Universal "back" action

Submission

Jon Plummer

Mar 24, 2021

Board: Features
Status: Pending

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Universal "back" action

I find myself sometimes struggling to navigate back to today's note as I move around from note to note, create notes, etc. It seems that there are various arrows in the macOS UI, and they don't all do the same thing. Keeping my location history in a single stack and moving through it might be more intuitive. + navigate back/forward between daily notes, not only project notes.

Jon Plummer

Mar 24, 2021

15

Eduard MetzgerMar 25, 2021

There is only one history back/forward and thats bottom right of the sidebar. The other arrows are for switching days or months. Not sure how to change this? All arrows have a purpose.

Jon PlummerMar 25, 2021

Eduard Metzger: This didn't do what I expected when I first tried it a while back, so I stopped. Maybe it does what I expect now. I'll give it another whack. Is there a key command for it?

Eduard MetzgerMar 25, 2021

Jon Plummer: Yes, it's `CMD+[` and `CMD+]`. Let me know if it's what you are looking for. It just doesn't cover the days. So if you switched from yesterday to tomorrow it won't give you that as back option, but if you switch between anything you can click on in the sidebar.

Jon PlummerMar 25, 2021

Eduard Metzger: "it just doesn't cover the days" – why not? Because "daily notes" is thought of as a single place?

Jon PlummerMar 26, 2021

Eduard Metzger: Okay. Here's a behavior that seem odd that relates to the "back" action. 0) I'm on a named note [[Bob]] 1) I click "Daily Notes", arriving at today's note 2) I type a link to a new note, for example [[Alice]] 3) I click the link, thus creating and navigating to the [[Alice]] note 4) Clicking on "Daily Notes" does nothing, as it is already selected 5) "Back" goes to [[Bob]], not my daily note 6) "Forward" from [[Bob]] takes me to today's daily note I expected "back" from [[Alice]] to take me to today's note. (I also expected to be able to create [[Alice]] in a new window, but that's a different request.)

Eduard MetzgerMar 29, 2021

Jon Plummer: Yes, it breaks a bit with the logic. The arrows in the sidebar control the history of the sidebar selections. Switching between daily notes doesn't change the sidebar selection.

Eduard MetzgerMar 29, 2021

Jon Plummer: Saw this also recently, apparently creating new notes has a timing problem (I guess). The note is added to the sidebar too late, after the selection command has been issue. And that messes up the order with the back button I guess. It's noted.

Eduard MetzgerApr 3, 2021

Jon Plummer: Have fixed this bug (creating a new note from a link was not selecting it in the sidebar, hence the issues with the back button you experienced), will be in the next update!

s__dJul 31, 2021

Eduard Metzger: will it be possible to go back between daily notes?

Eduard MetzgerAug 13, 2021

s__d: Yes, this needs to be added to the back/forward algorithm. Thanks for pointing it out.

Rob GraceMar 25, 2021

On mobile, this is sorely missed. But I recently (re)discovered that the command bar pops up a recent note history. These appear to be non-daily notes only

RhubarbApr 28, 2021

Related: https://noteplan.canny.io/navigation/p/back-forward-buttons-in-ios

s__dJul 31, 2021

"Go back" ( `cmd+[` and `cmd+]` ) doesn't work between daily notes, there shouldn't be a difference between daily and project notes. I should be able to just "go back" to previous note. :)

Mushy RoomyOct 5, 2021

Seems like cmd+[ and cmd+] are indent and outdent on iPadOS instead of navigation. Why the discrepancy? I would much rather have a shortcut for navigation than in/outdent which has an easy alternative with tab/delete.

Rob GraceFeb 18, 2022

Another thought on how an iOS- specific implementation of this could be done: Use swipes left/right from offscreen. Eduard had pointed out to me that this is already used to expose the sidebar, and deal with showing/hiding panes on iPad, but I think there's an option to distinguish swipes on the upper vs lower part of the screen. In iOS 15, Safari does this to allow a swipe on the address bar (bottom of screen) to switch tabs, vs the usual fwd/back navigation on the upper part of the screen. So in NotePlan, this could be: - lower 1/3: left/right swipe from offscreen would expose/hide sidebar as it does now - upper 2/3 of screen: use for fwd/back navigation. I think this nicely mirrors the same "shuffling pages" operation in Safari and similar apps with History navigation, PLUS feels similar to the on-screen swipes between days of the NP daily view (And, iOS Multitask uses bottom-edge swipes to switch apps ("context switch", like bringing in the sidebar is) so this paradigm isn't too unusual)