I would like to propose a small change to Bear that would, in my opinion, massively improve the usability of Bear for navigating large trees of nested tags.
Current Behaviour
If you select a top-level tag, all notes from this tag and all subtags are shown in the notes panel. This makes it nearly impossible to differentiate between the top-level notes and the notes in sub-levels.
At the moment, the only way to view the notes of the top-level tag in isolation (without showing the notes from the sub-levels) is by using the search bar.
This is extremely inconvenient when you want to browse your notes by navigating using the tags on the left sidebar. You basically have to change the search query constantly if you want to see all the notes of a specific tag- or subtag-level.
Proposed Behaviour
I believe that switching between both methods of navigation is an essential feature that would also make the tag-system feel a lot more like real folders.
The current behaviour could be massively improved by a small addition to the application that would not require much development time. In fact, I strongly believe that this could be achieved in a matter of days.
Option 1: Additional Option in the View menu
The easiest (and probably cleanest) solution could be implemented with just two simple changes:
Add an additional toggle option to the ‘View’ menu of Bear.
Depending on the value of the toggle, use the already existing search algorithm to display either all notes of the tag (including subtags) or just the selected tag’s notes.
Optional: You could also introduce another keyboard shortcut to make this feature accessible to all of the keyboard wizards out there .
Option 2: Additional Toggle Button
Alternatively, you could make a small addition to the UI of Bear. By adding a toggle to the UI, you could easily switch between both display modes.
This toggle could be placed next to the search bar or either at the top or the bottom of the left sidebar. A similar toggle could also be introduced to the mobile version of the application.
There is another way which i consider more elegant because no switching is necessary: the grouping of the notes list by tags in second pane. Here a screenshot of another app with that feature:
Apart from that no switching is required here you would have even more advantages:
in the note list all notes are grouped not only by the first level tag but also by all subtags
the separators in the note list could act as ui element, f.e. right click and meaningful commands: “select all”, “go to tag” and so on.
If such a button should act like in mail app then it would make more sense if its menu would hold filters like “untagged”, “today”, “to do” and so on. What i like about the filter menu in mail app is the possibility of multiple selection
If this get’s implemented it’s important that this stays as an option. I’m currently depending on how Bear’s nested tag systems works (with notes tags with a sub tag automatically tagged by the parent tag). In fact, it’s one of the reasons I choose Bear over other notes apps.
But I suppose an option is something that could make it work for everyone.
Also: if this makes tags work more like folders for those who want that yet retains the simplicity of Bear only having organizing structure that sounds like a good thing to me as well.
Maybe it is interesting: in the meantime i consider the op’s suggestion as far better than mine. The more i use bear the more i appreciate its simplicity. Simplicity doesn’t mean that you have a barebone app without any features but that there are no features which are just nice-to-have and at the same time raarely used. The feature i suggested would also lead to confusion as it could happen that the same note could appear multiple times in the same list. Not to mention the high development efforts for a feature that is not a must have like backlinks f.e.
I must admit that often enough it is a matter of mind set: in ulysses i loved the grouping inside the notes list. But now i am digging deeper into bear. I must admit, i really love the bear app. It is a pet app, like foobar2000 was in the times i used windows as OS
Yep, there is a stripped down version for Mac, still far behind the windows version. The library is missing. But it must be a matter of time when fb2k 2.0 will be released with a full version for Mac. That would be amazing. I really like that the mac app seems to take another route than in windows.
back to topic: I made several suggestions for an ui for selecting multiple tags to filter the notes in second pane. Apart from all other benefits it could serve as mean to shrink down quickly the notes list to selected tag from left sidebar without subtags.
I would like to ask the op: do you like the idea that the background of notes (matching the selected parent tag) has a slightly differently coloured background?
Adding different background colors would certainly help distinguish between top-level vs lower-level notes. I still think that there should be an unobtrusive toggle for people that prefer to only see the notes of each (sub) tag.
There is a new major 2.0 version for fb2k on windows. Also there is a new version for mac basing on newest windows code. It is a full version with media library, search functionality and so on. I am eager to test.
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