Wiki link does not differentiate between two notes with the same heading

Testing version:
9969
What were you doing:
Create two notes with same heading but different content. In another note, copy over the links to each of the two notes into wiki links.

What feature did you use:
“Copy Link to Note” in the context menu for note in the note list

What happened:
Both links point to the same note.

What did you expect to happen:
They point to different notes.

@devs

On wiki-linking couldn‘t also the creation date be considered as an unique identifier for a linked note?

Furthermore: if that should be solved it is the question how a user should recognise in the autocompleting field what note he means?

I guess the question is why isn’t a unique identifier used to support the wiki link reference?

Yes, sure, each not has an unique id :person_facepalming:

The main problem remains: how to know which note is the one you mean when linking from auto completion field?

Yes, this is a limitation of the copy note link feature as we have changed how the paste results in B2. My suggestion is to use the link panel ⌘K and enter a title to get a link to the note’s ID.

Gotcha. I see the hyperlink panel approach you mentioned will work.

Hate to argue on the semantics but this feels like a bug instead of a limitation, is this something that will be fixed down the road? I feel like it’s a pretty common use case that I hope will be supported.

It’s a drag to remember having to use the hyperlink panel when a note has multiple other notes with the same heading.

The only solution I can think of is using the note id inside the wiki link to differentiate between two notes with the same title, but I’d argue the vast majority just want to see the note title when using the wiki links.

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I am such a user. I do not want wikilinks to be special, they should just reflect the title. A wiki-link identifies a note by its title (so it remains portable across apps).
If a user needs to have two notes with the same title—I cannot think of a situation where that would be desirable, but that is just me—use the hyperlink style links, which use the Note-id and not the title.

2 Likes

Totally agree on the only see note title when using wiki links part. It would be very weird user experience we are also seeing the note id.

However, to make the experience better for those with multiple notes using the same title, would it make sense for Bear to present user a selection prompt to choose among the notes with the same title when tapping on such a wiki link? (basically ack the issue instead of randomly pick one for the user)

Ty ty.

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I guess this might mitigate part of the problem but in the text, you’ll still have [[note title]] without any other info provided to distinguish the N notes with the same title. The wiki link should change as well and eventually make use of the aliases but I have to think about it.