Streamline Sync UX process / save "My clippings.txt" file location to prevent file selection popup

[vii33]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I use this great plugin to sync highlights of my kindle files, type "documents". These documents are research papers (PDFs) and web findings. For this I have to use the "My clippings.txt" method since Amazon is not uploading non-book highlights to the cloud.

It is a bit cumbersome that I need to locate the file every time I want to do a sync.

Click process:

1. Click on plugin Icon: Pop up appears.
2. Click on "Sync"
3. Click on "Sync now"
4. Locate File
5. Click on "Open"
6. Click on close / X

Describe the solution you'd like
The easiest solution to implement would probably be a default folder location where the plugin looks for the "My clippings.txt" file. This is used after step 3 without the need to locate the file. Only if the file cannot be found in the default directory then the file selection popup appears.

Describe alternatives you've considered
I think the overall user experience of the clippings sync could be further improved: The user selection to cloud / locally sync is already stored in the plugin and could be changed by users in the settings. So why are steps 2., 3., 4. and 5. needed?

Leaner approach proposal:

1. Click on the plugin icon: Sync is done in the background.
2. After sync ended, popup with metrics appears:

Thank you and keep up the good work.

[fbmcipher]

I just bought a Kindle, just found this plugin, loved it, and felt exactly the same as you — I felt having to pick a file manually each time would quickly become cumbersome.

So I just wrote a PR that adds an option in the plugins' settings. You can type the path to your My Clippings file there, and the plugin will automatically use this file if it can!

[hadynz]

@vii33 thank you for raising this issue and the effort you've put in to share your idea.

I rarely ever use the My Clippings method myself so hence haven't experienced the inefficiency in the UX that you spoke about.

Happy to make the changes you proposed as they make sense. But can I clarify one thing - how would the plugin know the "default" location for the clippings file?

One option that could work is requiring the user to select a file location on first sync. This "last used" location is then considered as the default going forward.

How does that sound?

[vii33]

Hi @hadynz,
thank you for replying and considering this. In my opinion, it should be a setting, like the PR from @fzslm suggested. Otherwise you cannot edit the location if it changes at a later time.

You could also put in the settings a toggle to select either the cloud or the file sync as the default option. With this, you could save two UI screens, basically getting both sync methods to the minimal user flow (screen above).