A total "rethink" of the "Home" screen/concept: custom "home" page, etc

[Oshyan]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

The problem is that the Home screen has some useful functions on it (e.g. Favorites, Inbox), but its current design has many negative consequences, including a lot of seemingly “wasted” space, and the limiting of a number of useful functions (e.g. Favorites, Inbox) to being only accessible in one place: you must go back to Home to use them. These things that arguably should be universal and easily accessible functions or concepts are currently aspects of “home” rather than independent, separately viewable “collections” or “views”.

Describe the solution you’d like

I would like the “home” page (i.e. “dashboard”, or default/startup page) to not be a single, developer-created page, but instead to be able to designate any page as the “home” page. Further, I would like the functionality that is currently part of “home”, including Inbox, Recent, Favorites, Sets, and Archive, to be moved to a more generally accessible place, for example they could become part of the existing “Navigation” button functions. I should not have to go to a specific page to access these.

If they don’t belong in “Navigation”, perhaps they should be in e.g. a menu (like the “hamburger menu”), or better yet in a sidebar of some kind:

Please add traditional "tree" for navigating page structure

I must say, since I started using Anytype, the biggest frustration and surprise to me was the lack of a sidebar and traditional “tree” navigation. There seems to be the concept of page parentage, i.e. sub-pages, so the structure is there. But it is handled much more like mobile home screen nav, which is extremely limited as number of pages grow, and makes it needlessly difficult to navigate, create and maintain good hierarchies, etc. This kind of navigation paradigm was really created for mobile…

Navigation : Evernote like three column view

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. As a long time user of evernote, I would the anytype to have this view for navigation. Currently the UI is okay for a custom dashboard. It would make navigating Visually if it has evernote like structure… Describe the solution you’d like A three panel layout similar to Evernote. [image]

Idea/design inspiration: page properties and blocks sidebar

Here’s something interesting I ran across today, an app called “Craft”. It’s a more pure document type of tool, but block-based similar to Anytype, Notion, etc. What I want to point out specifically is the sidebar as shown at the time in the video linked below: [Beginner's Guide to Craft] I like that the sidebar can be persistent and “minified” very nicely. It has some similar functionality to Notion’s “ellipses” or “3 dots” menu, which is another good example. What I like in Craft…

These two ideas go together, i.e. if you make it possible to set any page or view as the startup screen, then you could take advantage of the power of Anytype (and planned features like in-line sets) to make almost anything you want. And then you are able to have the functionality that is important to you accessible very quickly with this “home” button. Maybe, in the future, you make it a “dashboard” with in-line sets, embedding of external websites, or even using plugins perhaps some kind of other data from your local system, a live RSS feed, who knows. The possibilities are endless, but only if the “home” concept is customizable. The easiest way to do that seems to be to make it just like any other page, IMO.

Describe alternatives you’ve considered

The designers and developers of Anytype could come up with a better design for the Home screen that is still rigid, but makes better use of space and makes features more accessible perhaps. But I strongly favor customization of both the “home” page itself, and the entire concept of “home” (i.e. default/startup page, dashboard, or view), as noted above.

Additional context

There are several related topics, like this:

https://community.anytype.io/t/-/1563

and this:

Ability to customize Home Screen

Moderator note: Because of the earlier date, the first post here is actually a less broad request than the second. The second post describes the request more fully. Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Not much of a problem but more of a quality of life improvement. I feel that it’d be great to move the Recents tab contents inside the search view and remove it from the dashboard. Describe the solution you’d like It’d be great to have only the “Inbox”, “Favorites” an…

But I believe I am suggesting something different than both of those: a completely different approach to “home”, which includes:

• “home” is no longer just 1 thing, and does not have to be the same for everyone
• by being able to use a Page/Object for “home”, the user gains a great deal of customization
• moving existing useful but limited functionality of e.g. Favorites, etc. into an always-accessible place

[michaellw]

@Oshyan The current “Home” screen is in line with my aesthetics, simple and majestic, but it is really not practical.

[qualquertipo]

+1

Agree with the problem.

Not fully sure what would be the best solution, but I like a lot of what @Oshyan suggested.

[lienbon]

navigation bar is really helpful.

Wish on top or left.

Objects could be drag and drop easily.

Structure is easy to handle.

[sambouwer]

@Oshyan I really like this idea to be able to customize the home/dashboard screen with objects (or widgets)! Especially the option to add objects like:

• Links to objects like we currently have on the home page under the different tabs
• (inline) Sets for often used Sets (similar to the current Favorites tab)
• A main calendar based on one or more date relations (preferably with filters for each relation ). See also Requesting calendar as one of the main tabs.
• An inbox style section for an activity feed with changes you made to objects, or notifications for changes made by others in shared objects (maybe a place in some kind of top bar would be more logical place, like next to the current hamburger menu on Android). See also Larger proposal for discussion: Notification System.

[abheek]

Calendar as the main tab would be such a productivity boost, thanks for supporting the idea. Please upvote on the feature request page, if not done already

[Oshyan]

Glad you agree! To reiterate my thinking, it is essentially this:

In-line Sets are a must already, and we know they’re coming. This by its nature includes different Views of Sets, including Calendar. Allowing the Home Screen to simply be a Page, therefore, would allow you to accomplish almost everything you and everyone else has expressed desire for, and more.

Rather than advocate for mere “customization” or specific options for the Home Screen, I think a focus should just be on making any page into any kind of “dashboard” a user wants to make, using a combination of blocks, in-line sets, and in the future, “widgets” would be great too. But again you’d want them for any page. So to simply take advantage of all that power already needing to be created for all pages, and simply use the same capability to allow a fully customized home page.

[qualquertipo]

Perfect! Agree.

By the way, I think the same idea should apply to the sidebar.

Here is a post I did about the ability to customize the sidebar

Ability to customize Sidebar items

Sidebar looks great, but I’d like to be able to customize what shows up there. Although having History, Favorites and Sets can be useful, I don’t think it should be imposed. I want to be able to add (and name) my own sections, and organize items the way I want in there, ideally with option to create folders and subfolders. Ideally I’d also want the option to disable automatically showing linked objects as children in the sidebar. I’d rather have a simple uncluttered main navigation in the sid…