A small quality of life request, but which would make a huge change of usability for users with a lot of windows…
At the moment, if you’re in Bear’s main window and want to check something, just browsing notes and clicking on a tag, the note you’re working on disappears if it’s not in the tag or list you’re looking at. This makes you lose your place and is quite disruptive. To find it again, you need to: open any note, then press the back button, which is quite bizarre.
And thus, if you want to browse your notes freely, you have to first open the current one in a new window in order to keep it aside so as not to lose it. This is not very intuitive and nor very elegant.
The more intuitive workflow would be to: browse tags freely, then open the note you’re looking for in a new window if one has been clicked. In a nutshell : do not change the note in the main pane until explicitly told otherwise (another note has been opened).
Therefore, I submit that, when browsing tags and notes lists, the note that is being worked on in the main pane should only disappear if and when the user clicks on another one to replace it, and never in any other circumstance.
This does not remove any functionality from the app currently, but has huge benefits in terms of navigation.
The initial philosophy of Bear was to establish a one-to-one relationship between the note list and the editor. This meant that if you had a note in the editor, you could always find it in the list. This design choice was made to keep the app simple and avoid confusing users. For instance, if you clicked on the trash, you might wonder if your note in the editor had been deleted.
However, we’re gradually moving away from this design as the app introduced various ways to navigate (Quick Open, History, Back Links, etc.). This might be another step we need to take to transition to a different design.
I can’t make any promises at this time, but we’ll have an internal discussion to address this matter.
A quick follow-up: the history navigation still functions without selecting a note (via hotkey), but as you mentioned, the arrows are removed from the user interface, which is something we’re actively working on fixing!
We’re also curious to know more about your intentions. What are you looking for or checking for?
I like to add a special subcase in which the current note is not kept open and which I find the most annoying one. I think I mentioned that already somewhere here in the forum one or two years ago. It is not possible to open a note in its own window without selecting it. I often open notes from the notes list by context menu -> open in new window. That results in having the same note in new window and as main note
Thanks a lot for at least considering this! I completely understand the initial design rationale but, as you mention, Bear is increasingly moving away from that paradigm.
We’re also curious to know more about your intentions. What are you looking for or checking for?
I find myself wishing for that multiple times a day. Here is how it works theoretically:
I work on something in the main window (because that’s logically where I’m going to work first)
I need to check something else. I would expect to: browse the notes list, find what I’m looking for and then, the preview could be enough or my purposes or, I would expect to open that note in a new window for reference, since I’m still working on my main thing.
And, as discussed, that’s not what happens. Instead, I’m expected to open my work in a secondary window before, as my work “disappears” the moment I move away to another tag.
At the moment, I can sometimes work around that using Quick Open to open what I’m looking for in a secondary window, but often, I don’t remember the exact note name, so I’m out of luck. I need to see the note list to find how it’s called.
Here is a list of use cases:
I work on a podcast. I write the show notes in the main Bear window as an untagged note, and I want to double check the release schedule which is in a different note, in the #podcast Name tag.
I work on a book (I’m a fiction writer). I write notes for the current scene, and I want to check some detail about a character which is related to their notes in #Book/Character name notes. (That’s often where I can’t remember how that specific note is called and Quick Open can’t help.)
I work on my Zettelkasten, and I’m looking for notes to link to or from the new Zettel I’m working on. I remember I wrote one which would be a great fit two days ago, but I can’t remember the exact title (Quick Open can’t help either here).
I’m working on a document for my tax agent, explaining some specificity regarding foreign income (as I live in one country but generate most royalties in another). I want to double check the Double Tax Agreement between countries, which requires me to get the PDF which is in another note. (And I can never remember in which country’s language that document is, which makes Quick Open hit or miss too).
Being able to just browse my notes to find what I’m looking for and just open that in a new window would solve this in a pinch, allowing me to not lose my place.
Let me know if it helps and if you need more detail about the use case. Thank you!
