Request: note geographic information in metadata

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1

That’s probably going to be low on the roadmap, but… if I remember well, geolocation data used to be added to each note metadata, then removed for reliability issues. However, that would be ultra useful for journaling especially, knowing not only when but where a note was created.

Would there be any chance for it to reappear in Bear?

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2

I hear you that would be neat. Currently, I run an Apple Shortcut to retrieve the current location and then paste it in manually.

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3

You remind me that I wrote a bash script ages ago to start new journal entries in vim, grabbing geoloc and weather too. That would be a fun addition to Bear via shortcuts — currently I use an Alfred snippet to start note titles, and I expect a Shortcut could be fashioned do both bits of meta.

4

Just pinging our lovely devs about this. Is something like this considered? I’d love to have a map view of where my notes were taken – very useful for journaling. Thanks!

5

Hey, unfortunately it is not on our roadmap at the moment. We’ve actually never implemented geolocation data to the note metadata in Bear. While it’s a feature that certainly makes sense for journaling apps, Bear is more note taking – we are moving in a different direction. On top of that, it also requires user permissions to access location services, which adds another layer of complexity. An easy workaround is to use Shortcuts as @bolive and @celsius1414 suggested. If you have any question about creating Shortcuts, let us know! :slight_smile:

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6

Thank you! And thanks for taking the time to clarify this. I have my shortcut, but it takes a few seconds to compute the location instead of having this done in the background, and it does not offer any kind of map view or geographical search, which I would love to have.

As for the journaling Vs. notes app, I submit to you that Drafts systematically captures geolocation data and it’s definitely not a journaling app. It’s an interesting piece of metadata (and asking the user geolocation permission is trivial, come on :slightly_smiling_face:)

But I understand, and appreciate your clarifying your stance on this.

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