Too easy to accidentally delete items in the mobile (ios) app!

🐛Bugs
#1

I do like the new swipe function in the mobile app. But - and there is a big but - it is now very easy to delete things by swiping, and I have now several times happened to delete big parts of my lists without even noticing before later! And this is NOT good - it is too easy to lose important information without being able to retrieve it if you haven´t got the back-up otion (which luckily I had, but it is somewhat time-consuming to having to reinsert big lists from the back-up file anyway).
So - is it possible to for instance make archiving a swiping option as other have mentioned, and making it possible to choose between archiving and deleting in the settings?
Perhaps making the swiping act slower, so that it is not so easy to swipe by mistake?
Or getting a warning pop-up or something like it before you delete?

I will be happy to hear what you think of this.

3 Likes
#2

Agreed.

Workflowy, for example, requires another tap after swipe to delete. In my view, delete confirmation should be configurable. Switched on to prevent accidental deletion, switched off to make it convenient when deleting a number of items in succession when reorganizing your outline.

#3

I think so, too.
I often delete an item by mistake, and I try to undo it, but it takes time and effort to undo it on mobile.

For example, can you add an undo button to the toolbar so we can easily undo it when we accidentally delete an item ?

#4

Thanks for the feedback! Personally I haven’t run into this, my finger motions are mostly vertical when using Dynalist, because there’s no horizontal overflow. I do sometimes accidentally complete items, because I was trying to drag out the pane on the left.

I would be curious to know more about the accidents. Are you guys trying to read the text when the accidental deletion happens? Or when you’re not actually using the phone, like how you would pocket dial someone?

#5

Archiving is its entire thing, unfortunately, and there are lots of details we haven’t figured out. It also overlaps too much with completing an item.

We might make swiping options customizable, but we won’t add archive items for fixing this issue.

#6

There’s a Undo button at the top too bar, do you see that on your app? It’s on the right hand side of the top toolbar.

#7

It can happen when attempting to edit text on ios . When one long presses on the screen to activate the magnifying glass that lets you find the exact spot to enter a correction, and dragging the magnifying glass. This can trigger the delete swipe if you are not careful (my devices are a few years old, so they might not be the quickest to respond).

#8

As you mentioned, I sometimes accidentally complete or delete item when I try to open or close the left side pane.

I also do that when I put my finger on the text and move my finger to right or left in order to reach exact word in order to edit the item.

#9

Thank you for your reply.
I knew the Undo button and I could see that on my app.

When using Dynalist, I search for something and then use it in an extracted state.
In that case, the toolbar is hidden by the search term, so I have to cancel the search to display the Undo button.

Dynawrite, which I often use, has its original toolbar, and there are Undo, Redo, Back, Forward, and Reload buttons.
Of course, it can be used in the extracted state and it is very useful.

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That is why I proposed that such a function could be implemented in Dynalist.

#10

+1, I myself have recently found myself using the iOS app (on iPad) a lot more thanks to all the extra mobile features. This is a particular bugbear though, especially on iPad (not so much on iPhone though).

Would love the option to disable swipes altogether as I rarely if ever want to swipe to delete content.

1 Like
#11

Hope to have the swipe gestures be configurable in the future. I rarely use the delete command and would like to replace it with something else (copy or move, probably)

2 Likes
#12

After much discussion, we plan to turn mobile swipe actions into buttons. It would require another tap, but is far safer. Hopefully this will be fixed after that’s done.

It would still be faster than tapping the item, waiting for the keyboard and toolbar to appear, and choose your action.

#13

We’ll definitely consider that too, especially now that the toolbar is already customizable.

#14

Great. If you do that you might consider allowing up to 4 separate actions. I don’t know about other platforms, but many iOS apps have separate actions for long vs. short swipes…

#15

Are you addressing this issue as well Erica? It’s a recurrent problem for me too.

#16

Both sides will become buttons, so technically you can still make mistakes, but it’s much harder (you’ll need to accidentally initiate the swipe, followed by an accidental tap within a small area).

1 Like
#17

I was just about to start a new thread on this, so it’s comforting to have discovered this thread.

I was horrified, earlier today, to discover that one of my main docs was missing an entire list item with many sub-items nested within it! It simply vanished.

I only happened to notice that something was missing by memory. I got extremely worried that I could one day lose data in Dynalist without remembering or discovering that any items vanished from the data-sets.

When I examined the version history of that document, and my Dropbox daily backups, what I found was that the item along with its sub-items got deleted this morning a few minutes after 6 a.m.

I did wake up this morning at around 6 a.m. and I did check my Dynalist as one of the first things, but I am 100% positive I never touched that particular list item this morning. Didn’t edit it, didn’t even look at it. I did take a look at the document containing that item, though.

So, here is my theory on what happened. I frequently use the iOS gesture for moving between apps, which is “swipe with 4 fingers”. I must have done that this morning – I checked the Dynalist document, then swiped with 4 fingers to move to a different iOS app, but Dynalist interpreted that iOS-wide swipe gesture as a delete command for that particular list item inside Dynalist!

So, Erica, even though there may be no “horizontal workflow” within Dynalist itself, there definitely is one within iOS.

I’m happy to learn that the current functionality will be disabled and replaced with buttons. It’s just too dangerous the way it is now – when you can lose data without you even realizing something got deleted, and you might never rediscover you lost something important.

2 Likes
#18

Hello Dynalist,
+1
I also deleted an (unremembered :-/ ) item yesterday, swiping horizontally on it by mistake, while consulting one of my Dynalist documents via the Quick Dynalist (QD) Android app.
I guess QD is not supported via this forum, but I was hoping that, being Pro, the “Version history” feature of Dynalist would allow me recovering the deleted item. Unfortunately, for some reason, Version history works only on the very last changes made today, and not on yesterday changes which include the unfortunate deletion. Any solution to this ?
Greetings,

#19

If you keep pressing the Load more button, you will eventually see the changes from before.

As for the swipe to delete, we’re working on a change which makes the delete requiring an extra tap to happen.

#20

Dear Shida,
Thank you for your answer and for the ongoing development!
As to the ‘Load more’ button, the thing is that, even before pressing this button, I already do see enough dates, including the time of yesterday when I made the undesired deletion.
The problem is that the side panel visualizes the updates (i.e. the changes) only for the most recent version, not for the earlier ones, so not for the needed one.
Regards