Quick and easy UX requests for wiki linking

Love the introduction of aliases in the latest beta! However with the additional power of wiki linking I would like to request two small UX improvements to how they work.

Size of the autocompletion window

If you are following the Zettelkasten method, you may have long notes titles especially with UIDs and the pop-up window for link autocompletion becomes crowded and unreadable:

CleanShot 2022-11-24 at 17.22.54

→ Please make that pop-up wider!

Save us a key press when autocompleting links to headers and aliases

Currently, if you want to link to a header or introduce an alias to a note, you

  • Type [[
  • Start typing your note link
  • Look for the note inside the popup
  • Scroll to the note itself
  • Hit Tab to complete the link
  • Type # or | to find the header or type the alias itself

The operation in bold is unnecessary. If a link is selected in the pop-up, # or | should be interpreted as actually wanting to complete that link (as if Tab was pressed) so as to bring us to the next step of entering the link (looking for a header or entering an alias).

Please remove the Tab step and have Bear understand the intent when autocompleting links: Obsidian does this and it’s a little delightful touch.

Thanks for considering those ideas :slightly_smiling_face:

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Yes, this is on our todo list.

I might be missing something here if you want to link a header instead of * Hit Tab to complete the link hit / to get the list of headers inside the note then enter or tab to complete again.
I think # is the separator obsidian use but decided to use / because is the same one we use for tags.

| (alias separator) can eventually be handled to the autocomplete panel to facilitate alias insertion but I’m not sure this is what you are proposing. What I mean is, when you hit | on the panel the result will be [[note title|]] with the caret placed before ]]

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I’ve gotta give a huge +1 on auto-complete with | inserting the currently selected wiki link and beginning alias entry. Honestly, I’ve found that every single wiki link I’ve placed since the new beta came out is using aliasing.

In regard to ux for wiki link: is there a way after typing “|” for alias or “/” for heading to keep the double brackets at the end of the wiki link? Am i missing something or do i have to set the second pair manually?

Indeed, my apologies – I mixed both apps! I meant / and not #.
But the UX could still be streamlined – if a note title is selected, you could save pressing Tab and have / being interpreted as triggering autocompletion and then entering / and prompting for the list of headers.

| could behave in the same way: if a note is selected in the dropdown, when | is pressed, autocomplete the link and simply put the caret after |. Let the user finish the link by typing ]] or simply pressing Tab.

I’m missing something here. / already trigger autocompletion and opens the header menu (one key press).

There are specific reasons you don’t want the link to be closed (]]) and the caret placed between | and ]] after you press |?

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It does not on my end, but I am using a French keyboard and I’ve seen foreign keyboard layouts may be an issue with this in other threads, maybe that’s simply the issue here.

That was to avoid pressing twice right arrow to get to the end of the link, but indeed no, auto closing it seems perfectly logical :slightly_smiling_face: