The Latest Update Feels Half-Assed. Again

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1

I was really excited when I first discovered Anytype - about a year ago. I thought I’d finally found the app for me. This was mainly because collaboration and shared spaces were on the way, apparently in the first quarter of 2024. Then it was delayed a few times and then it finally got released but as with pretty much every feature you’ve rolled out, it’s pretty much unusable.

Nothing works properly.

Let’s go through them one by one.

  • Shared spaces. This is all well and good but I can’t use it. You have this ridiculous, absolutely nonsensical thing where when someone leaves a space, either because they were kicked out or voluntarily, you send them an email with a download link and actually invite them to download all of the data from the space! I mean, it’s just amazing how insane that is. How am I supposed to share Anytype with my team if I know you’re going to encourage them to steal all my data! I just can’t get over how ridiculous it is. And it STILL isn’t fixed.
  • The Web clipper. Another feature I was super excited for. And another feature that is so flawed, I can’t use it, it’s completely useless. You STILL can’t even save bookmarks to a template. People have been complaining about this for months and nothing happens. The only way bookmarks make the slightest bit of sense is if you copy and paste everything manually. You can’t save them to a set, the option to include the page content is a joke (why even include it as an option if it’s that bad?). I just tested it again as I haven’t looked at this feature for a long time and the bookmark I tried to create randomly added a load of tags that I didn’t select.
  • Tags. Half-assed again. I’m a heavy tags user, so another feature I have been looking forward to for ages is tags as an object. Where is it? We were promised this months ago! I still use tags (unlike shared spaces and the web clipper) but all they’re good for is filtering sets (or lists or whatever you’re calling them now). You can’t even get a list of everything that has a specific tag, let alone explore the tags and find related tags etc. like you can in Capacities for example.
  • The Graph. Half-assed. This is something else that doesn’t work good enough for it to be useful. I would like to use this but because it’s so limited, it feels like nothing more than a gimmick. And as for that ‘Flow’ thing whatever that’s supposed to be, god knows. The whole app is like a graveyard of abandoned and half functioning features.
  • The Kanban View. Once again, half done. I don’t really use it, although I’m a big fan of Kanban views in other apps, so I’m sure I would use it if it was better. Still has loads of problems. For example, it defaults to tags to create the columns and because I heavily use tags, I end up with hundreds of columns when I create a kanban view so I just don’t bother. There are other missing features too like a preview of the content in the objects
  • The Colours. The original colours for highlights and text are just awful, really bad. I don’t know who you paid to come up with that mess but they want firing. Atrocious, you can hardly even read coloured or highlighted text. Okay, so you introduced an option to add your own CSS file, which I did. I hated the original colours so much, I spent about a week learning CSS purely so I could change them. But even if you do go to all that trouble, the colours don’t transfer to phones or the web clipper etc. Half done. Again.
  • The Latest Update. Half-assed. And, I would argue not really that important either. God knows why you’re spending time moving the library around when hardly anything works properly. Also, in the All Objects list, for some reason I have a load of random pages that I’ve apparently updated in the last 7 days that I don’t even know where they came from. Obviously some kind of glitch, but there’s no way I’ve updated them in the last 7 days - I’m not even sure I even created them in the first place and if I did it was months ago. And the relations are half done, it’s just the same old story yet again.
  • Import export - half assed again, to the point it basically doesn’t work. I spent a few hours trying to import a load of my notes from other apps once and all I could get to import was the note titles, no body / content, no tags etc.

I can’t really be bothered writing anything else in detail but it’s the same across the entire app. There is so much other stuff that doesn’t work properly or I’m unhappy with too.

  • I STILL can’t create an object from a set without the title disappearing and I have to retype the thing. This has been going on for months too.
  • You can’t copy and paste from Microsoft apps. If you do, it pastes it as picture - totally unhelpful.
  • Why is there still no date as object?
  • There still isn’t a preview option in gallery view either - something else I’ve been waiting for for months.
  • I constantly have to force quit the application - twice today!
  • And what happened to this task force or whatever you were calling it? At the last town hall meeting, remember the one where everyone was complaining about nothing being finished, yeah, we were told you had a team dedicated to fixing everything, as a top priority. Well, they haven’t done much have they.
  • No AI
  • No API
  • Calendar - half-assed. No duration, no week view, no year view, tons of features missing
  • Tasks - half-assed
  • File Management. Total waste of time.
  • We don’t get told what’s been updated. Like this one in the last couple of days. When you do an update, why can’t you announce it, it’s not hard. “hey guys, we have the new beta version out today, here are the features… this is the beta version though so it might cause these xyz problems. The proper version will be out on the 14th…”
  • The android app is bad

It just feels like you’re in a hurry to add new shiny features all the time but you never complete any one feature to a high standard. It’s incredibly frustrating. Everything is just slopped out, hardly any of it works. I’m just fed up with it.

Is that really what you want to create? a half-assed, corner cutting mess of incomplete and unusable features? Where you’re so desperate for new users, all the old users leave because they know everything is poor

And you’re even moving to a new system now I hear, so what? you can make even more features that don’t work properly?

I just can’t be bothered anymore.

2

While I agree with many of the points about incomplete implementations (but this has already been covered extensively in other posts), I totally disagree with others. As a result, I’m replying mainly to tone down the post (the vocabulary seems a bit violent to me…).

No.
You don’t like them. I’m not a big fan too. But it’s not awful.
Many love it and it’s part of the design choices to have pastel colors rather than aggressive ones (even if they would be more visible).

Here, I hope it’s a first step too because I agree, it’s not user-friendly at all (there are ways to improve it and make it even more powerful, but there’s an FR for that)

As much as I agree that a major release needs to be commented on, it’s still disappointing when it’s only “half” functional.
But beta or alpha updates… it’s their role to help refine features before releasing them to everyone. And to allow beta-testers to do their job.
These versions need to be commented on if they correct a bug or bring something that needs to be tested. Whether the team is wasting time explaining that it’s a character change somewhere, an update to an indirect brick (or the core)… I’d rather they worked on these “half” features!
Want to see it all? Github and the source code is exhaustive.
Just want to use it (no debugging or anything)? Use only the “Release” versions

Disagree. It’s a long debate, but I firmly believe that you need a tool that’s already well finished and functional before adding these “overlays”.

I suppose you opened a ticket for each?

Don’t get me wrong, I quite agree with the rest, I’m looking forward to a lot of improvements.
The latest posts talking about a redesign to speed things up, more extensive UI/UX work, etc. leave me hoping for a lot.

3

Don’t care Shampra, sick of the whole thing.

4

I feel like this is overly negative. I agree with a lot of the points, but it’s a little combative. Some of this is personal preference (colors, and I for one am glad that there’s no AI), but some of these points are fair. I think the team should finish a feature completely before moving on, so that it becomes an integrated part of the whole application.

5

Thank you for such a detailed message. I can tell you’re passionate, and I appreciate your honesty. While I agree with many of the points you’ve raised, I don’t think it’s entirely fair to label it as “pretty much unusable.”

First, you’re using an alpha version. It’s expected that not everything works as you’d hope—it’s still very much a work in progress. This update involves a massive technical overhaul, with a complete rework of our data store, search engine, and upgrades to the any-sync protocol. The primary goal here is to establish a solid foundation, which means some features might seem incomplete or rough right now. This isn’t “half-baked”; it’s necessary groundwork.

You’re right about multiplayer. It was delayed, and I agree it was delivered in a raw state. We’re the first to tackle this problem in this way, so a few extra months were needed. But it was crucial to release it now, even if it’s rough, to gather real-world feedback. This approach helps us iterate and refine the technology that provides our users with autonomy. We’re focused on building a solid base first; UX improvements will come, but they can’t happen without this underlying structure.

Regarding updates like the library change, I understand why it might seem pointless. But there’s logic behind it, as it addresses specific issues while laying the groundwork for what’s next. You’re seeing just the tip of the iceberg—a lot of work happens under the hood, and judging based on a small UI change doesn’t capture the full picture.

Many of the things you mentioned could be fixed relatively quickly, but why patch things up if the foundation isn’t solid? We’re prioritizing technology, ui primitives and the navigation patterns. Once those are in place, we can address smaller issues. I know it’s frustrating, but these steps are crucial for building a long-term, sustainable product.

You might feel that moving to a new system is just to add more unfinished features. Actually, it’s the opposite—it’s about improving the foundation, not adding shiny distractions. It’s about to bring clear primitives.

This alpha phase is meant for testing and uncovering issues, so perhaps it’s just a bit early for you to engage fully with the app. If you’ve paid for Anytype please let me know, and we’ll arrange a refund. I understand how frustrating it can be when something you were excited about isn’t quite there yet.

Thanks again for your feedback—it’s both heard and valued. Our team has mixed feelings about your post. On the one hand, we’re excited that you’ve taken the time to give us such direct feedback. On the other hand, the tone feels a bit aggressive, which can be disheartening for us. We’re here to improve, and we’re grateful for your input.

6

As much as I agree with some of your points, I see that in the recent updates, Anytype team has solely been focusing on improvements and trying bolder changes in UI/UX, adding new underrated widgets, and a unique way to navigate between spaces with the sidebar. Even so, I feel it can be improved further. The new all-object menu, which I liked, might need more polishing, but it honestly looks better than the previous one. I wish I could share my feedback in a post if I have time for UI/UX changes that will improve it.

But honestly, I wish the team would keep this approach, focusing on what already exists, maintaining a solid, usable UI/UX, making more improvements for Collection/Sets, which are the core key for me, and develop better ways to manage my data, like improved methods for self-hosting, backing up data, and switching between vaults like Obsidian, better security or others. so please as much as people want features like publish to web, whiteboard and honestly even formulas it can easily delayed, or it will be ending up half-baked.

8

@anton I’m delighted that you took the time to consolidate the foundations, and I agree with most of what you say, except this:

I don’t agree, for the simple reason that I think that most users, after having experimented with multiplayer, don’t use it because of the absence of (in order of priority/desirability):

  1. Notification of Edits/Newly created Objects/Newly created blocks.
  2. Comments/Chat system.

I’m well aware that such feature will come in less than a year’s time, but I question the quality of the feedback you can get in the absence of these features, which in my opinion are essential to use multiplayer in the first place. I’d like to see them integrated, even in the most basic form, so that I can experiment with several people on shared Spaces!
The local-first community club is a perfect example, with over 250 inactive members. The enthusiasm was there from the start, but even the workarounds to interact overwhelmed the members. But perhaps what you really needed was feedback on the backend, not on usability?

9

I understand your frustration and i also feel development is taking too long. Doesn’t necessarily makes it true. Somethings take time, and somethings, once implemented, it will be very hard to reverse, so they need to be very well tested and thought of. It’s better to solve these issues on pre-release versions.

Still… i agree on some points. Bookmarks templates should be given priority, for example. It’s the reason Web Clipper exists in the first place.
It’s still very frustrating to see Android app (not sure about iOS), uses filters generaly for all sets. What’s up with that, right!?

There are many people that use Anytype already as a finished product, like me, and issues that affect your everyday, should be priority.

I am very grateful to Anytype. I use it daily to keep my life organized. It’s been a ride to have everything setup, but i did it, and i won’t change to another solution any time soon. It’s been a tremendous helpful tool for my ADHD. My wife thanks you, without even knowing i use it XD

10

We live in different worlds. In the world of distributed systems, you can’t simply make a fix; you need to carefully think through and test everything before making it public. You’re right; this testing isn’t about identifying missing features—it’s about validating the protocol and code that powers this multiplayer experience. The local-first lover club example helped us to highlight some issues, guiding us to think them through and find solutions.

Otherwise, we would have launched with things that didn’t work and wouldn’t have had time to fix them quickly. This is often what happens with protocols that aren’t built on a foundation of real-world use. Distributed systems are hard to perfect.

11

While I agree with most, if not all, of the points made by @MikeyP, I do believe your post comes across as overly aggressive in its wording. While the frustrations you express are valid, understandable, and come from a place of passion for the product, being aggressive in your language doesn’t help anyone.

Please keep in mind that the team works very hard, and every update comes from a place of passion and good intentions. There is no ill intent, and posts worded in this way can be demotivating, especially when the team puts significant effort into each update.

That said, I do think there are some small areas where the Anytype team could improve.

First, every update, no matter how small, should include patch notes (update notes or comments) to inform users. This helps us understand what has been fixed and what we can test or use, even for beta updates on the testing branch.

This is an important step for improving both user expectations and transparency in communication.

Second, it feels like the team is stretched too thin. I’ve mentioned this a few times, but many of the “unfinished” features seem to be the result of trying to do too much at once. A more focused approach would likely lead to better results.

Third, I feel the team says “yes” to too many features without providing any kind of timeline. This “over-promising” doesn’t help, and it might even hinder both the community and the team.

While I understand that many of these features are coming someday, many likely won’t arrive within two years, which can make them feel like empty promises. Saying yes to almost every feature request also puts immense pressure on the team, which could be why some features feel underdeveloped (which is understandable).

One last thing—@anton, you mentioned that Anytype is still an alpha product, but we received an Open Beta: We did it :balloon: email a year ago. Which is it? This is a small example that adds to the perception of a lack of focus or trying to do too much at once.

Please know that I truly appreciate all the hard work and effort the team puts into this product. I hope you see this post as positive and constructive criticism. <3

12

First: Obviously. I think it’s what’s happening. For the alpha we do it in our slack channel for alpha testers. With the last release we also doing this in the alfa.

Second: Yes, this is what is happening right now. One small team, one project at a time. We have four until the end of this year. Will see the results.

Third: Our communication on this front will improve. I’m not sure which features you’re referring to when mention - two years to delver, but we plan to create a clear system where you’ll be able to see what’s planned for the next four months in detail. The new roadmap is coming out very soon, and I hope this approach will lead to fewer “unmet expectations.”

On the last thing - I think it would be better you read with focus. When I mention alpha in this thread - it means I discuss the alpha - the topic starter of this thread - the feedback on the last update which is the alfa release.

Thank you for sharing your perspective :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

13

I know it’s not fair to compare with other apps, but, here is the pages of Capacites, right from the top menu of their offical website. What’s new with detail notes, roadmap, what’s next and a requests/bugs integration, all in one place.

Screenshot_20241008_121137
Screenshot_20241008_1211371600×1283 169 KB

14

As you can see, we use the forum for feature requests, bug reports, and general feedback. We use GitHub as a roadmap and code management tool, and Linear as an issue tracker. All these tools are connected and work well together.

Building and maintaining a dedicated website for this at our current stage would be a bit of an overhead. The existing setup works as it is, and so far, it has been effective for our scale.

Nobody has complained about release notes being in the app so far. The roadmap is also going to be more detailed.

19

I’ll take you up on that.

I was actually eager to become a member, wrongly assuming membership is something more than getting another subscription service. The extra services offered to paying users are irrelevant to me, so their purchase makes little sense.

21

please write to [email protected] and we will make this happen

22

First of all, you have no right to use this kind of tone around here and it’s just a disrespect to all the developers who provided us with this amazing app.

I’ve been with Anytype for almost 3 years now and I’ve been lucky to be in this journey but the point is that no one has forced me to use Anytype, the same way that you’re not forced to do so. If you’ve chosen to use it, I assume it’s because you saw some potential alignment with your kind of workflow and what Anytype has to offer. I’m not saying that Anytype is perfect and it should be seamless for you to use it but to go to this length to basically insult all the work the team has done is not acceptable. Especially since Anytype and most of its features are completely free so you’re not even paying for it with your own money (assuming of course that you haven’t subscribed to it.)

If you take a good look around, you can see that a large amount of features that are present in the app comes from the community and how they together with the devs, collaborated, though and discussed together so that it can bear fruit eventually. From personal experience, I’ve seen how devs listen and seriously have taken into account a large amount of our suggestions, feedback and criticism. But this kind of tone, shouldn’t have any place in this kind of vibrant, thriving community.

Again from personal experience, I’m simultaneously using Notion, Obsidian and Anytype as my main tools among others such as One Note, Google Keep, etc. But the reason anytype has become my Life OS is not because it’s perfect without any problem, but it’s because it has the most amount of feature set that I’m looking for with my workflow + it has a community to build this app together. For instance, I’ve longed for the inline LaTex feature since the beginning and it finally been added. I, among countless other suggested this to the Devs and they made this a priority and shipped it a couple of months back.

So, I kindly suggest you make separate posts, feature requests and suggestion in the community to make your dream app a reality or feel free to leave Anytype for the numerous options that are available.

23

So, was this long silence really all about re-architecting the underlying system? It took nearly a year? I’m not here to criticize, just genuinely curious. I actually stopped using Anytype quite a while ago, even switched to several other tools, and witnessed some software go through crucial stages in their lifecycle—like Affine, CAP, Notion, and so on. Even Obsidian, with its small team, has added advanced table interactions across platforms to address users’ pain points, and SiYuan Notes, developed by just two people, has managed to solve thousands of issues.

I haven’t used Anytype in a long time. When I downloaded it again recently, I saw that even the Kanban support for mobile, which I mentioned a year ago, still hadn’t been completed. Do we have any updates that clearly show substantial progress? Has our alpha phase dragged on for too long? This should have been an important phase in witnessing the growth of a “remarkable” software, but now it seems to have become an excuse for deferring user needs and extending development time.

When we talk about software with “long-term, continuous development,” the emphasis should be on “continuous development,” not “long-term.” In a post I made before, I listed over a dozen issues that have been bothering the community for a long time. Now, a year has passed, and they still remain on that list. Instead, we have a collaboration feature seemingly designed to please enterprise clients, which was suddenly pushed to the top of the roadmap, along with a subscription plan. I wonder, when you decided to start charging, did you consider that you are still in an alpha phase? Have you run out of funding? The pricing model is based on storage capacity and the number of collaborators, rather than something like Obsidian’s early access to beta features. I suppose you’re aware that there aren’t any new features or updates for those who had high hopes for Anytype, because none of the ten-plus items I mentioned last year have been done.

I hope the team understands that when I say “recently,” I don’t mean the last few days or weeks, but rather nearly six months. I’m curious: why does this self-proclaimed extraordinary software seem so mediocre when it’s finally time to show its potential? I don’t usually like to make comparisons, but as I mentioned, many similar tools, even the slower-moving Notion, have gone through a remarkable lifecycle. Yet, our software is still in alpha. I used to have an Anytype group with almost 500 members, and even made self-hosting tutorials for Anytype on video platforms. But now, unfortunately, that group has been renamed to “Comprehensive Note-Taking Software Group.”

The team seems reluctant to make any commitments, never giving a definite timeline for straightforward improvements like Kanban view support, graph view on mobile, or encryption key changes. These are clear enhancements, even though this extremely insecure login method has affected many people.

Still, I want to thank Anytype for the excitement it once brought to me and my community. Most of us were attracted to the beautiful P2P vision that Anytype promised, not the extremely long development cycles and slow handling of user requests. Since Anytype is an open-source project, we can clearly see its source code, every commit, every file change. Some members of our group used to closely monitor code changes, sharing with us which parts were modified, which branches were merged, and what changes were coming.

Unfortunately, we have seen no substantial solutions to major pain points, nor has work begun on the most requested features. As for the so-called “vast underlying system re-architecture,” we haven’t seen any real results. So, goodbye, Anytype.

24

It’s interesting because when I started using this version, I thought it was exactly the kind of updates I had been expecting from Anytype lately: fewer major new features and more focus on polishing and smaller tweaks, which enhance the overall experience.

Like all of you, I have my own ideal roadmap and specific needs in mind (publish to web, please!). While I do experience some friction and frustrations—mostly around the mobile app—I must admit that, on a day-to-day basis, Anytype has evolved into a powerful tool in both my professional and personal workflow since it moved out of alpha. This transformation has happened gradually, almost without me realizing it, as the updates rolled out.

I hope the team doesn’t feel discouraged by the harsher comments but I would suggest them to be more vocal about what they are working on and how they approach their development process, similar to how companies like Arc, Capacities, Raycast or Craft communicate with their users. Increased transparency could foster a stronger connection with the community and maybe more tolerance on the development choices and deadlines.

But for today I’m genuinely happy to pay for all the services Anytype provides me.

25

As long as I keep my expectations low, no one can hurt me :sunglasses:

However, Anytype gives me a sense of contradiction. As a programmer, I think its slowness is excusable given the high technical threshold of p2p and the increased difficulty in synchronizing functions due to native mobile development.
But as a user, its development speed is indeed slower than its competitors. For those who closely follow and have high hopes for the product, such slow progress is killing their enthusiasm.

26

I feel your pain. We’ve done a ton of work and launched multiplayer on a cutting-edge stack that we also develop. You might not know this, but our desktop team consists of just two people, and they’re doing a tremendous amount of work – you can see it on our GitHub. You’ve done that, right?

You mentioned being attracted to our beautiful vision of P2P. Those you’re comparing us to don’t have that, so it’s not entirely fair. We’re still investing a lot of focus in the tech, which gives plenty of reasons to use our software. The UX is coming.

Many of our members are very kind and patient. We listen to them and have made significant improvements. I’m sorry you feel like you want to leave, but I hope you’ll give our software another chance – perhaps in a year.

Just curious, what do you mean by the extremely insecure login method here? Whom it affected?