A Clearer Filter Panel: Reset in One Tap, Toggles Instead of Dropdowns

A few of you told us the filter felt broken. Searches came back with four or five results when there should have been hundreds, and clearing did not seem to help. When we looked at what was happening, the filter was working exactly as asked. The problem was that it was hard to see what it had been asked.

Filters stay on between visits. That is useful when you come back to the same search every morning, and confusing when you start a new one without noticing that last week’s bedrooms, bathrooms and build-up limits are still in place. Land with at least three bedrooms will always return four listings.

Two things made it worse. The button that clears everything and the button that clears one dropdown were both called Clear and looked identical. And the dropdown’s Close button was grey on grey, so it was easy to miss. So we redesigned the panel around one question: can you tell, at a glance, what your search is doing right now?

The F block opens the panel

The orange Filters button is gone. A small dark block marked F now hangs from the edge of the side panel, with the number of active filters under it (3 ON). Click it to open your filters and again to close them; it stays in place either way, so the filters are always one click away. On a phone, F sits at the end of the search row.

The panel tells you when filters are on

At the top of the panel you now see a chip reading 5 active or None active, a headline with the live count, Showing 412 listings. Every field that is narrowing your search shows its label in red, with a dot. If the chip says anything but None active, you are not looking at everything.

Reset filters, one button or one key

The panel-wide clear button is now called Reset filters and sits at the bottom of the panel with a reset icon. Press it, or press the R key anywhere on the dashboard, and every filter drops back to your defaults. The boxed R in the word Reset is the reminder. And every filter that is narrowing your search now shows its name in crimson with a dot in front, so you can see exactly which ones are on.

Dropdowns say what they clear

Inside a dropdown such as Broker or Neighbourhoods, the footer now reads 1 selected, with a small Clear this field link that resets only that one dropdown, and a single solid Done button to close it. While a dropdown is open, the rest of the panel dims behind it, so you always know which field you are editing. The list of options is also three times taller, so long lists like brokers and neighbourhoods are easier to scan.

Toggles for the small choices

Some filters only ever had two or three answers, and a dropdown was a lot of ceremony for them. Contract type (Sale or Rent), Right to land (Freehold or Leasehold), Pool and Verified are now one-tap toggles with an All or Any position on the left. Listing status is a toggle too, and you can pick more than one, so Active plus Pending gives you everything that is not closed.

A tidier layout

Related fields now sit together in boxes: island, region and neighbourhood at the top; the price, lot size and build-up ranges you type into; and the bedrooms, bathrooms and year built ranges you pick from a list. The filters that narrow a search the most come first. The panel is a little wider, and on a phone there is a clear gutter on the right so you can scroll with your thumb without hitting a control.

If you live in this panel, you can now drive it without touching the mouse. Nothing here is a special shortcut; it is how the controls already work, tidied up so it holds together end to end.

• F opens the panel and puts you on the first field. Press it again to close.
• Tab moves to the next filter, Shift+Tab to the previous one. After the last one, Tab comes back to the top of the panel. Each toggle row is one stop; use Left and Right to move within it and Enter to pick.
• Space or Enter opens a dropdown. Use the arrows to move through the options and Enter to pick one. The list stays open so you can pick more. Escape closes it and keeps your selection.
• In a searchable dropdown such as Broker or Neighbourhoods, just start typing to narrow the list.
• R resets every filter. Escape, with no dropdown open, closes the panel.

You always see where you are: the field that has the keyboard shows a thin crimson outline. Mouse clicks do not show it, so it never gets in the way.

You may notice the panel looks more like our email alerts than the rest of the dashboard: paper background, fine hairlines, one red, and a serif headline. That is deliberate. The same design language is now available to other parts of the dashboard, and the filter panel is the first to use it. Every colour was checked for contrast in light and dark mode, so nothing depends on telling red from grey.

Before you start a new search, press R or tap Reset filters. It takes a second, and it is the difference between four results and four hundred. If the chip says something is active, the panel is still narrowed from last time.

As always, if something does not work the way you expect, reply to any of our emails or write to support@mercala.org. This update came directly from one of those messages.