The graph view of anytype is a powerful rendering of all of the content in a space. But I am afraid this powerful view limits its usability by showing too big a picture. There are currently 3 boolean filters for the view: relations, links & unlinked objects. These are not enough.
HOW COULD IT BE DONE
Support filters in the graph view. It could have preset keys Example:
types: <select types>
relations: <select relations>
property (relation) tag = later
Stretch goal: The filters themselves are dynamic (think a DSL variant of graphQL) to support queries like:
page-contains: pattern
rechable from node X
etc.
REAL WORLD USE CASES
Cutting the noise: The graph view shows unnecessary atoms e.g: Every link ever typed into any note in anytype goes into the bookmark type. (It is a separate concern that they should not exist if later on removed from a note).
Another related example would be: I want to delete all bookmark objects which do not have an incoming link. There isn’t a view to locate them!
RECOMMENDED ALTERNATIVES
N/A
ADDITIONAL CONTEXT
I would also like to point out that the fundamental graph rendition of Anytype is an innovation. It would be strategic to invest into making this graph rendition soak into the user’s minds. This promotes the knowledge garden in the mind & on anytype are in sync! The graph view needs more power.
Support object filtering in graph view, for example, only display nodes of a particular object type.
HOW COULD IT BE DONE
click the search icon on the top right
allow entering filter queries
REAL WORLD USE CASES
Most of the time, I don’t want to see the full graph since many of the sub graphs are not related. I would prefer to be able to zoom in to a set of nodes to remove the cluttering. For example, I would like to have it only display nodes of a particular custom object type.
Lets just say we have a tag input named “archive” or a checkbox relation named “archive” which would mean this object is no longer relevant & filtered out from view in all sets & collections.. But these objects will still show up in the graph view as we don’t have the option to filter objects by relation in graph view
How Could It Be Done?
Just add an option to filter objects in graph view
Real World Use-Cases
This would make graph view much more organised & handy
Let users filter bookmarks out of the graph view to reduce clutter
HOW COULD IT BE DONE?
Treating bookmarks like blocks instead of types could declutter the graph view, and so would adding a setting that filters them out of the graph view.
REAL WORLD USE CASES
This feature would make it possible for people to use anytype to collect links without making the graph view slower or less usable.
RECOMMENDED ALTERNATIVES
Maybe you could add a “show image and description” option to regular cmd+f links as an alternative to bookmarks
Bookmarks could be treated like blocks embedded in types rather than types themselves, like how headers are treated now (this would also make it possible to delete bookmarks by right clicking rather than just orphaning them)
Bookmarks (and other types!) could be filterable so that they don’t show up in the graph view
ADDITIONAL CONTEXT
I use anytype to collect inspiration, websites, and products, which means I have almost a hundred bookmarks & links on a few pages. Since most of my bookmarks are references or items on shopping lists I can’t just remove them, and I’d rather use bookmarks than regular links because they have pictures and descriptions.
Here’s part of a page where I used links (I wish I could use bookmarks here but they’d ruin my graph view):
i was looking for something like this - i am a very visual person, so the graph view is almost my default! i need to be able to manipulate colours manually, and if possible, according to relations.
also adjusting icon sizes for graph view to create hierarchy would be appreciated. i understand the whole idea of anytype is that it doesn’t have hierarchy, but i need to order pages etc.
also request for us to be able to edit these bookmark icons because they don’t show up on the actual object, but can make graph view really awful to see important info, especially if it’s linked to something of higher importance.
Give the ability to hide certain object-types from graph view (settings of object-type in library)
Give the ability to hide certain relations from graph view (settings of relation in library)
Give the ability to hide specific objects from graph view (settings of individual object)
This way the Graph view could be de-cluttered in a generic way, but also cherry-picked objects could be disappearing
My example:
I have humans as objects
In task-object i have a relation of assignee to object type human
When i have many tasks, linked to me (which i do), i have a big ball of tasks, arranged in a circle around me
But i am not interested in even showing the task connections to persons, i am only interested in object-links to information, documents, other tasks etc.
Hey @shur3d, a lot of the points you brought up can now be done using the new graph view we’ve implemented for sets. You can use any filters you want since it’s just a regular set view.
Man you made my day
I never thought about that! Awesome!
But I think there is basically one nice-to-have feature which can’t be used right now: Jumping from an object into a customized graph view
This would only work if
a) main graph allows settings for filtering
b) somehow showing the present object into another set/collection (which is rather complex i think)
Am I right?
But anyways thanks a lot for your great suggestion
I recently come across this reply of yours and it got me thinking. As a researcher, one of my struggles are how I can see the broader picture and connect different physical concepts with each other. The normal graph view was a good idea to do so but since my space is getting ever so bigger, it’s hard to find anything in it.
But having the ability to filter the graph view in sets have some big potentials I guess but I’m struggling to tune it to my needs or maybe it’s not possible at the current state so I appreciate if you can help me.
I need to see all the connections ( relations and links/backlinks ) that there is to a certain object. Not only that, I need to see how far the connections go. Imagine a scenario where the object X has three links to other objects and 4 relations with other object. But each of those object have other links/backlinks and relations too.
Is it possible to see all these connections starting from the object X?
Adding another voice here, Anytype is falling behind on their graph view. It’s very basic and many other apps are starting to make their graph more versatile, which is a big bummer because I love Anytype. Highly recommend the ability to at least filter by object & relation.
It would be great to be able to filter graph view by tags. For example when I am finished with a certain project I tag it as “Archive”, it would be great to be able to filter out anything that is archived from my graph view.
I want to add my support for this as well. With all the new “X as an object” implementations, things are becoming a bit messy.
I have a Daily Notes type, which is not particularly useful in my graph view, it is more of a necessary evil for my workflow in Anytype. I would love for it to be better filterable (it makes links completely unusable for me).
Alternatively, I would not mind if the graph button could open a custom Set in graph mode instead, but that feels like it would muddy up the UX design for something the graph view should inherently support instead.
Graph view and filters are necessary for having a 2D view of relations between objects. Without filters, graph view is useless, just a decoration. Also we need to be able to save a specific filtered graph view in a page.
