[Draft discussion] Global search for browser

Bitwig does have side-browser and the shortcut for it’s search field is Alt+B (on Windows) which you can change or add new one. From your request though all it needs is no category filter for when you want to get overwhelmed with results :smile:

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Lol. Yes , sometimes you get more results than you wish but 99% of the time it’s better than having to tell the browser what exactly am I looking for which is an extra mouse click in a browser that is mostly used by a keyboard. This really adds up

I think we could at least have the option to do that if we choose to
Works great in Ableton

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at first I thought your request was about even more universal search field, like to also find stuff that’s already inside your project. which might be useful for big ones

As the pop-up browser works now, it is always anchored to a “+” and is ready to add something to your project. I believe results are sometimes filtered to whatever makes sense by default, and then the user can change the parameters. When you type something, this browser shows how many results you have in each category.

Then we have the Browser Panel on the side, which can always take any input and then the user can drag any of the results to the project. This browser doesn’t show the results for each category, which forces the user to click each category (if they aren’t unsure what they are looking for). Each category also shows its locations, which is perhaps something that would get more complicated if all results across categories are shown.

For this “global” feature, the Browser Panel seems more fitting. What do you think?

What I wonder is why and how often a user wants to find “something” by a name. At least in my case in most cases first I think I need an instrument or a clip, etc, and then search for its name if I’m not using the parameter. Sometimes I have wondered “Is there anything ‘Indian’” here, but these are exceptions, and even in those case it was useful to check whether those were presets or clips, because what I would do with the results is very different.

Well, there’s one caveat with current search though. Whenever you make presets that have to be put in Chain deice, but really center around specific device in it, you can’t search for this preset filtering by device used in the chain. I may not have too much problem with that when I know what I’m looking for is wrapped in Chain or Layers type device, but when I share such presets other people may struggle to remember what it was and as such filters may get in the way sometimes. tags help, but only if you remember to include all categories and types of devices.

So personally, I would prefer Side-Browser that pimarily searches all types of content and then you can press those buttons to filter by category.

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Correct me if I’m wrong, but this request as presented above wouldn’t solve this problem either, right?

depends on how you define ‘global’ I suppose

I mean, reading the description.

In my comment above I was making the case about whether this feature is really needed, and what problem is it trying to solve. You responded with one example. I believe your example would require a new feature that isn’t mentioned above. That’s why I’m asking, to be sure about the feature(s) to be requested here.

well, this global search means we’re searching not tied to specific tab like presets, samples, etc. so for example if you search Polysynth, it would be handy if it also showed other device presets that contain Polysynth.

I have edited the description, basically cutting a lot of text because the request by @Jordi is in fact quite simple. Or am I missing anything?

@x.iso goes beyond the initial request and suggest additional features. Should we include them here as well?

personally I would add that detail, and we leave it to developers how to implement it if they decide to, and in what capacity

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@x.iso I have added this to the description:

Is this ok? Feel free to edit the description if you have improvements.

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