Auto-resizing when typing into a new card in a canvas note

mod edit
It is already possible to resize to fit vertically by double clicking the bottom border.

When typing text into cards in a canvas note, there is very little text visible; the default window size is rather small, and doesn’t automatically expand. It would be great to have it auto-resize as you type, up to a limit size.

55 Likes

Good idea! You may also be interested in this request: Canvas: double click to autofit cards to content

Thanks.

7 Likes

At the moment, when working on Canvas, I really miss the function of automatically adjusting the size of the card to fit its content, whether it is increasing the size of the card or decreasing it.

In 1.1.4, an automatic vertical card size adjustment was added when double clicking on the bottom of the card, but I would also like to see an automatic horizontal card size adjustment when double clicking on the left or right side of the card.

Definitely +1 for this Feature Request.

6 Likes

I need this, having to resize it by had is such a pain because if you shrink it too much it gets a scrollbar which means that you have to expand it more than needed and then shrink again and hope you’ll get it close to right this time… At first I was hoping that if I would double click on the corner it would auto-resize both width and height, but neither happened. :frowning:

2 Likes

+1 for this. I have an ever expanding element that houses some queries. It would be great if that element could autofit without having me double-click the border of the element each time to perform the same function. Bonus points if the other elements of the Canvas grid retain their spacing, i.e., if there are elements beside another element that are within two grid spaces, this spacing is retained upon auto-fit. Extra bonus points if you can toggle automatic auto-fit selectively.

2 Likes

@trevware I totally agree! One thing that is really nice about Dataview queries and canvas is the ability to drag and drop links from the queries to add the notes to the canvas. Of course you could simply do this from a separate tab group, but there is something nice about having a query in the thick of it as a source from which you want to rebuild the structure more visually. It would be even nicer if that card expanded and contracted automatically, and like you said, it would be bonus if there were an option to have the surrounding elements shifted (although sometimes you don’t want this when you have made everything just right). In terms of using the queries to help in canvas, it can be especially true of queries with multiple headers that you might want to break out sub-elements of, and conceptualize it spatially. For example, a query like this: Dataviewjs query that separates 2nd level of nested tags into headers - #5 by holroy

Sorry to get off topic. Thanks!

4 Likes

+1 to this request. I’m a new user, and am using Obsidian for creating a story outline. The canvas works great for mapping out a timeline of events, but the lack of auto-resizing the note sizes is a huge pain in the butt.

2 Likes

+1. Sometimes it’s tricky to get the double-click resizing to work properly, and it takes time to readjust every single card.

2 Likes

Use case or problem

When creating new cards, I sometime paste text, or just write a couple of sentences. Then I need to resize the card to show all the text, which can be annoying.

Proposed solution

If possible, it would be great to have an option for canvas cards to automatically adjust their size to fit the text that is pasted, or as it is being written.

Current workaround (optional)

Related feature requests (optional)

3 Likes

+1, I was about to write a post about this, and I think It’s easy to implement

And also another helpful toggle option is to prevent cards stacking on top of each other, so that cards in the way are automatically moved.

3 Likes

+1, it is quite annoying to have to drag the card height every time I write more than a sentence within the card.

1 Like

You can adjust the height by double clicking on the bottom border

2 Likes

+1. Using Canvas has completely changed how I take notes. I have to admit this is one of the major annoyances I have in the experience. While double clicking on the bottom border works, I would love to see auto-resize!

6 Likes

@WhiteNoise
Something like this:

  1. Define card size.
  2. Click on button “adaptive size”.
  3. The card width and height remain the same, but not the bottom border, which goes down when card filled with new text.
2 Likes

I completely agree. It is quite annoying having to click the resize vertically button every time I write some text, and it completely breaks the flow when this does not happen automatically.

1 Like

I’d also love to see an auto-fit option, maybe with a max. size setting, so it can’t get out of hand. At the current state, it works decently on PC (as we can double click the border to auto-fit), but on mobile it’s quite clunky. Even a pop-up/right-click menu point “auto-fit” would be a good start.

1 Like

This feature and Canvas: Cards and Notes in Links/Backlinks and Outgoing Arrows from Canvas in Graph View are the ones it could make using canvas so much more powerful!

Being heavily using Canvas and auto-resizing would be a great improvement for using experience.

2 Likes

I think there should be an option for “default resize method: (none|automatic)”. clicking a button is the same amount of friction as double-clicking the bottom edge, just front-loaded instead of done at the end.