Feature Request: Allow us to search from root

[ollyde]

Like Safari and Chrome it would be perfect if we could search from root, instead of typing R each time.

This could be achieved by dumping a set of bookmarks as HTML files in a folder and syncing it.

If this is not possible, is it possible to cache the bookmarks, having to wait a second each time for it to fetch bookmarks is kinda annoying.

[westerlind]

Hi @ollydixon

There is a way to sort of search from the root, which is what I do myself, and you can do that by opening Alfred's settings, going to the workflow there, and up in the left corner you can assign keyboard shortcuts for searching Raindrop and for adding a new bookmark. I have for example assigned option+space for searching, so that I have cmd+space for standard Alfred and option+space for bookmark search specifically. This makes it just as fast to reach the bookmarks search as anything else on the root level of Alfred, and also keeps it much cleaner by avoiding that bookmarks are mixed up with apps and everything else that points to local things on your computer. (Which I personally would not like at all)

When it comes to caching bookmarks, I intentionally choose not to do that, even if it means that there will be a wait for a second or so before the search results are shown. (I really don't think that it is a very long wait, at least not for me) This is mainly because doing it this way (letting Raindrop do the searching) gives access to Raindrops full search engine, including full text search for all your bookmarks even if they are only cached at Raindrop after the original had been removed. It would take a major effort to get anywhere near as good search as there is now by re-implementing this myself locally, with sync engine and all, and I do actually think that the way it works right now is really good, and because of that it is not worth that effort.

This workflow is made by me in my free time, independent of Raindrop.io itself, simply because I missed a bookmark search feature of any other app or workflow that I enjoyed using, and I do really like how this workflow behaves right now, very much including the search. If anyone else want's to put in the effort of creating an alternative local search method for this workflow because they don't like how it behaves right now, it's open source, so anyone is free to do it if they want to.

[ollyde]

@westerlind thanks for the reply, I've assigned a shortcut.

Re-guarding the waiting a second or two; it is driving me crazy; going from instant bookmarks (not even being able to see them show) to waiting feels wrong; also the ordering is wrong each time.

If we can cache them it would be awesome to remember the order as well; at the moment I have to scroll down on some bookmarks 10+ items each time; by default Alfred usually optimizes the position (that would be fixed with locally based files)

[westerlind]

@ollydixon

Alfreds feature for ordering according to it's own logic is still available for workflow's that functions like this one does. I know I disabled it in some places, simply because it conflicted with some things I wanted to achieve, like always having favourites on top, which is a feature that you might find useful for solving this same problem, and for displaying collections and tags above the bookmarks when they are included in search results.

I could look into adding a setting for letting Alfred always keeping full control over the sorting of the search results if that is something you think would work better for you. As I said though, it wold also disable the possibility of always having collections, tags and favourites on top of search results.

I am caching the collections and tags already, and I think caching works well for that. But for the bookmarks itself, as I said, I do not think that it would even be better (the search itself would give much worse results, without full text search etc), so I don't plan on implementing that.

I do understand what you are saying about the speed though, of course. This workflow does not behave like the web browsers own bookmarks which is of course faster, but rather like a full web search engine for only your own things. And that last thing happens to be what I aimed for with this workflow. This approach makes it list the results somewhat slower, but gives you better results, so depending on how you use it and what you expect, you might find it slower or in another way faster than the web browsers own bookmarks feature.

I find it much faster to get to what I'm looking for this way.

[ollyde]

@westerlind

There are 2 main issues for me

• The speed thing, sometimes taking a 1-2 seconds to load bookmarks.
• It's not remembering the history order at all.

:-)

[westerlind]

Would it still be better for you if it did search instantly, but only searched the titles of the bookmarks and none of the page content, tag names or description etc that is searched now?

[ollyde]

@westerlind only titles is required for search :-D