Congratulations on the version 2.0 of Bear, the new features and the new design are really great.
I would like to offer an opinion about the new Folding feature. I find the idea of being able to fold sections of the notes extremely practical. However, I don’t understand this choice to make folding so complicated. In my opinion, it would be much more convenient to always leave a display button to unfold and fold the section once you have activated the feature for a section. Is this choice final?
I added a screenshot of Bear 2 with an example of the kind of icon I was thinking about.
I agree that currently to fold-unfold is cumbersome, I would say typically the idea is to unfold to read or view details in a point and then refold and move on.
I think folding is very useful in a bullet journal because you can add detail (folded) while keeping most of the bullets on the screen.
I would further add that in the least all/any non-bullet or numbered text should allow folding of the bullet lines that follow it OR (ultimately) any text should be able to fold any following indented text or items.
I totally agree. It’s too complicated… and it’s such a useful feature, too much TAPs. I would like to use folding all the time, but most often I feel I waste my time clicking and wondering which option to use.
I agree, though I was hoping Bear 2 would implement folding at the bullet level where it is more useful than at the heading. All other apps that do folding, support it at the bullet level, and is shown on the left side, where you can click to collapse/expand. The current UI is not very pleasant, and trying hard to be different.
Personally speaking, I don’t want to have extra toggles when not needed. Fold button for case of someone’s usage which is dominant on the screen is not favourable in my opinion. However, I must agree the header and folding options are now quite burried since they introduced fold/unfold all headers. But then it is what people asked for. So there is quite a conflict
I would also vote for this solution: but the – button to fold a heading, should be hidden until heading line is in focus or on mouse hoover when using trackpad.
other button icons than – could of course be used, but I also, think it should be on the right side, so it’s easy to toggle on/off on/off on/off without having to move finger or mouse arrow to the opposite side.
I have been using toggle heading and toggle/untoggle all extensively over the last days, and it’s really too much friction to fold a section as it is now.
Unfold button work very well and easy, as it is now
I do believe you can fold bullet points in bear 2 if I’m not mistaken. Just checked my notes and you can indeed! In case you didn’t now, simply hold down CMD and click on the bullet point that requires folding (for mac, not sure how it works on ios).
I was thinking of a button which appear only when an user want a section to be foldable, and is not here by default. Once the “folded section” is activated, then a fold or unfold button should always be displayed in my opinion. My point is : if a section is long enough to be folded, it is probably a section that will be fold and unfold often.
If the always displayed button to fold a “foldable” section is distracting for some users, the functionality could probably be turned off in the settings.
Maybe “Toggle folding” is not quite clear wording?
At least, for me, I was initially confused.
I initially thought “toggle folding” meant to turn on a setting (for that heading) that allows me to fold/unfold it at will (something like making the “…” permanently visible, instead of just visible until I unfold once)
I realized “toggle folding” means “fold this heading”
That is the way all the other big players (like Notion) do it. Its very intuitive and user friendly imo but the developers think it makes the clean aesthetic of bear look cluttered. I personally would much prefer the visible toggles, or at least the alternative suggested by @LeoS (although the solution provided is to a problem that wouldn’t exist in the first place with the use of toggles). Hopefully a happy middle-ground will be reached.
