Feature Request: Unlist a shared notebook

[mootari]

A problem I frequently run into is that (shared) notebooks I create in response to topics on talk.observablehq.com clutter my own notebook index. I have no interest in keeping these around, but moving them to the trash makes them inaccessible.

I’d love to see a feature to hide a notebook from my own index:

• The notebook stays accessible to other users.
• The notebook no longer appears in my list of notebooks, unless I specifically filter by “hidden” (similar to trash).

[mootari]

@mbostock Any thoughts on this request?

[mbostock]

Yes, I have this problem too. We don’t have an immediate solution, but we are looking for ways to better organize your notebooks—something beyond just public collections of published notebooks. I like the idea of “resolved” or “hidden” notebooks which are still accessible by link but don’t show up in your list of notebooks.

[aaronkyle]

It’s really inspiring to be a member of this community as Observable so rapidly grows and develops.

Since we’re on the the topic of organizing private notebooks, I’d like to bump a related feature request from awhile back: enabling search within one’s own private, non-shared notebooks:

Searching within 'My Notebooks'

It does not appear that there’s a means for searching for one’s own draft notebooks within ‘My Notebooks’. The search tool will bring up other public notebooks, but won’t return matches within my drafts. I would find it helpful to add, and so thought that I’d raise it here for consideration.

… This might be an alternative solution to cutting through ‘clutter’ in one’s non-public notebooks.

Thanks for this amazing tool, Mike, Tom and Jeremy!!!

[mootari]

@aaronkyle

… This might be an alternative solution to cutting through ‘clutter’ in one’s non-public notebooks.

It would certainly be a useful enhancement, but does not solve my use case: I have several unfinished notebooks that I leave lying around for weeks or months at a time. Without additional filtering I have no means to tell them apart from one-off support notebooks.

Edit: A more flexible alternative to yet another fixed category might be the ability to organize notebooks in custom categories. Tags would be an alternative to categories that can also be integrated into a search.

[aaronkyle]

@mootari

Edit: A more flexible alternative to yet another fixed category might be the ability to organize notebooks in custom categories. Tags would be an alternative to categories that can also be integrated into a search.

I like this idea too - even allowing for grouping private notebooks into collections would help.

[mootari]

Bumping this feature request, because frankly with every new notebook I’m one step closer to just deleting the whole bunch.

[mootari]

… Bump?

[mbostock]

If you want to hide your shared notebooks, you can go here (replace my login with yours in the URL):

https://beta.observablehq.com/@mbostock?types=public&types=private

That’s our solution for the near future. There’s a huge amount of other stuff we are working to release, and we appreciate you want certain improvements, but please be patient.

[mootari]

@mbostock

That’s our solution for the near future. There’s a huge amount of other stuff we are working to release, and we appreciate you want certain improvements, but please be patient.

That won’t work for my case, because many of my in-progress notebooks are also shared. But since I was primarily looking for an estimate on when we might see this addition, “not in the immediate future” is an answer I can work with it.

[mootari]

Updated the topic title to (hopefully) better reflect what is requested.

[mootari]

I’m marking this topic as solved because the recent addition of private collections provides a reasonable workaround.