Improvements to bookmarking

[JanineMumsnet]

Hello,

A couple of weeks ago some of the eagle eyed among you noticed there were some changes made to bookmarks. Unfortunately these changes were accidentally released a little too early - so some features were broken, and, understandably, many of you were a bit concerned. We're sorry about that.

The first change was to improve the visibility of the bookmarking feature on your mobile devices. We removed the bookmarking option from the dotted menu and created a new icon, and added some styling which changed the colour of the bookmarked post. These changes seemed to be received well and so we're going to release these in the wild today - please let us know if you've any questions or suggestions about any of that.

The second part of the change was related to how bookmarking interacts with 'Threads I'm Watching' - if you saw the changes you will have noted that by clicking 'bookmark' this automatically added the thread to your watch list. The reason we did this was based on a survey we asked users to fill in here back in February. The overwhelming feedback from this survey was that some users found it frustrating that they also had to separately add a thread to TIW and they thought this should be automatic. BUT it's clear from what you told us that there are other ways people use bookmarks, so you'll be glad to know we won't be releasing that part. We hold our hands up and admit we got that wrong, but we'll be reworking the solution to perhaps include a preference so you can choose whether you want that option or not per thread. As always, any suggestions on how you think we could best do that are always welcome.

It will be really useful to hear your thoughts on bookmarking and the threads I'm on/watching/started so that we don't miss something important - please feel free to add any feedback you have to this thread.

Thanks

MNHQ

@mnhq same as the previous two posters - how do you in bookmark something? I've now bookmarked twice this afternoon accidentally and it's not obvious how to undo it 🤔

I like the book mark!

I keep accidentally bookmarking things and can’t work out how to in-bookmark them. Also can’t work or where to find the things I’ve bookmarked!

@JanineMumsnet how do we un-bookmark? Several of us have done it accidentally and want to remove it but can't work out how to do so?

I don't think it's possible to remove a bookmark totally. As far as I can see, all you can do is move it by tapping the bookmark option on a post further down the thread.

This is how the bookmark feature has always worked, so it's the same functionality as before but with more attention drawn to it.

I'd be more inclined to use it if I could remove a bookmark when I want to.

I never really used the bookmark function although I understand many do. I mainly use Mumsnet on my iPhone, on Safari, so it’s easy to accidentally tap the bookmark button if you’re scrolling through with your finger.

I would like to unbook mark too, as pressed it twice by accident, really irritating

I keep bookmarking by accident while scrolling and can’t undo it. It’s very annoying

@Weathergirl1 thanks for giving me a heads up. As @DramaAlpaca has said, the functionality has always been this way - we realise it isn't ideal, so will hopefully add in the ability to remove a bookmark. But these changes for now are just styling changes to make the bookmark button more visible and the bookmarked post more obvious.

We have a 'roadmap' of changes we want to make to the feature which will take a bit of time. But the next round of changes should be in the next couple of weeks.