Will there be another cohort of testers added this week?
Yes, the plan is up to another 50 testers.
If you’ve signed up to the waitlist, then that should be all good. If you really want to expedite yourself, you can message me with your email so I can see if it makes sense based on what you’re looking to accomplish. That being said, testing data migration, etc. all of that is too early days at the moment. We will build a bridge for data migration between Anytype > Anytwo in the future, so there’s no need to manually do so at the moment. Regardless the new Anyblock v2 among many other things make us confident there won’t be any issues.
It’s more ad-hoc based on chat and activity.
can’t wait to get that invitation email 
Just a quick note from someone who just got access to it.
As an Anytype tester, I wanted to help out and debug.
But of course, I also wanted to explore and play around with it, just like a large part of the community. That second reason has left me a bit disappointed.
If your goal is to test and help move the “chaos” forward, no problem.
But if you’re hoping to discover an improved “Anytype,” the experience is likely to be frustrating—really. It’s understandable and has been explained by the team, but a lot of the features we’ve come to love and appreciate in Anytype are gone. At this point, the desire to explore and play around is quickly replaced by “ok… we’re going to have to roll up our sleeves and provide solid feedback to the team so that by the end of the year, we’ll have an Anytwo that people actually want to play.”
(P.S.: I’m using it without AI…).
In short, unless you’re eager to help, I recommend waiting a bit before asking to join—so you can have more fun discovering a more polished product and get that “wow” factor!
Thank you for your feedback.
It makes it easier for us, who wait. 
Dear @Shampra don’t forget that they have at moment disabled some features that was already shown in the Town Hall.
That means, internally they are already further then the things we testers see. But for the moment, they want to focus the testers attention on certain basic things.
Maybe the disabled features are still unstable or at least under heavy development. They know themself that there is still work to do, therefore there is no need for the team to get feedback about all the half-baked things at the moment.
What counts for them now, is that what’s not hidden from us.
If the basics are cleaned up, they will enable more things for us.
Personally, I expect a fast development, way faster then anything we have ever seen in Anytype.
– I speak from my own experience with writing software.
It’s hard to explain, but even without looking into the code, I can “feel” the difference between the old and tangled code and the way cleaner new one.
And btw.:
Same as you, I test it without AI.
That means, we would clearly see more features if we would use AI.
Yes, the basic features are still behind Anytype, but everything what there is, is already better!
Agree in general with your post, but I would more accurately frame it as, “not developed yet”. There are many simple things that are unlikely to change, such as Kanban, Calendar, etc. that’s just a matter of executing.
But there are other things that may need to be fundamentally different because of architecture changes. Types/Queries in intersection with Collections 2.0 is the most obvious one. And Widgets in intersection with Mini apps is the second big one.
Yes. We hope that folks answered the waitlist form in earnest. Being an active tester really is a different expectation from ‘I just want to play around’.
Check out Code-Jack’s AnyTwo – first impressions for a very detailed write-up of testing.
Also worth sharing here: @Code-Jack is also documenting the experience of being an early tester AnyTwo -- first impressions.
Separately, @kaye, can you share a bit about the current mobile development? I know desktop has been the focus, so I’m wondering what the expectations are for releasing the mobile app. Is that also expected by EOY? Are testers also able to test mobile builds, or will that come later?
We have mobile builds for our internal team, but we have not yet released it for testers because it’s too early. Today, the mobile app is functional in the sense that I can access all my objects across all my spaces—so if I really need to check something while I’m mobile, I can do it. It will not be as mature as the desktop release. I don’t think it’d be ready by end of the year. That’s as best as I can say based on today’s forecast.
This is also why we emphasise that the migration from Anytype to Anytwo might vary quite a lot depending on your needs. Unfortunately, for people who really require mobile, then the wait will be longer. But for those who are satisfied with desktop and have more basic use cases, then the wait is much shorter.
Can not wait to play around with this!
On the mobile front, I’m the one who left the feedback in my beta tester form about wanting native-feeling macOS and iOS apps — especially on iOS/iPadOS. This is THE most important thing for me, and something that I think is important for many people even if they never consciously think about it.
Over the years I’ve used so many apps where the developers reinvent the wheel and expect money for it, or even just time and attention. And that wheel does not roll well. I have come to find this exploitative, exploiting the benefits of the Apple ecosystem without providing something proper in return.
Some proprietary apps don’t even have basic iOS functions like Search! (EG searching a word should highlight that word; and if that word is in a sub-section of the app, tapping on the search result should go there. Anytype handles this in its own way, but at least it’s handling it. Some apps do not!)
I view this anti-iOS attitude as disrespect coded into the software. There is no good reason to develop an app that is worse than the main platform design language and “solidness.”
Because of these bad apps, I’ve become an iOS purist, using almost no apps that aren’t natively designed for iOS. The only holdout is the health tracking app, Bearable, that I can’t do without — and I genuinely hate using it every day. I’ve given feedback to the developers for half a decade and they don’t care.
—
Sure, Apple has been getting quirky with their HIG standards, but their approach is still the gold standard for an iOS app. That SwiftUI “solidness” that an app has.
The only app developer I’ve seen reinvent the wheel and do it as good or better than Apple is Things by CulturedCode. It seems to be very rare/difficult to reinvent this wheel and make it feel/work good on iOS.
If Anytwo (which I think should be called Anything !) *feels* like Notion or Evernote, or like some “soft, non-solid” iOS-disregarding app, that is an instant disqualifier from me ever using it — just as I ditched Notion and Evernote like hot potatoes, especially when Evernote went through their “evolution” away from platform-native apps.
It’s this strange user-side perception that the my interaction with the app are “floating” between the input and the app’s response. It’s just not “solid” or “direct.” I don’t know how else to describe it. I don’t know how to design great UI/UX, I’m just very attuned to when I experience bad UI/UX, and am beholden to develops upholding their responsibility to design great UI/UX. Any developer that doesn’t know how to design great UI/UX should be sticking explicitly to the platform standards!
If Anytwo doesn’t conform to iOS UI/UX standards, I will never use it. And I wish more people had this standard and principle with their apps, because then developers would be less inclined to think they can get away with their mucked up reinventions of the wheel.
(Sidenote: I was so surprised to learn that macOS Anytype was built on Electron, because how did you guys do it right while Evernote gave us that strange compromise of an app?? It’s proof that Evernote chose to ruin their desktop app!)
—
As for Anytype for iOS, it is almost too “solid” and “blocky,” and that’s actually what introduces friction against me using Anytype as diligently as Apple Notes. (Though I use Notes and Anytype for two different use cases, so it works out.)
When the mobile app was released a couple years ago I was soooo relieved that it essentially conformed to iOS sensibilities, because it meant I had found my long-sought Evernote replacement. This was the primary reason I committed to Anytype as my knowledge base app, seeing that the desktop and mobile apps had platform-aligned UI/UX — and I’m hoping you don’t betray this now.
—
As for macOS, I find this to be less of a concern. Notion even felt okay on macOS, though it was still strange and not-Mac-like.
I think this macOS vs iOS differentiation comes down to the keyboard/mouse being more forgiving and less constrained on desktop, and also because the screen and interface is larger and less intimate.
But iOS is a locked-down interface with one strict design language, which is more intimate due to size, and which is literally in our faces when we hold our phones too close. So apps need to conform to that. Otherwise they feel like a violation of that intimacy; forcing us to back up from the device and figure out how to deal with the reinvention of the wheel and manage unexpected scenarios. On mobile, an app with its own wheel sticks out like mold. It is never positive. An app like Things eventually fades into the background, but an app like Bearable always sticks out.
—
In conclusion, I wanted to emphasize this on my form and again here on the forum, because from what I’ve observed, I’m concerned that the glimpses I’ve seen of Anytwo for desktop/macOS already has that “floaty feel”…
I am praying the mobile app does not, at all. And that sharing this input from the beginning can ensure Anytwo is a solidly-designed app on all platforms, particularly macOS and especially iOS.
Oh no! I missed the email for registration and now seems like its too late!
Looking forward to join the next cohort !!!
I had always been using Anytwo as a PKM and I was fine with the limitations of the current version.
But I need to organise communication & action tracking with a group of parents for my kids’ school (some are really not power users). And I quickly stumbled against critical impediments to collaboration. To the point where I don’t envision much how Anytype can pretend to position itself as a collaborative tool.
For instance :
- The inability to create an action directly from a page… you can only create an action on the side & then create a link with the action on the page where you take notes (double manipulation that is unacceptable to new users)
- The inability to dynamically create elements from a template
e.g. a template of a page holds an inline collection, when a user create a new page, it should create a new collection automatically, specifically for the new instance of that page… - The inability to display contextual information (another version of the point above).
E.g. I create a “People” type with 2 templates '“Parent Profile” & “Kid Template” + a dropdown property “role (parent/kid)”
In the first template, I add a query :- From which I can create a new People with the “role : kid” with an automatic backlink to that parent
- Which displays all people with the property “role : kid” & backlinked to this parent.
- The inability to link a User to a Profile Type.
This would allow me to invite users to input any info about them - such as phone number, kids, email… and display a query of all tasks assigned to them
Anyway… I understand the current Anytype can’t and will never be able to do any of these.
And other needs too, like :
- The ability to show desired properties on a Card view of a link
E.g. an action has an assignee, that’s what I want to see in the card, not its description which is the only element we can display with the Object type (I don’t even see the point of this later option) - The ability to insert a property on a page and choose if we want to display the property name or not (for beautiful page layout purposes)
I am looking forward to drop my hands on AnyTwo to see how, by building it from the ground up, you have been able to prepare the foundations for these use cases.
I don’t know when to test, but I can’t wait to test Anytwo. I hope to be in the next wave @kaye 
. From the Alpha stage onwards I can help localize it to the Turkish language.
Been supporting anytype since it’s earliest days.
So the Anytwo pivot has been polarizing, but quite exciting.
But I’m hyped to try out “Anytwo.”
Signed up a bit ago, and would be honored to be chosen as a tester again for the new product if needed.
Also have some great names to consider for “Anytwo”, but I’ll hold back on those if it’s too early for consisteration. @kaye
There’s a discussion in the Anytype community space here where you can add your suggestions.
Or, a number of us have provided feedback here on the forum. The Any Team should see your feedback in either spot.
As a tester, I was excited to hear that AnyTwo had started its closed beta. Unfortunately, I didn’t get an invitation to participate.
Guys, I know you all want to become testers, that’s well understandable.
But believe me:
The team has already more to do then they can effort.
It would be a hindrance to have even more testers.
Honestly, I believe that they must be on the edge to burn-out.
– Alone @Shampra and my humble self do our best to drive them into it. But there are also some other highly active testers in addition. We all together flood the team permanently with reports and requests. And many of our inputs pull tails of replies and discussions after it. The team must handle all this and they do so much more then “only” that!
You wouldn’t believe how much they do; I ask myself every day how Kaye is able to handle so much?
It is as if he works 16 hours per day, but even then it looks impossible to get such an amount of work done.
I can tell you, since I became a tester, I sit all day long on the PC and write one request after the other, suffering from sleep deprivation since the first day. The permanent flood of notifications and everything else is barely manageable.
With more testers, the team would only get more duplicates of already requested things and couldn’t handle the chaos anymore.
Give them some time til the situation becomes quiter. When they are ready, they will surely invite some guys more. At the moment, it would be too much for everyone – us already active testers included.
We need to read the other testers inputs to avoid reporting the same. There is much more traffic in the feedback board then here in this forum.
– Please be patient, the thing that they cook becomes a shining gem and the release will be relatively soon!
Many of of you’ll get your chance before the release, but at the moment, it would be “too much”.