After a few months of catching up on overdue platform uplift (the editor rewrite, import, GFM, a new marketing website, and user guides) I’m now focused on building new features for the Android and web apps!
Let's jump straight to the first announcement...
Introducing global tags!
I'm excited to announce the first of many features planned under the 'nested organisation' pillar of the roadmap. It’s pretty self explanatory: you create global tags once, and they’re available in all bundles.
Here’s a demo! A quick volume warning before you start, I discovered the Pixel selfie screen recording feature, and I simply had to try it...
The main takeaway is that global tags are designed to be the best of both worlds: they’re available in all bundles, but they won’t clutter bundles until you actually use them.
Once you’ve made a global tag, you can apply it to any entry via the All tags sheet (...), or by searching in the keyboard-based tag filter. You can manage global tags from the bundle Tag settings menu, either to include or remove them from the tab bar, or manage their priority against other bundle tags.
When to use global tags
At the moment, global tags are a way to avoid creating the same tags over and over again, and to enable consistent tag colors and actions across related bundles.
Another advantage is that they're retained when you move entries between bundles, opening up the potential for new workflow features (imagine, for example, a tag action that moved an entry to a different bundle AND changed tags).
In the future, global tags will form a core part of organisation capabilities of Bundled - Bundle folders/groups will make tag consistency across related bundles more important, and a planned, secret tag feature will make tags much, much more powerful.
And guess what, you can try global tags right now by joining the Discord
channel below - a beta APK has been uploaded to the #alpha-beta-apks channel.
Join the Bundled Notes Discord
Web app localisation & translation improvements
It's long been a goal of mine to standardise language across both the Android and web apps, and to have a proper, ongoing translation approach.
I delayed tackling this simply because it was daunting. 100% of strings in the web app were hardcoded, and about 30% on Android. Plus, I'd been hitting the limits of the current community translation service, and it was time to look for an alternative.
I finally made time for this last week, and am excited to announce the following:
- All strings on the Android app have been moved to translatable resource files.
- Localisation support for the web app has been implemented, and the web app will be fully translated over the coming month or two.
- I have selected a new, better translation service that will support community translations and more languages.
- The hard work of existing translations from the community is retained - existing translations will be the same across web and Android.
- I've established a development process that means all future strings will be translatable ahead of launch.
- I'm finalising details and incentives for the community to contribute new translations - make sure to join the Discord if you're interested!
Overall, this means that the Android and web apps will be much more consistent for non-English languages, and that feature copy will be consistent cross-platform.
Just to be clear: I haven't used AI to translate anything. Almost all the existing community translations are retained and will be migrated to the new service when it's available.
To join the translation program, head to the Discord group and jump into the
#translation channel. I'll be sharing the details there shortly!
Join the Bundled Notes Discord
On a sidenote... this string resource uplift also unlocks new capabilities for bundle content descriptions. In the coming months, I'll be releasing an update that will use bundle content descriptions instead of "entry" in more places. For example, deleting something in an "Articles" bundle will prompt a confirmation sheet with "Delete article?" instead of "Delete entry?".
Development update
I've written extensively about rewriting the Android app in Jetpack Compose over the last couple of years. It was a huge project that was practically finished with the recent 4.1 update, where the new editor page was released.
But, though all the primary pages in the app are migrated to the new architecture, there remain a few small legacy features:
- The widget setup screens
- The share sheet receiver
- The reminders list
- Reminder edit sheet
Because global tags change how entries are loaded and rendered, the upcoming 4.2 update will force me to finally rebuild the above (excepting some of the reminder edit sheet, which I'm saving for a dedicated reminders overhaul).
This clears the path for a bulk deletion of thousands of lines of legacy code and resources, reducing the app’s size, making the UI even more consistent, improving build times, and accelerating development of new features.
In other words: the global tags update will mark the end of the Android rewrite - and I'm thrilled to be focusing on building new stuff, not fixing old stuff.
Thanks again for reading, and stay tuned for more announcements over the coming weeks!
- Xavier