Chrome search engines as fast bookmarks for Dynalist items

Iā€™m not sure how widely this is known, but it was new to me when someone showed me recently.

Each bullet in your Dynalist has a unique URL, for example, this URL links to ā€œthe atomic structure of matterā€ in Propaedia
https://dynalist.io/d/GcSvL_R4bB97MLi4SAwhYrgY#z=ftq8V7kkDA0KNPKthVgT2OI_

I have a few Dynalist bullets I use frequently. I used to get to them by first navigating to Dynalist, then crtl+o, then get them from the Dynalist bookmarks.

For me, it was better to go to chrome://settings/searchEngines. After a few defaults, thereā€™s ā€œother search enginesā€ and ā€œaddā€. I click ā€œaddā€, and in the dialog that pops up, type a short name for the dynalist bullet, then a short key to remember it, then paste the url. Then, whenever I type the key into Chromeā€™s address bar and hit enter, I go straight to the Dynalist bullet I want.

For example, I could type
Search engine: structure of matter
keyword: som
URL with %s in place of query: https://dynalist.io/d/GcSvL_R4bB97MLi4SAwhYrgY#z=ftq8V7kkDA0KNPKthVgT2OI_

Then when I want to go to the structure of matter bullet point, I hit ctrl+L in chrome to go to the address bar, type ā€œsomā€, hit enter, and Iā€™m there. This was faster for me because I didnā€™t have to navigate to dynalist first.

I knew about the chrome search engine edit for a while, but never thought to use it this way. It just creates aliases for URLs, which is useful for searches, but useful for quick navigation as well. I even use it to bookmark chrome://settings/searchEngines as ā€œseā€ so I can add new pages quickly. (So if Iā€™m on a page I want to bookmark, I hit ctrl+L, ctrl+c, se, enter, tab tab tab enter, then type in the moniker, alias, and paste in the url, hit enter, and I have a new bookmark.)

This has the downside that you have to remember the aliases you gave, but for any URL I visit frequently, I find it easier and faster than standard bookmarking, in Dynalist and elsewhere. Itā€™s also useful for fast-emailing people I email frequently, (see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6548570/url-to-compose-a-message-in-gmail-with-full-gmail-interface-and-specified-to-b for gmail urls).

2 Likes

ah this is such a great idea

you could take it even further by automatically that entire process using a phrase-express macro to handle all those keys in phrase-express

so really, the fastest way of doing this is as follows:

  1. On dynalist site
  2. Press a hotkey that [asks for input, ctrl+L, ctrl+C, se, enter, tab tab tab enter)
  3. Press Ok (automatically paste values in āœŖSearch Engine (default of dynalist) āœŖ Keyword (input) āœŖ URL %s (URL of site you were on)

then you just type input press okay

Search engine is completely irrelevant so if you just use the same name over and over it makes it easier to find

You can take it always do this step when making new document in dynalist and have some shortcut / keyword naming rules

I tend to make a lot of MOOC course docs on lynda so I think I would name mine like this:

  • LYCSS1 ā†’ css course material part 1
  • LYCSS2 ā†’ css course material part 1
  • LYJS1 ā†’ javascript course material part 1
  • LYJS2 ā†’ more advanced topic
  • LYNode ā†’ nodeJS stuff

only downside is if you have a lot more documents it can be kind of hard to remember everything document names as list gets bigger

unless you had a cheat sheet with all your shortcuts names ā†’ doc names on it

Not sure how you would run backups / sync with 2 PCs though

Arenā€™t there chrome extensions to handle omnibar types of searches? Or bookmark tools?

Just a thought. I have used Slimjet (https://www.slimjet.com/) as my primary browser for years. Slimjet is built on Chromium and has alias functionality builtin. I have a few aliases that I use constantly. After reading this thread I see that I have failed to grasp the power of aliases.

The only downside of Slimjet is that it does not run on Mac OSX. I am on Linux 99% of the time, Windows 1% of the time.

Thanks for the hugely useful idea of using aliases more.

that link to atomic structure is not even deep

if something was deep enough, just have a separate list/outline/note, simple

what exactly would this be helpful? examples would be helpful