Tag Feature Request: Selectively Put Some Notes in Parent & Child Tags

Requested User Story

For the following scenario, the option “hide subtags” would be turned on in the settings.

As a user:

I would like some notes to show up in two places, in the following way:

  1. Hide all of my nested tags in the subtag (:ballot_box_with_check: Done/ Already implemented)
  2. I would like some notes to show up in two places:
    a. in the nested tag AND in the parent tag.

Example:

I would have a note titled “Shopping”
it would have two tags written in it:

#shopping” and “#shopping/clothes”

I would have a second note titled “Shirts” with only one subtag written in it:

#shopping/clothes”

For the “Shopping” Note:

Because I explicitly wrote the “#shopping” tag by itself, the note would appear in the parent “#shopping” tag’s list of notes.

Because I also explicitly wrote a path to a subtag “#shopping/clothes”; my note would also appear in the subtag.

For the “Shirts” note

Because I have the “hide subtags” option checked in the settings, this note would only show up under “#shopping/clothes” subtag.

If there were a third note, titled “Groceries”

and that note only had the “#shopping” tag in it; it would only appear in the “#shopping” tag’s list, and not in any subtag lists.

To put it more simply: you want to be able to search for notes tagged with parent tag without subtag, and this search should return also notes which have BOTH parent tag only AND parent tag with subtag. Which is probably not possible now.

Just curious (plus maybe I could help you find alternative solution) - what would be real example where you would need it?

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I think what he means is that all notes disappear from the parent tag list, if there is a sub tag of that parent attached to the note.

A note with #test #test/sub will only show in the #test/sub list even if #test was added to the note.


That was discussed here. And I must admit that the current behaviour (due to database limitations) is the only point I really hate because it makes many things just impossible for me.

Currently it doesn’t make sense at all to tag a bear note with a tag and a subtag at same time.

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Hi,
Thanks for the reply.
So, I have a “to-do” tag. In that tag, I have all of my to do lists, such as “House” “Paintings”, etc.

I have all of the main lists for all of my projects. I want to see them all in that “to do tag”

But each project has a bunch of sub-lists. So, let’s say the project is “Decorate the House.” I want to click into “#to-do/decorate-the-house” and see all of the pages I have for that project. So, I could have a page called “Buy New Windows,” etc. in that sub-tag. But I need the main “Decorate the House” note to show up in both places.

When I’m looking at all of my “to-do” notes, I don’t want to see every single note that is for every single project in my “to-do” list. I just want the main hub notes there.

But when I click into a specific project to see all of the notes I have for that project, I don’t want the main note to now be hidden becuase it is only in the parent tag.

So, I want writing “#to-do” and “#to-do/decorate-the-house” to have the same behavior as though I had put two different tags on the note. I want the note to show up wherever I explicitly tell it to, with a tag/path.

re:

“To put it more simply: you want to be able to search for notes tagged with parent tag without subtag, and this search should return also notes which have BOTH parent tag only AND parent tag with subtag. Which is probably not possible now.”

No, I want the search to be exactly the way that it is now.

I just want the declaration of tag paths to be separate.

So, if I put “#shopping/clothes” and “#shopping” in a note, it shows up in both of those paths (or in both of those searches).

Hi,
Thanks for your reply.
I’m okay if the note disappears from the parent tag; but not if I also explicitly declare the parent tag.

Three examples:

A note with “#parent” only shows up in the parent tag.

A note with “#parent/child” only shows up in the child tag.

A note with “#parent/child” and “#parent” shows up in the parent tag and the child tag.

thanks, I replied on that thread too. It was confusing because it seems that the conversation started out as a different topic.

As a workaround, could you use tagging by different tag instead of parent tag? E.g. you could tag “Decorate the house” by tag #todo/decorate and #mainprojects or something. It would probably solve some of the issues (but maybe produced new problems, I am not sure). But this is how I would solve it provided that I would like to see all my main projects separately from detailed project notes.

Yes, but under the hood, this is all search, irrespective of if you click on tag to filter only those notes or if you search explicitly typing tag names in search bar. That was what I spoke about. If at least explicit search (by typing parent tag names) would be possible, it could solve your problem. In current state, you can not explicitly (by typing tag names) search for parent tags only (in notes which have both parent tag and child subtags)

Hello everyone,

I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth repeating: tagging a note with #parent/child is the same as tagging it with both #parent/child and #parent. The note will end up with both tags, so we can’t modify the behavior of the hide subtags feature.

This is due to the way Bear’s relational database is designed, and this structure isn’t expected to change soon (it’s generally beneficial, just not for this specific feature).

If you’re interested in learning more about the inner workings of Bear’s database, I’m happy to provide a more detailed explanation. :blush:

You have given a good explanation here that is easy to understand even for non-technical users. Ultimately, bear deals with the existence of multiple tags from the same family in the same way as Obsidian. There will be good reasons for it being the way it is.

Rewriting a database is certainly not a trivial matter and the question certainly arises as to whether it is worthwhile in view of the few users who have a problem with it. To my surprise, I have noticed here in the forum that very few users use tagging as extensively as I do. It’s a limitation that the majority of users can live with, indeed they won’t even notice the limitation.

However, those who do notice the limitation will find it very painful, as it prevents them from making sensible use of all the tagging options available in Bear. And I maintain that for someone who has reasons to set several tags of the same family within a note, Bear’s behavior goes against all expectations. That’s why I’m hoping for Panda and to move some of my notes and texts there, as this problem can’t occur with single tags.

Hi,
Thanks for the suggestion; but that wouldn’t do the job; as I am trying to get the note to show up in two places. Each tag path would have the note stored at that path.

For the user experience I’m looking for, I really would want to just click a tag/folder to see it there.

Sure, I would be curious to know why it’s not realistic/ possible to do both.
Again, the use case is.

  1. Hide subtags turned on
  2. But if you explicitly write #parent and #parent/child → it shows up in both places

maybe a lot more users would use it for productivity, however, if this feature was available?

It’s not as if a feature simply needs to be added. As you can see in matteo’s explanation the database is not aware if multiple tags from the same branch exist at all. That means that the whole database concept has to be rewritten. I would certainly be very grateful to the developers for rewriting a significant part of the program just because of me, you and the few other users. On the other hand, I also understand that the development costs are disproportionate to the number of users who would even notice the change. Don’t let me lie, not more than a total of 5 users including me have raised the issue here and on Reddit since the release of bear 2

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