so it’ll land in the next release.
“Hide subtags” is a bit of an odd feature to begin with, more of a workaround to simulate folders (which we don’t like too much), and only a small niche of users rely on it right now. So while it’s a real issue for you, we’re considering it a minor one in the bigger picture.
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Just back from holidays and had some time to play with workspaces, and I’m with @krssno on this one.
Keeping the main section consistent with the default “Notes” workspace just makes sense to me. Most of my workspace tags are root-level tags with subtags underneath, so with “Hide subtags” on I land on an empty list every time I focus one.
I could restructure things by pinning separate tags for each workspace instead, adding them directly to the relevant notes, but even then I don’t see the benefit of keeping the current behaviour.
I get that not respecting “Hide subtags” in the main section could be confusing if someone uses index notes on the focused tag. But since the focused tag also appears in the sidebar alongside the other tags, users who want that filtering can just click the tag there instead of the workspace name imho.
I missed this last message while writing mine, so never mind 
This is great news, thanks!
FYI, for me, “Hide subtags” combined with Workspaces is much more powerful than just simulate folders. It is an even better version of the @Untagged query.
When in a given workspace, I can quickly add notes and jot down thoughts without worrying about the tag. Then, when I am ready to clean up a bit, I open the root tag in the sidebar, with “Hide subtags” and see all my “untagged” notes for my workspace.
It allows me to essentially treat the root tag as a temporary inbox.