Filtering rework

[JosefNemec]

• add support for exclusion filters
• and/or filter settings per field
• option to not show all fields on filter panel and instead add them dynamically only when needed
• rewrite the entire code to something more maintainable

[jerrygreen]

Yeah, filtering out the game that are completed, so I can choose from the rest, - one pretty common filter. I'm surprised there's so much work done, which is wonderful, but yet somehow there's no this feature

[jerrygreen]

History repeats itself, and as in Steam, someone finally thought: «I want to add programs into this thing, too» 😀

Honestly I think this app shouldn’t be used for programs though, by one single reason: you don’t normally need to look at a list of programs and think: «which program I’d like to run to entertain myself today» (unlike with games).

So instead, what you really need for programs is just a search tool most likely (like I do)… Windows Search works bad, indeed. MacOS Spotlight works slightly better in this case though (but still not ideal).

I wait till some new groundbreaking tool comes into the place, a cross-platform one, which will become the new standard. Something that looks as beautiful as Spotlight, or better, but works immediate, instant, and has a bunchful of features, like to execute some function within a program (like create a reminder or something), etc. I knew there’s Raycast, which at least in ads looks similar to what I’d want, but it is in some closed beta, many advertised features unavailable, and it is macOS-only:

https://www.raycast.com/

And it is not open source unfortunately, - which is also important…

Now we need something like VSCode of searching tools. Open source, cool, cross-platform.

[Prometheus720]

@jerrygreen

And it [Raycast] is not open source unfortunately, - which is also important…

On Windows, try Flow Launcher or Wox. Here are some other alternatives

[ThinkSalat]

I think this is related - but the reason I would want exclusion filters is because I use the grouping feature A LOT. and the obvious and quick fix in terms of that would be to make it so that selected items in the filter list are the only group headers that show up.

For example. I select FPS and Shooter from Genres. If I now go and select to group by Genres, the expected behavior would be that you have two groups: FPS and Shooters. The actual behavior is that it aggregates every genre from every game that includes one of those two genres. It then shows ALL the genres in the list of groupings. THIS I think would be an easy fix that doesn't require any UI changes. That's a quick win and I think would cover a LOT of the reason people want exclusion filters in the first place.

[xsm2]

I would love if there could be a way of making a custom filter with a logical expression: an input where you could define your own filter, where you would write something like: Library:"Steam" Or (Not(Platform:"PC (Windows)") And Status:"Instaled")

That would give users so much control over filters, sure it would not be very intutive nor easy to use if you don't have previous experience with coding, but could be great for power users to use with the filter presets as it would allow for far more complex filters

[kongomongo]

Wireshark display filters work similar. GUI for simple usage and a filter string gets created for pro users.

[minecrawler]

Most software with very extensive filtering-capabilities offers simple filters for all users and a query string for power users. JIRA is one example which comes to mind. But afair they all have a rather ugly UI xD

What I'd love to see is a way to create custom filters with query strings, which then show up in the side-bar. This should be the default/only way to create filters. The filters will be pre-populated by a number of useful filters which were created using queries. Normal users won't even see that under the hood all filters use queries and power users will have some examples to start with!

Filters which I use...


Let's be honest. We usually don't use most of the filters. Like what's with that "version" field??? They are ok-ish for demo purposes, but when we look for a game, the top-left search input is the way to go. The above pic is my every-day view which shows me installed games, and I sometimes switch to the "Plan to Play" completion status to select the next game to install.

Also, the source code for the filter bar is in URGENT need of some DRY-ing - so a make-over could remedy multiple things!

Maybe @JosefNemec can give some feedback? Implementing this doesn't seem too hard, but should probably be aligned with the project vision and goals...

[JosefNemec]

Filter panel is being completely rewritten in P11. I have nothing more to add for now.

[redactedscribe]

If Playnite 11 is a long way out, maybe a temporary solution to exclusions could make it to Playnite 10.x using a simple method: Allow us to select all from a filter's drop-down list, then we'd only need to deselect items to NOT them from the results. This could be a button, "All" list item, or Ctrl+A with the filter list open. Looking forward to the filtering improvements in P11.