Remember last cursor position when returning to a previously opened note

[raacampbell]

Have you read the Longevity Statement? Yes

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. I have some longer notes. I sometimes need to move back and forth between them. When I do this, the position of the cursor in the note always reverts back to the top of the file when returning back to a previously opened note. This is very frustrating as it means each time I need to scroll back down to where I was originally. This behavior feels unexpected.

Describe the solution you'd like I would like the editor to remember where the cursor last was for every note.

Describe alternatives you've considered I have considered using shorter notes and breaking up content. Sometimes this not possible or not the natural thing to do.

[serpaulius]

I know what you mean by long notes, as I have so many of them and scrolling to the bottom in mobile is a real pain.

Eventually I decided to take a look and implemented a couple of ideas for the sake of convenience for myself:

1. hack - added 2 buttons in the toolbar to go to the top/bottom of the textarea element. Works in plaintext and Super notes. This is not the best approach because those buttons ruin the toolbar UI by taking too much space on smaller screens and you can only go to the top/bottom - no exact position saved. That being said it is an easy hack as there is no need to modify any domain model and it works well for my plaintext purposes (still using it daily).

2. experimental - saving exact cursor position in the note properties after every edit, and added a button in the toolbar to "Continue editing" in the last saved position. It works, but I am not sure it is the best way to implement it, as I modified models by adding a plaintext-specific property which is being saved/loaded in all notes. Besides, it only works in plaintext for now, as I did not yet find a good way to implement it in Super note.

I pushed the changes to my fork for reference.

Maybe someone from standardnotes team could comment about the 2nd approach - I am certain this could be implemented in a better way, but I am not that familiar with the codebase.

I hope this helps.

[raacampbell]

Thanks. I'm surprised there has been no comment on this until you. This is one of those basic features that just does a helpful job and never gets in the way. It really should just be there, as it's nowadays the expected behavior.

[serpaulius]

Here is a gif for visual reference.

I think it would also look and function better if it was a floating button on the bottom right corner (like the circular blue '+' button on the main screen). It could be shown only if the note is not focused yet and disappear on focus. Or it could be hidden while scrolling the note. I mean there are many ways to make it more user friendly than current version :D

[raacampbell]

Any comment from the developers on this? It seems like a basic and useful feature.

[sravanrox]

I am surprised that a note taking app is missing the most basic feature.. I moved from simplenotes to this because of 2FA and now i am switching back..

[chadadavis]

My work-around is to create a heading EOF at the end of the note. Then, when you open the note, tap the body of the note (required to make the editing toolbar appear), then tap the TOC button, then tap the EOF heading, and continue writing above it. Yes, it's cumbersome, but sometimes faster than scrolling to the end of a long note.