Docs · Writing · Editor & markdown

Editor & markdown

Quick edits happen in focus mode (double-click a note). For real writing, press ⌘⇧E to expand into the full editor — a near-fullscreen layer with tabs, outline, backlinks, and the complete markdown toolkit. (On Windows and Linux, read ⌘ as Ctrl.)

Tabs and splits

  • ⌘O opens a note in a new tab; ⌘1–⌘9 jump between tabs; ⌘W closes.
  • Drag a tab to the right edge to split the editor — up to three columns side by side.
  • Right-click a tab to pin or close it; drag to reorder.

Power markdown

Everything renders live as you type, and round-trips cleanly to plain markdown (switch between Live / Source / Read modes from the toolbar):

  • Tables (resizable), task lists, and code blocks with syntax highlighting for ~35 languages.
  • Callouts in five variants, footnotes with an editable bibliography.
  • Highlights in five colors, plus comment marks for margin thoughts.
  • Inline and block math via KaTeX — $x^2$ and $$\int f$$.
  • Mermaid diagrams from a code fence or the toolbar; click a rendered diagram to re-edit it.
  • Type [[ for autocompleting wikilinks — with aliases ([[Note|alias]]), heading anchors ([[Note#Heading]]), and create-on-the-fly for notes that don’t exist yet.
  • Embed another note (or a section of one) in place with ![[Note]], ![[Note#Heading]], or ![[Note^block-id]]. Embeds are live — edit the source and every embed updates.

The editor’s left rail holds six panels, opened one at a time or docked side by side:

  • Outline — the note’s headings, with scroll-spy.
  • Annotations — margin comments anchored to a block.
  • Backlinks — every wikilink, transclusion and semantic edge that points at the open note.
  • Properties — the note’s typed fields (see below).
  • History — every saved version. Pick one and the note itself renders it, so you compare against the real thing rather than a thumbnail; Restore is the only thing that writes.
  • Inspect — exactly what the search index saw for this note: the text it extracted, whether an image was captioned, and the notes it landed nearest to. Answers “why is this linked to that?”.

Below them sit the clipboard, calculator and translate tools. Hover any wikilink or edge for a floating preview of the target.

Typed properties

Notes carry structured fields alongside prose: text, number, date, datetime, checkbox, list-of-text, and list-of-links. Properties are first-class in search — status:active, priority:>=3, due:<2026-08-01.

Slash menu, palette, find

  • Type / for the categorized insert menu (blocks, media, templates).
  • ⌘P opens the command palette with every action in the app.
  • ⌘F find, ⌘⇧F find & replace within the note.

Media, drawings, templates

  • Attach audio (records in place), embed PDFs, or attach any file — drag and drop works for all three.
  • Insert an Excalidraw drawing with /drawing — sketches live as blocks inside the note.
  • Eight built-in templates (Meeting, Book, Project, Decision, Daily, Recipe, Research, 1:1); save any note as your own with ⌘⇧T.
  • A daily note is created automatically the first time you open a canvas each day — see Note kinds.
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