I recently switched from Obsidian, which lets you command & control the entire app through a Spotlight/Raycast-style command palette. I’d like to do the same in Bear Notes.
On Mac, this could be as simple as adding a command. On iOS and iPadOS, a good approach would be something like Google Chrome’s pull-to-actions menu. In Chrome [IOS and IPadOS], pulling down to refresh reveals three options: refresh, new tab, and close tab.
In Bear, pulling down would default to search. Pulling down and swiping right could open the command palette, while pulling down and swiping left could be used for something else, like global search or creating a new note.
What’s the point though? I get it in Obsidian as you can do a lot more with the program in general but with the search feature already in Bear, would this really be necessary? Just seems a little overkill
For me it is more about having one interface that does everything, I don’t like looking for buttons in menus. You can say just pull down and type export and it will export the note instead of having to look for the export button in the top menu. Fixed small menus also restricts the number of commands you can have or access.
Bear is about simplicity, I get it. I don’t want more commands all I want is a single easy-to-repeat action to access them all.
Mindless and easy execution.
Using interfaces like this makes little sense for regular actions like format-bold for which you have strong muscle memory.
If command palette does not prove to be helpful the pull-to-action menu can launch Quick open (3 finger swipe is not good for single hand use and is also not very quick) besides local search and maybe settings.
For the ones who don’t want either can just use the search as they used to.
The feature also barely is a clutter!
No not really!
On iPhones or iPads you have to go search through the ellipsis menu—as before if you want to export a note click the top menu look for export which opens one more menu in which you look for your export format of choice. Instead you could just type export as HTML.
On Macs bear has hotkeys. But first you need know all hotkeys; without which—for commands used once a week—you end up searching the menu bar. Instead what I do is use the search-menu-items plugin in raycast.
The feature for bear isn’t a necessity, it will likely not save more than a few minutes a month but nevertheless I would like to have it. I just am used to similar actions in Raycast, obsidian and even todoist.
