What's new?
Recent continuous improvements ― July 2022
New breadcrumb system A reworked breadcrumb system at the top which better reflects traversals trough a network of content. It shows the last visited pages and get’s reset when you navigate globally. (August 12, 2022)
Better navigation We reworked the whole navigation system. Preview modal gets a breadcrumb stack on the top when you click on a link in the preview modal. Entities open consistently in preview or full page based on type and context. (August 12, 2022)
Filter based on icon You can now filter in tags and collections based on the icon you chose for your entities. (August 12, 2022)
Better export Entity export (right sidebar) is more consistent, and reliably exports files if referenced. Better CSV export of collections. And copy/paste in text is now full based on HTML for better integration with other apps. (August 12, 2022)
Added full support for language input systems and complex composition input (tested in Firefox, Edge, Chrome, and Safari. Please report if you run into any further issues). (August 2, 2022)
Several small design improvements (August 2, 2022)
Improved group block design.
Improved quote block design and nicer rendering of children in quote block (left bar spans across full height, children are rendering below, not indented).
Improved multi-column block spacing (balance vertical and horizontal padding).
Green status label in component header and preview modal header instead of green frame (too distractive).
Added plus buttons to quickly insert new blocks anywhere.
Added style menu button again to quickly allow styling of block.
Improved blog handle design and performance.
Show style menu in preview modal as well.
Improved design of text bar.
Improved design of LinkToken.
Grouped colors together in BlockStyleMenu.
Some rendering performance improvements.
Improved design of type labels and other labels (slightly less border radius because that’s more consistent with rest of the design).
Design of menu item focus state (gray instead of blue).
Less border radius on some Menus.
Improved split screen behavior: When in split screen sidebar states are decoupled from when in full screen so you don’t always have to close and open them. (August 2, 2022)
Better tag search: Tag search is now more fine tuned and shows create new at the bottom always. (August 2, 2022)
“Daily notes” in left sidebar has been renamed to “Calendar”, quick link to today added: We’ve renamed the “Daily notes” button to “Calendar”, because the views include more than just the daily notes and will do more and more so in the future, as more content types will get a relationship with date and time. We’ve also added a quick link to today. Pressing the shortcut for the calendar view twice will also lead you to today. (July 30, 2022)
Cleaner design of list view: The design of the list view has been improved for better readability and a cleaner look. (July 30, 2022)
Label next to button to add new content type: To make the interaction of adding custom content types and thus new databases more visible, we’ve added a label next to it.
Some bug fixes around text block operations in combination with backspace. (July 30, 2022)
Spell checker support: Capacities now supports native spell checkers. Chinese and Japanese input methods are not supported yet, but we are working on it! (July 30, 2022)
Delete word forward or backward: Us
Option+backspace(Mac) orCtrl+backspace(Windows) to delete a word. UsFn+Option+backspace(Mac) orctrl+del(Windows) to delete a word forward. (July 30, 2022)Beter behavior when adding links in text: pasting and adding via text bar has identical behavior now, consistent open behavior, consistent color coding of links. (July 30, 2022)
Slash “/” as an alternative to “+” added: For all users with QWERTY keyboards you can now quickly access the control dropdown by typing “/” (July 28, 2022)
Grouping text from dropdown: Just type “/group” (or “+group”) to group the current block. No need to use the menu anymore. (July 28, 2022)
Fixed: Pagination navigation for databases and collections: There was a bug where the navigation bar was not displayed correctly. In addition, there is now a limit of the navigation items plus ellipis shown (previously there was an overflow of navigation items for very large databases/collections). (July 28, 2022)
Fixed: Reactivity bug of collections and databases. There was a reactivity bug that lead to some collections and databases not being immeditaley shown on load. (July 28, 2022)
Fixed: AudioPlayer was broken, now working again. (July 28, 2022)
Improved graph view: Main node is centered and more visible, initial loading with a small graph view but can be resized in top left, huge improvements in loading speed. (July 27, 2022)
Rebranding “capacities” to “Capacities”: Since capacities is an existing word we decided to make a clearer distinction. (July 27, 2022)
Better emoji search: We fuzzy match your terms and on enter the first emoji gets selected. (July 27, 2022)
Improved performance: Initial loading of spaces is faster, context-based fetching of content, syncing content is more efficient reducing lags in UI, faster display of tag pages and collections. (July 27, 2022)
Better offline handling: You get information about offline/online when content cannot be loaded. (July 27, 2022)
Display related tags on page view of a tag: For more context and a quicker navigation through your network of tags whe display the most relevant related tags on the page view of a tag. (July 20, 2022)
Improved: In multi-column layouts: clicking below column adds new text block. (July 20, 2022)
Improved: Better word-break behavior of LinkToken. Issue from user feedback board: Keep words on the same line for links and tags (July 20, 2022)
Improved: Truncate text in table text cell with ellipsis at the end. (July 20, 2022)
Improved: Small design improvements of Pill and DatabaseHeader. (July 20, 2022)
Improved: Slightly larger icon size on page. (July 20, 2022)
Improved: ColorInheritance of quoteInterface from outer context. (July 20, 2022)
Fixed: Some issues when rendering images in different views. (July 20, 2022)
Fixed: Make title on MediaFilePage editable. (July 20, 2022)
Fixed: UI bug with display of pagination numbers (unwanted text-wrap). (July 20, 2022)
Fixed: Some Firefox UI bugs. (July 20, 2022)
Added: Missing German locales for dailyNotesTemplateManager. (July 20, 2022)
Improved: Better spacing of ComponentHeader. (July 20, 2022)
Fixed: Performance issues in Safari: A critical performance issue with Safari has been fixed (it caused grid and wall views to be super laggy and almost unusable). (July 7, 2022)
Fixed: Image rendering in Safari: There was a bug that caused images to render unreliably in Safari which has now been fixed. (July 7, 2022)
Better progressive loading of images: Smaller versions of images are loaded first before the optimal resolution based on the width of the container is shown. (July 7, 2022)
New Feedback System: We added a feedback board for more transparency on which features, improvements, and bugs are known and worked on. You can contribute by submitting ideas or problems, by voting on the requests of others, and by adding comments to existing requests. (July 2, 2022)
Release 9 ― June 2022
Contextual backlinks
If we reference content somewhere we are often interested in the full context of that link: In which sentence or paragraph is it used? Was it referenced in a nested list where the parent could give additional info? Does the block with the link have children that provide even more details? If you are not familiar with the concept of (contextual) backlinks, we recommend reading Andy Matuschak’s notes.
Enabling this is a game-changer many of our users have asked for. Capacities now shows contextual backlinks with the individual blocks where the link or tag has been made. This includes the path of parent blocks this block might have as well as its children. It works for inline links as well as tags being used in the text.
There are two different situations where contextual backlinks are displayed:
- Backlink section for each content: If a content is referenced somewhere you will find a section labeled “Backlinks” at the bottom. The context of that link is displayed here, labeled with “Mentions in text”.
- Wall, list, and grid view of tags: On the page of a tag we show contextual backlinks in a dedicated section named “Mentions in text” at the top.
In the wall view, text references are shown as text snippets directly on the wall. By using this you can create a wall of text content combined with cards if you use the tag field at the top of an entity.
We are excited about how this will change your experience with Capacities, it already changed ours. One use case users have been mentioning in their feedback is to quickly tag individual text blocks or to-dos on the fly and then process them further the next time they review the tag page.
Databases 2.0
Capacities real power comes with its custom content types because they enable you to define the structure of your notes. Create meetings, books, or questions instead of monotonous pages.
Our focus so far has been on the basic types such as pages, images, or web links to build a solid foundation of the most common types of content and media. We will continue to work hard on the basic types and expand the repertoire with more types such as quotes or code snippets which will then also get their own database and additional properties to tag and organize them on a top-level.
With this release, we are starting to extend the power of custom types with a complete redesign of tables and entity pages, local filter sets to build dashboards, and improved usability.
Redesign of custom entities
We started with the table layout and redesigned the cell for each property type to achieve a more unified look. We also improved the experience of editing properties in the table by improving input and picker elements. For now, a table cell only displays one line of text/content. In the future, we will add additional settings to customize this for each property.
In the next step, we did the same for the list of properties that is shown on the page/embed views of custom types. They are now visually more aligned and more pleasant to work with. From here new properties can be added and the order of properties can be changed by dragging them around. Blocks properties are always positioned at the bottom, but if you have several “blocks” properties, you can rearrange them, too. The handle for properties gets the same look as the handle for blocks. For each property, there is a dropdown menu to edit the name and icon or to delete it.
Working with custom types and databases is simpler and more powerful: For properties that link to other content types, we’ve added a dropdown picker similar to the dropdown for tags with less friction than a large modal. The large modal is still used for media where a bigger preview of content is helpful.
Local filters to build dashboards and workflows around content types
If you embed tags or collections on a page the filters, sorts, and view will now be local. By embedding tags and collections you can now build powerful dashboards with Capacities: You can for example embed a collection on a page twice and filter for the tag “todo” in the first and for the tag “doing” in the second.
If you add a new entry to a collection or your database it will (as best as possible) be compliant with the active filters. In the example from above, a new entity would automatically be tagged with “todo” or “doing”.
Sharing made easier and more transparent
Sharing content in a knowledge graph enables you to create digital experiences for others that can be explored. This is different from what we are used to: Books, Documents are linear concepts that you scroll through while a graph can be clicked through, allowing you to connect and visualize related concepts right where you need them. We took this a step further and made it more intuitive.
In the graph view of a content you now see which parts of your knowledge graph are public and which are private. Links that can be explored by users who have access to your content are also highlighted in green.
When you open a shared content as an author you are entering a different context: You edit the content that is visible to others. To make this clearer all public content has a green frame making it simpler for you to switch contexts.
On top, we made the sharing process more intuitive. By default, daily notes will not be shared anymore unless you share them explicitly. If you remove read permissions of all included content will be removed as well by default. For content that is shared in another context, you will see an indicator and you can decide if you want to remove permissions here as well. We published a learning unit on how sharing works in Capacities here.
Miscellaneous
Automated tag inheritance for media: If you add images, PDFs, … to a page the media entity will inherit the tags of that page. We might add a setting to make it possible to disable this behavior, but we think that most of the time it is very useful if media receives the same tags as the content in which it was created. (June 13, 2022)
New block handle: We wanted to remove the number of elements that pop up when hovering over a block in the editor to reduce overall distraction and ‘noise’ in the UI. We replaced the nine-dots-icon on the left with a more subtle circle. We also moved the “plus” buttons that used to appear on the top right and bottom left of a block to the left. They only appear when hovering over the circular handle on the left. (June 20, 2022)
Text statistics also for selected blocks: When a range of text is selected, we show a small indicator for the text stats of that selection. The same now also works for a selection of blocks. This can be super useful to check how many words or characters a couple of paragraphs have combined. (June 20, 2022)
Color picker for tags in table view: We have added a nice little color picker to the color property of a tag in the table view. You can now change the color quickly when reviewing your tags in the table view. The selected color is also visualized as a colored label.
Accessibility of column resize handle: The resize handle for table columns in custom databases for the last column was not accessible. This has now been fixed.
Tag dropdown: We fixed a reactivity issue and improved some details in the design (e. g. position of loading spinner).
Show more entries of tags in the database We now show more entries in the database dashboard for tags (120 instead of 40), because tag preview cards are small and it’s important to view as many tags as possible on one screen.
Better UX of adding HorizontalLineBlock via dropdown: Automatically insert and focus empty text block after HorizontalLineBlock when added via dropdown. Hint: Typing
---at the start of a line also generates a HorizontalLineBlock. (June 20, 2022)Home shortcut: Press Cmd/Ctrl+H to go back to your daily note dashboard. (June 20, 2022)
Improvements
Better change stack with undo and redo: In normal text fields, we now support a local change stack where you can undo and redo changes if you focus the text field. (June 20, 2022)
Improved delete logic: Delete can now happen in the background. You don’t need to wait until all content is loaded to confirm a delete operation. (June 14, 2022)
Improved: Better image rendering performance. (June 6, 2022)
Improved: Better design for arrow buttons in preview modal.
- Improved: Better design of tabs.
- Improved: Explanation of how tabs can be persisted in Capacities.
Improved: Better design of active states throughout the app.
Improved: Some design details in the small card of a tweet such as image and content width have been improved.
Improved: The breadcrumbs above the content panel have a more aligned design.
Improved: Consistency improvements of all card designs.
Improved: We improved several layout details in the small preview of “blocks” content.
Changes
Removed: Deactivated navigate to space shortcuts (via space number). (June 20, 2022)
Facebook Messenger integration deactivated: Meta, unfortunately, does not allow to fully use of the API. For now, we need to deactivate the Facebook Messenger integration. Might be activated again. (June 14, 2022)
Bug fixes
Fixed: Pressing
delat the start of a text block removes character and only unbreaks/removes block when the block is empty. (June 20, 2022)Fixed: Better handling of escape when the preview modal is open. (June 20, 2022)
Fixed: Backspace and Delete behavior. (June 20, 2022)
Fixed: List view now opens the preview of entity when clicked in EntityMenu. (June 20, 2022)
Fixed: Some remaining issues with image rendering (flickering, layout shifts).
Fixed: Deleting the custom emoji of a property sets the icon back to the default icon for that property type.
Fixed: Prevent default behavior of ctrl + h or cmd + h (it opens chrome history for some users).
Fixed: We fixed many issues with the mobile version of the responsive design (menu blocking the screen, overflowing content, etc.).
Fixed: There was a reactivity issue in some cases when adding/removing tags to/from content.
Fixed: There was a bug in the block selection and in text stats.
Fixed: Blur any selections made in document when opening the feedback form. (June 20, 2022)
Update 8 ― June 2022
We’ve just shipped a big update! 🥳🎉 Some really cool new features and many small improvements. Let us guide you through. 👇
Daily notes
Daily notes get the biggest update. 💪 We are introducing two new views to make even better use of your daily note: Week Overview 📆 📆 📆 📆 📆 📆 📆 and Month Overview. 🗓️
Week overview
The Week Overview allows you to plan and review your week, drag and drop blocks between days, manage your to-dos like moving them to another day. ✅↔️
Month overview
Month overview shows you at one glance all daily notes you’ve created in that month. You can then zoom in and quickly navigate between each daily note using the preview modal. 🌅
Daily note templates
In addition we are adding templating to daily notes. Create the perfect structure for your daily note, make it the default template and start with a beautifully pre-structured daily note with just one click. 🏗️ 💨
We’ve also improved linking two a daily note (which was not really possible before) and full support for backlinks related to daily notes. 🖇️😬
Daily note shortcuts
In the ‘+’-dropdown you will now also find the options “Yesterday”, “Today”, and “Tomorrow” which allow you to quickly create or reference a daily note for that date. ➕👍
Dashbaord mode or page view for daily notes
A daily note can be viewed in dashboard mode 📋 – where you can benefit from the Week Overview, Month Overview, and the additional info of what you’ve created on a certain day – and the page view, which shows just one single daily note on its own. 📄
Daily notes also appear the correct way in the breadcrumbs at the top left of the window.
New backlinks section
Another major change is that we moved the backlinks section to the bottom of the page. This is how many other TfT do it as it treats backlinks as part of the content itself. Here we display all backlinks to the current content. For media we provide a small preview, for text-based content we show the embed view directly which can be edited in place. 🔗↔️
Design of block styles
We’ve worked again at the design of styled blocks. To align colored blocks better with the rest of the content, we give it some padding and make the colored area slightly wider. This gives you a good readability while also looking very nice. 💅🖌️🎨
In addition those block styles can be added via the ‘+’-dropdown:
More prominent type labels
To emphasize the importance of types 🏷️ in our system, we display a more prominent type label for most views of a content. Clicking on that label will also lead you to the corresponding database. 💾
Improvements to page view of an image
Since the title can be an important property to reference and find an image, we’ve added a title field to the page view of an image. We display this title and the first row of tags on the initial screen when opening an image in page view, without having to scroll. That way the title and tags can be edited more quickly. 🖼️✍️
Better visual feedback for shared content
In a knowledge graph sharing can be complex. And when everything can be connected with each other, it can be difficult to tell which content is shared or not. To make this distinction easier, we give the page view of each content a green ring around its container. That way you can tell at one glance, whether this content is shared or not. 🟩👁️
Improvements on tweet content type
We’ve also worked on our tweet type. For each individual tweet you can access a link to the original tweet on Twitter. To open a quoted tweet on twitter, just click on the quoted tweet. Clicking on the icon or name of an author opens the author in a new tab. 🐦 → 🔗
Skeleton loading states
Skeleton loading states are now shown everywhere where some kind of grid, list, wall, or table content is loaded. 💀⏳😎
Database dashboard layout
We’ve changed the database layout to be a bit more useful. The inbox now contains elements that have not been tagged you. We’ve also moved the collections section to the top to make it more prominent. We’ve also worked on the styles and the design of the layout type and filter elements. 📋
Better embed views
The embed views of tags and collections have an improved layout that fits better into the page where it’s been embedded. 🛌🤌
Some more small improvements from this update period
Filter by type: On the daily notes page and on tag pages you can now filter the results by content type. You can either show certain types or ignore some types. Just use the “Filter” button, add a new filter and select “Content Type”. (01.06.2022)
WhatsApp integration: You can now also send messages from your WhatsApp account to Capacities. Learn more. (30.05.2022)
Code file support for Telegram and Email input: You can now send code files to Capacities with these integrations and they will automatically be transformed into a CodeBlock. Also showing a message in your daily note if a type is not supported. (28.05.2022)
Email Integration supports multiple email addresses: You can now add more email addresses to your email integration to save from different email inboxes to different spaces. (26.05.2022)
Update 7 ― May 2022
Messenger and Email Integrations
Random ideas, thoughts, or tasks can come up at any point, and that’s great. 💡 But we need to have a system to capture them fast, so that they don’t stick in our head and distract us from our current focus. That’s why we have a second brain. 🧠
With this release we introduce a frictionless input to your second brain: our input integrations. We bring Capacities into your pocket and into your inbox. You can now save text, messages, images, files, or voice messages by simply sending an email to Capacities, or open a chat with Capacities on Telegram or Facebook Messenger – and soon many more.
Save messages from the Telegram messenger
Telegram is our most powerful integration. Save text, images, files or voice messages to your daily note by sending a message to Capacities. You can automatically tag and name your media files or even send voice messages. Learn more.
Save messages from your email inbox
Send emails and attachments, or simply forward other emails to save@capacities.io. All your mails will be attached to your daily note. Learn more.
Improvements and small features
Setting up multiple Twitter accounts: Connect Capacities to all your Twitter accounts and save to different spaces by default. (24.05.2022)
Tagging tweets from Twitter When saving tweets to Capacities by commenting the tweet you can now also add tags by like “@capacitieshq save #tag1 #tag2”. (24.05.2022)
Trigger conditions for emoji dropdown (space before : needed and triggered by first character after :) (19.05.2022)
MediaWebResourceSmallCard design. (19.05.2022)
InteractiveToken breakpoints. (19.05.2022)
PreviewModal design. (19.05.2022)
QuoteInterface design. (19.05.2022)
SpaceSearch design. (19.05.2022)
Reduced size of SearchResult and ControlDropdown icons. (17.05.2022)
Better group-hover for add description buttons etc. on Page views. (17.05.2022)
Better PreviewModal design. (17.05.2022)
Better AddDatabase design. (17.05.2022)
Design of Preview modal and other design improvements. (15.05.2022)
Preview text details. (15.05.2022)
New, more compact design of audio player. (15.05.2022)
Downtime status page: Under https://status.capacities.io you now find uptime statistics for Capacities. (10.05.2022)
Learning guidance: In the top right you now have access to “Capacities learn”, a portal that will be enriched with tutorials, videos, and articles over time. A “Getting started” video for beginners. (10.05.2022)
New and improved onboarding (10.05.2022)
Improved design and spacing on daily note page (10.05.2022)
Moved language dropdown for code block to the top again (10.05.2022)
Added written label next to icons of layout types as well as sort and filter menus (10.05.2022)
Minor layout improvements throughout the app (04.05.2022)
Improved code block design: More sensible arrangement of langauge dropdown and buttons to copy/download snippet. (30.04.2022)
Better link handling when pasting: If text gets pasted links in text do not automatically get saved to database. You can click on the link and save it from there. This does prevent your web link database from being cluttered with unimportant links. (30.04.2022)
Tooltips for block interfaces: Hovering over heading 1, todo, etc. now shows helpful tooltips.
Extract links and images from tweets: Tweet media assets now have a button where you can save the image or link with one click to Capacities. The tweet and media asset are linked.
Pin any content to your space: On the top right you can now click the pin symbol to pin any content to the pinned section.
Fast access to block interfaces via dropdown: You can now type “+” and search to add a todo, toggle, heading, …
Better support for PDF from the web: If you have a link to a PDF you get full PDF support in Capacities (like when you uplaod it). Requires the website provider to allow it. If not you can still open it via a button.
Space Settings: Next to your space name on the top left you have access to settings on that space.
Account Settings: You can now change your password or delete your account.
Design of collection header
Content type properties can now be reordered in the page view
Detection of email and tel as Links with mailto: and tel:
Consistent opening behavior of links
Fixes:
- Language of web resources now matches users language
- Group shortcut fixed in daily note
- Shortcut for creating new content from “cmd + o” to “cmd + u”
… and much more.
Update 6 ― March 2022
Capacities is evolving everyday to become what we set to be our vision: A place to organize your mind, an interface to all the information and media we consume ever day. With this update we introduce two new features: tags and a twitter integration.
Tags
Use tags to organize your content. You can attach tags everywhere in your writing. When clicking on a tag you can see all content that you attached to this tag and in the graph view you get an overview of the topics this content relates to. To learn more about tags read our learning unit.
Twitter Integration
Twitter is a great medium to get inspired, to exchange thoughts and develop ideas. We are on our way to fully integrate your twitter workflows into your second brain. The first step is done: You can save tweets and threads to your second brain, they are stored and you can use them like any other content in Capacities: Take notes, organize them with tags or in collections and link them to any other content. Further, you can comment on a tweet on Twitter to automatically save it to your space. To learn more about it read our post on the Twitter integration.
Many small improvements and fixes
- Better link navigation: You can directly navigate to links by clicking it. To edit it, use “CMD + click”.
- Improved app design: In Capacities the content matters. That’s why we moved the content pane into the center and the navigation elements into the background.
- Animations: Transitions are now animated, creating a more smoother experience.
- More filters: We added filters for blocks, so you can filter based on your content blocks.
- Fixes around text editing: You can now better edit text and navigate even with linked content in your text.
- Filters for daily notes: On your daily note page you can now filter the content created on that day.
- Improved Weblink design: Web links are now more compact, allowing you to better take notes on them.
… and much more.
Update 5 ― March 2022
This is a big release, we are really proud of. We introduce to new features which we think are both game-changing: graph view and daily notes. 🤩🚀
Graph View
Creating a network of your thoughts is very powerful because it removes the constraints rigid folder structures impose on us. We took this a step further: With a single click you get a powerful visualization of the current context, allowing you to fully grasp the structure of your notes.
Daily Notes
You are progressing over time, so should your notes. You now have a central hub for your daily note taking. Your daily note is where ideas emerge and where you manage your work. Over time you get a powerful chronological view of what you’ve created.
Wall view
A new layout for your content: Wall view displays preview cards with varying heights, depending on the content. This gives you an even more immersive preview of your content.
More detailed card preview
We’ve added some refinements to the card preview to give you an even better picture of the content inside.
Many small fixes and design tweaks
Update 4 ― February 2022
We worked on improving the text editing experience in Capacities and simplified the creation of custom types. 🎉👇
Simpler Creation of Content Types
You can now create your own types in Capacities with just two clicks. Modify them to your needs if you want.
“Turn Into” Operations
Turn your notes into entities within seconds and find them in your databases.
Filter and Sort in Search Modal
Simply filter and sort your content when you want to reuse it.
Unified shortcuts together with an in-app cheat-sheet
We’ve unified the conventions for shortcuts and put all of them in a cheat sheet that’s accessible from anywhere in the app.
Let us know what other shortcuts you would like to see!
Improved Tooltips
Our tooltips now have a small arrow that points to the element it is referring to.
Changed: Renamed Workspace to Favorites
We renamed workspace to favorites to better reflect that those are pages marked for quick access and not the single source of truth for all content.
New section “Linked Content” in right sidebar
All the entities that are contained within your page are listed in the right sidebar. You can click on them to navigate to their position
Alternative way to add collections in Database dashboard
Improved Code Block
More supported languages with language features and syntax highlighting
Copy snippet do clipboard or download snippet
Several bug fixes and improvements
- Fixed: text-focus after copy and paste
- Database page navigation is persistent now
- Picker modal for content shows all selected content at the top
- Improved: Spacing and design of blocks
Update 3 ― February 2022
Here comes our third batch of product improvements since we launched last month. 🎉👇
Improved Card view
We added a beautiful content preview to our card view. You now see a live view of what’s inside.
New Menu for block styling
We developed a completely new menu to quickly style your blocks. 🧱 In addition to the standard options we’ve added a palette of beautiful colors. Remember that you can combine options such as toggle, heading, to-do, or colors to create just the block you want.
New color palette for text styling
The same color palette is now also available inside text. 💅
Filterable menus
To make the input of new content even faster we’ve added a filter to the menu for adding new content. Just type what you want to create and press enter. ⌨️💨
Notes for Image view
As we aim to integrate media of all types more and more into your notes, we’ve added a “📔 Notes” section to images. In the full page view, just scroll down and capture any thoughts related to that image. ✍️🖼
Better tweet embeds
Design unifications and improvements
We’ve progressed a lot in the process of unifying the design of the whole app and giving it a unique language. We hope you will notice it!
Improved mobile view, experience on touch devices
Although we don’t support editing on mobile yet, we’ve improved the reading experience and mobile layout a lot.
Improved table view
We’ve also made some adjustments to the table view. The cells look more unified, the headers are better readable, menus inside the table are more accessible.
Improved loading performance of the app
We reduced the bundle size resulting in a much faster initial load of the app.
Update 2 ― February 2022
It’s time for another update on our product improvements. 🎉 This time we mostly worked on iterative improvements to improve the UX. But we’ve also added some new features, as you’ll see.
Filter and Sort for Collections
We’ve added the much requested feature to sort and filter collections and databases. We also show a small indicator for active filters and sorts.
CSV export for collections
You can now export your collections as CSV. This will include basic properties that are compatible with CSV by nature such as title, date, number, tags. Blocks property and media files are not supported for this type of export.
Improved Picker modal
We improved the UX of reusing existing content via picker. It now shows all available content with pagination and has an improved layout and design.
Mobile layout/design improvements
We’ve massively improved the reading and navigation experience on mobile devices. Most content now looks pretty nice on your smartphone or tablet. The editing experience is still not supported for mobile devices.
Performance improvements: Reduced loading time
We’ve added quite a few performance improvements concerning the loading speed of the app. The loading time is now up to 33% faster.
Better keywords and german locale support for emoji picker
Our emoji picker has gotten better keywords and now also supports german locales, if your language is set to german.
Views for custom types
We’ve added improved card, embed, and page views for custom types that work out of the box.
Progressive loading for images
Images now load faster due to progressive loading. That means, the smallest version of an images is loaded first and progressively replaced by larger ones.
Notes Attribute for images
Since media is a first class citizen in Capacities, we’ve also added a “Notes” property to images. You can now take notes on a specific image, link it to other content and view the places where it’s being used.
Quick navigation in table view
To quickly navigate to an item in the table view we’ve added a quick link that appears on hover right next to the “Title” cell.
List view
In addition to Grid and Table we’ve added another view – the list.
Better navigation with views in database
To make it faster to switch between views, we’ve added a button group that makes it just one click.
Update 1 ― January 2022
Complete redesign of right sidebar
The sidebar on the right comes with a fresh new design and a lot of new features.
Type and metadata
At the top you can always see the type of the current content with a link to the database, to quickly navigate to all your content of this type.
Below you can view and edit the most important metadata such as title and description.
Actions
In the new ‘Actions’ section of the sidebar you can share, import, and export this content. You can also quickly delete the current content.
Table of contents
The new table of contents gives you a better overview and lets you quickly navigate to any heading inside of the current content.
Text statistics
The text statistics-sections gives you all relevant stats. It will only be displayed for content with a “blocks” property for rich text.
Created at and last updated
At the very bottom we display secondary metadata about creation and updates of the current content.
Import and Export
We now support import from and export to several formats for single entities with a ‘blocks’ property. We support Word, HTML, LaTeX, and Markdown formats.
When importing a file the content of the file gets added as blocks to the bottom of your content.
New Dashboard for Databases
The new dashboard for databases is a great way of reviewing, finding, and organizing your content by type. The dashboard consists of several sections. In ‘Last edited’ we display the last couple of items you edited, so you can pick up your work where you left it. Below we display the ‘Inbox’–items you’ve recently created but not organized in a collection yet. And finally, we display your collections in a grid so you can quickly access them. You will also find your collections in the left sidebar, just below the database of that type.
In the database dashboard you can toggle between ‘Show all’ to show all content in one container and ‘Show dashboard’ to display content in different sections, as explained earlier. You can also search through all content of this database via the search bar.
Over time we will add more sections to the database dashboard to help you get the most out of your content.
New Space Dashboard
We designed the new space dashboard as an entry point into your space. You can now instantly create any type of content and don’t have to think about where to put it first. And below you now get an overview of the most relevant content in a space. For now we only show your workspace pages, but we will add more smart sections soon.
Improved Search
We’ve added a search bar right to the dashboard of your space. That way can quickly jump to any content. The search lets you filter by content type. It will now also find your collections and databases.
What else
Fresh new look
We have started to give Capacities a fresher, more unified look. This includes aligning all buttons and cards. We are mostly through, but not completely done with it yet.
Simplified Left Sidebar
We’ve simplified the sidebar on the left to leave more space for ‘Workspace’ and ‘Databases’. We moved ‘Give feedback’, ‘Search’, and ‘New content’ to the top and put all of them in one line. We’ve also improved the design of the Account menu where you can change the language and log out.
Faster emoji search
We’ve improved the emoji picker in the app. It now comes with a faster and smoother search. Unsupported emojis are being filtered out and are not shown anymore. Currently the search only supports English keywords, but we will add the localization of keywords in German soon.
Improved Preview Modal
The preview modal to preview any content now also supports the info and features from the right sidebar. You can toggle it via the button in the top right corner.
Add description on page
You can now add a description from the main view of a page.
That’s it for this release. Stay tuned for more! 😎