TL;DR: In the file explorer, show the approximate number of minutes / hours / days / weeks / months / years - since I last edited a note, e.g. 21m, 4h, 6d, 2w, 3m, 1y
Use case or problem
When I want to start writing, I sort my Inbox by modified time (new to old). This helps me see at a glance “notes I’ve been working on recently” vs. “notes I worked on in the recent past” vs. “notes I’ve long neglected and may need attention or deletion.”
The problem is: I can’t actually see the age of these notes on any timescale. It would be helpful to know how many days/weeks/months/years it’s been since they were edited.
As implemented in Bear on MacOS:
Proposed solution
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When sorting by created/opened/modified time — show the value inline with filenames in both File Explorer and Search Results.
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Show this ‘note age’ in approximate, human-readable format, e.g. 3m, 6h, 7d, 2w, 6M, 2Y. This format is more compact, useful, comparable, and elegant than a full timestamp. (See the Bear screenshot above.)
Current workaround
You can hover over filenames in File Explorer to view timestamps but can’t compare different files or see how much time has passed without a bunch of mental math.
Related feature requests
See also
- Here’s a request to show note timestamps in one of several locations.
- Here’s a request to be able to manually edit created/modified timestamps and search by date.