Something fuzzy this way comes šŸ»ā€ā„ļø

There is a quick animation, but it doesnā€™t get in the way of searching instantly. We might even disable it for the shortcut if people find it bothersome.

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Great news. But please keep feeding the panda, donā€™t let him die!

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Maybe give people the option to disable it in the settings?

And like so many already said, Iā€™m hyped for the new Bear. Loved your app from day one and it helped me to get through my masterā€™s degree. :slight_smile:

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Canā€™t wait to try that !!! Please add me to the bear 2.0 beta for mac OS program.
I am working on a big document directly from Bear note, but definitely miss the expand/collapse feature.
I was trying to do it in Notion but would really love to be able to stay in bear for that.

Congratulations for all the work done to integrate Panda.
Really hope you will be able to maintain the clean and minimalist approach of bear into a much stronger app.

And is there any chance you ll implement a Gmail app to add an email as a task (as todoist and tick tick do) ?

I think that is the province of a task manager, which Bear is definitely not (but Todoist and Ticktick are).
You can replicate that using automation on your device with a backlink to a specific email.

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this is why Iā€™ve been supporting Bear for so very long. Cannot wait for 2.0

HOW EXCITING. Been a long-time subscriber and user of Panda. Hopefully, I can be a part of this private beta!!!

So many features added which is great but really I would love backlinks done right which imo many apps get wrong such as craft. Apps need a collapsible area below or in a right sidebar that show notes linked and context of the link (header above, bullets below) ideally. But these thoughts come from outliner note taking apps which Bear is not at its core.

Also selfishly I would like built in templates, collaboration and a web app WAY more than tables etc but each of us have a different use case.

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I agree with you that showing backlinks in context would be super useful, particularly for knowledge extension and rapid idea connecting. But I suspect Bear 2.0+ will not do that - particularly given the lack of space in the info panel. Iā€™m guessing weā€™ll get just a very basic list of backlinks (probably not even re-sortable). Iā€™d LOVE to be wrong and that we get full paragraph/bullet context, link counts, proper merging of multiple backlinks per note, hover preview, and the ability to sort/filter the links (basically the awesomeness of Obsidian backlinks) - but my gut says thatā€™s not going to happen.

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There is a quick animation, but it doesnā€™t get in the way of searching instantly. We might even disable it for the shortcut if people find it bothersome.

Hmm. Weā€™ll see! The speed of the animation matter as well I suppose. I was going to write that Quick Find in Things did not use animation at all, but upon further inspection I see that it does, but itā€™s so quick that itā€™s imperceptible (I literally think the whole animation is less than a couple of frames on a 60Hz display).

As long as Bear feels light and extremely fast to use Iā€™ll be happy!

I really hope youā€™re wrong, and that we eventually do get inline visible backlinks. I understand that Bear canā€™t be everything, but it is literally the only single thing I really miss with Bear, but itā€™s enough that I from time to time check out note apps if I see they have backlinks.

However, I understand that developing stuff takes time, and I can imagine that integrating a readonly-part of the editor might not be that easy to develop, so I understand their choice, and I absolutely understand prioritising getting Bear 2 out the door over this.

I just really hope they eventually tackle this. It would add so much value to Bear over me.

With ā€œinline visible backlinksā€ you mean inside of the note itself?

Yes.

This is the way many note-taking and knowledge-apps do it. Typically at the top or the bottom of a note.

What this allows is you to get context based on your wikilinking and basically organically get a kind of navigation for free based on what you link. Itā€™s absolutely brilliant concept. Both Obsidian and NotePlan do this.

To be brutally honest, I really tried to make things work with NotePlan because of their inline backlinks functionality alone. However, since their UI has the notelist in the very list (and insists on opening the folder with notes all the time) I came running back to Bear and itā€™s tag-list-and-notes-in-separate-panes design.

Throwing my two cents in here. Iā€™d actually prefer if Bear didnā€™t do inline backlinks. Iā€™ve found it clutters up the design quite a bit.

Iā€™d prefer the backlinks in the info panel but some sort of indication somewhere in the editor that this note has x number of backlinks. Kind of how Obsidian does it by default on Mac.

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Actually obsidian displays the backlinks in a side-panel (which you can place where you want like everythng else in obsidian :slight_smile: ). I prefer that because 1. you donā€™t need to scroll until the end of note to see the backlinks and 2. you see the backlinks just when you want to see them.: Backlinks at the top of a note would be horrible in my eyes. However obsidian added the feature to show them also inline. In the ā€œsecond brainā€-scene that seems to be obligatory. In context of ā€œroam researchā€ - where even a tag is nothing else than a note - many notes exist mainly as collection of backlinks. But already in obsidian that approach was left. I mostly like a sidebar for viewing backlinks as tojyouso already said could clutter the design of a note

Here a screenshot of obsidians latest version (still not released). The backlinks are listed on the right side in the upper panel:

I am wondering that you ever have considered to migrate to noteplan. I throw a look into this app and quickly decided that it is too cluttered and complicated for me :wink:

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Great thread all!

When Iā€™m referring to backlinks ā€œin contextā€ I do not mean within the body of the note. If you put them at the top of the note, then you have to scroll past to get to the content. And if at the bottom, then you have no idea what backlinks exist (on longer notes) until you scroll to the end. I donā€™t find that helpful for rapid research and note traversal. Thus sidebar or info panel is the place to go.

By ā€œin contextā€ I mean displaying not just the title of the backlinks, but the entire paragraph (or bullet parent) within which the backlink exists. Without the context, a list of backlinks is nice but not nearly as helpful as being able to understand why we made the link in the first place, which you mostly get from its context.

As I noted elsewhere, and as @krssno references, I think Obsidian is the gold standard for handling backlinks. Hereā€™s an example. Note how the linked mentions can either be shown in full context or as a collapsed list. Not shown, but just as important (for me) is this: hovering over any of those links displays the full contents (in a fully scrollable hover preview) of the linked reference.

obsidian-backlinks


backlinks-collapsed

As much as I would love, absolutely love, for Bear to implement backlinks like this, I donā€™t believe they will. They are not in the game of ā€œdo what others are doingā€ but rather have a very clear vision of what a notes system is for them (Bear tagline: Markdown notes for Apple devices). Notice their tagline is not anything to do with second brains, networked thought, or anything like that. Again, I would so love to be wrong here. Having Obsidian-esque backlinks in Bear would be note-taking nirvana for me. But I just donā€™t see it happening :cry:

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Thank you very much for your passion and feedback, these kinds of posts are incredibly useful to us!

While itā€™s true that Bear is not going to make backlinks the main feature of the app it had wiki links since day 1, so itā€™s something we care about.

Our design philosophy with Bear is to provide powerful features without making the UI complex, allowing a simple and smooth UX for those people who donā€™t care about them. We want the app to be accessible to everyone and we donā€™t want to overwhelm people the first time they open it.

I can tell you what we have right now for backlinks:

  • they are shown inside a tab of the info panel
  • title and context (a bit of text before/after the link) are both shown
  • we have linked and unlinked references
  • we donā€™t have previews of the full content (and we donā€™t plan to add it)

We are internally discussing the 4th column, but no promises about that :slight_smile:

Hope this will clear up a bit our stance on backlinks!

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This is perfect, matteo! Great news.

If you decide not to go with a fourth column PLEASE find another way to keep the backlinks visible at all times on the iPad.

That is FAR more than I had expected and wonderfully welcome news! Thank you for sharing @matteo.

One follow-up question if I may: if a backlink is clicked, will the referral note be opened and scrolled to the section containing the backlink (kinda how the current Bear link-to-note-header works)?

Thanks again

Yeah this is pretty great and more than I expected. I canā€™t wait to dive into Bear 2!!