Deleting notes is cumbersome

Features
1

First of all thank you for Joplin, this is such a nice software for taking notes.

In the current (1.0.119) version of Joplin under Windows I often take small notes, re-order contents and therefore create and delete new notes. At the moment deleting notes requires three steps:

  • right click to open context menu
  • left click for delete option
  • dialog pops up and requires confirmation

After having done this a few times I am sorely missing an easier way to delete, copy and paste complete notes. Ideally the ‘del’ key would simply delete a note without any questions asked and for safety purpose not delete the file on disk but move the note in trashcan category.

Am I overlooking something or is this functionality missing in Joplin?

2

to delete a list of notes:

  • select the first note to delete
  • press shift to maintain to first choice, and select the last note
  • right click , choose delete, confirm

you can also do the same with crtl key instead of shift, to select among your notes and not a complet list

3

The newer version of Joplin now allows to delete notes via keyboard shortcut. This is great, thank you for implementing this feature!

1 Like
4

On Mac client, (Dec 2020) I'm experiencing this same frustration. I couldn't find a shortcut to delete a note.

I've imported a lot of old data and I'm trying to tidy it up and deleting has been a chore.

1 Like
5

On the MacOS client this is still cumbersome, when you hit <cmd> + delete a confirmation window appears but none of the options has the focus so you are obligated to use the mouse to hit "Delete" or "Cancel".
I think best practice here is to auto focus "Delete" so when you hit <enter> the note is deleted

6

@superlevure
Unfortunately this same problem exists in many applications, free or paid. Basic UI functionality (often with the mouse, sometimes with the keyboard) is implemented and tested. But nobody ever thinks about "routine" and "repetitive" operation. And so the user ends up doing the same click-point-key-... exercise times and over again, while it could be so much easier. But the dev won't win a price by cleaning it up, so it is always low priority.
Nevertheless we all have to admit that Joplin is already pretty good in this respect. The keyboard shortcut editor was a great advance (while not solving your problem :frowning:

@jkrauska
on Mac fn-back opens the delete dialog box (just like it does in most Mac applications)

@foxmask
one can select multiple notes with mouse and the shift key. But when you hit only the first note is really deleted.

7

Maybe it's macOS only. On Windows when I select a note and press "Delete", the "Delete" option is highlighted in the confirmation dialog.

8

Yes it's a bug in Electron that only affects some operating systems and not others. We tried to fix that a few times but that didn't work. Maybe we could try again since Electron has been upgraded recently.

9

My workaround is to create a temporary "Trash" notebook, and drag notes there (no confirmation).

10

@superlevure I faced the same issue with you in macOS, so I wrote this plugin to solve my problems, you can try with your own risk if you still want to delete notes without confirmation

11

I moved the all note books into one notebook and deleted the final one note book