I re-use a handful of graph view filter configurations over and over.
For example, when I want to view just my zettelkasten notes, I filter out all notes in subfolders. For me that looks like: -path:"daily" -path:"fleeting" -path:"study" -path:"reading" and with “existing files only” turned on.
Any time I want that view, which is routinely, I have to re-create that custom query. There are other views I like to re-use as well.
Create a ‘Presets’ section of the Graph View UI to save and load custom Graph View settings. It would be helpful to be able to name each preset.
I believe presets that control just filters and color groups might cover most (all?) desirable use cases since display & forces seem more like ‘set them once’ preferences.
Related feature requests (optional)
This is related to, but different from, requests to save the graph view state, i.e. the position of every node and edge, even after manually dragging them around.
This request is just to save the graph view settings, which is a lot simpler.
The most similar feature request is this one to include graph view settings in Saved Workspaces. That seems like a crude workaround and not what the Workspaces plugin was designed for (saving/loading entire workspace configs). A more appropriate design would be a quick and easy part of the graph view UI itself.
If the graph view was sufficiently customizable, and if there was a UX element for tracing your history/breadcrumbs as well as your possible options from a given note, then you could combine and create a guided graph view to navigate your database. What I have in mind is a path that’s traced as you click through the graph view.
There’s a cool implementation of this somewhere, but I lost track of it.
I would add to this, it would be nice if there were a button to send the current search string from the search plug-in to the graph search, or a button on the graph search to pull it from there, if possible. So that when an ad hoc search is performed and one wonders how else the notes are related to each other, one doesn’t have to copy and paste the search.
Another possibly better option is a switch on the graph view to lock its search to the search plugin, essentially making them the same, so that all searches are reflected in the graph view as well, but can be switched off when we want to explore the graph independent of the current search. As the number of notes grow, a “default” graph of everything becomes more eye-candy and less functionally usable without relying on a search to view a subset of the data. Over time, this makes it more and more likely that the search will always be used when looking at the graph, and therefore all searches being automatically reflected in the graph (with a switch to disable) becomes highly useful.
My own request of beeing able to have presets for color-groups (Predefined Color-groups (Graphview) for easy switching between them) can be merged here. Its basically a sub-part of this request here.
I like the overall idea of beeing able to save the state of the whole graph-setting way more, as this provides more flexibility (and could be implemented way nicer from a UI perspective.
Now that we have the color-groups for graphs i would like to request predefined groups that i can switch between.
Use case or problem
Why? I love the coloring to easy spot different things in the graph, depending on what i am after i use completely different search-phrases for the colors.
I.e. : i color all my MOCs, the status of notes (seed, fleeting, permanent etc…) and can get an idea of the overall “health” and state of my pkm
Then i filter only atomic notes and links between and color them to see what overall Themes they fit in - here i can see what Themes are bad linked (lots of orphans) or if there are themes often intersecting …
This goes on… To do it right now, i have to setup the coloring each time i change what i want to look at.
Goal: I would like to be able to define color-groups (maybe elsewhere, in a file or in another menu), name the whole group and just tell the graph to use a certain pre-defined “color-group” then.
Proposed solution
I can either imagine it being file-based (like a .ini file, can be xml or json) and there you define the properties (search termes and colors, grouped together)
In obsidian itself you would therefor only reference/choose the “title” of the group defined in the file, so you can quickly switch between different settings.
The other option is to make it UI based (altough i can imagine this way harder to implement in a practical way) but the same would apply:
Having a seperate UI (maybe in settings) where you can make a new “group”, name it, and in that group you have the same options like currently in the graph view, aka setting search terms and colors.
For ease of use (and so it doesnt hinder current workflows from people) this could be optional, so the ui in the graphview would stay the same, but you have the option to use a predefined group also…
Something I’d like to add, a small addition to Dsteinbock’s request, is that it would also be useful to set one of the previews as the default.
That way, if there’s a specific preset that a user deems to be better than the current default, you don’t always need to select the preset you want. This could also boost performance, if you want to use a preset that leaves out a lot of notes. That way the computer doesn’t need to initially plot all the notes you want to leave out.
Along the lines of what dsteinbock is requesting, the ability to add our own custom filters to the toggle menu would be a perfect way to save filter presets:
I’ve lately tuned out much of the PKM conversation and even keeping up with newer features being added to Obsidian. Instead, I’ve focused on tending the little garden I have here. “Work” happens all sorts of ways, much of it away from the computer. I’m pleased with the progress I’ve won by keeping it simple.
This thread confirms my method. Keeping Moore’s Law in mind, it was just the other day that I thought, “it might be nice to save graph queries.” And here it is — lots of others have already thought of it.
If that had been given to me from the start, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. In fact, most of the features in Obsidian are like this for me. I’m grateful to have the capability, but happy to leave it alone — almost like in a black box — until I see the need for something I can’t accomplish with the current tools.
Just yesterday when I wanted to close the filters panel I inadvertently clicked restore filters, so I lost all my color groups (as well as the other settings). I wish I could reload a saved preset profile then!
I have a small .md file where I keep a few lines of more or less complex and refined filter options (path, -path, etc.), so I can just copy and paste them as needed. But it would probably be faster and more relevant as loadable presets.
In any case, I find it very useful for color groups, because choosing consistent colors takes time, and being able to save conceptual, thematic or practical palettes would be great.
In terms of the queries we can save them in the starred section by copy-pasting the query into the global search box. Then we can search for the query by clicking on the star option to load it in the search tab, then copy-paste it back to the graph filter.
Although to leverage star tabs more (if the devs decide to go in that direction), I propose to add a drop-down option from a saved query that would send it to the graph filter.
Being able to load custom view including the colour groups is ideal though!
Files relate to each other in many different ways, and having only one Graph view causes a tangled web that is more confusing each time you create more and more nodes.
So I think its necessary, just like Juggl does, to have a save button and that way being able to open different configurations of graph view, each one with different colors, filtered tags and sizes
PS: yes, Juggl does it, but its system is not as fluid as the core Graph view.
I don’t know how long the “workspaces” core plugin has been around, but I just found it today. In short, it lets you save different pane layouts and sidebar states.
I think it would make a lot of sense to implement this request into the workspaces plugin. If the layout of different panes can be saved, then surely it would be very useful to also save the state of the graph.
+1 to this, it was so nice to discover that i could color-code my graph by queries, and was really disappointing to see that those settings couldn’t be saved. Saved graph groups, please!
