Hello everyone ,
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.
Please let me know what you think