Notes and the editor

Writing in Markdown

A note is a Markdown file in your vault, and its first heading is its title. The editor renders as you type; the Markdown characters around a word only show while your cursor is inside it.

The Aa square in the bottom-left corner of a note opens the style bar, with the same formatting as buttons (⇧⌘Y), plus link, table and picture. ⌘+ and ⌘− change the text size, and ⌥⌘0 puts it back.

Copying from a note copies what you see, so pasting into Mail or Pages keeps the bold, headings and checkboxes, and a plain-text field gets the text without the Markdown characters. Pasting back into a note brings the Markdown with it. For the source itself, use Copy as Markdown on the note’s ⋯ menu.

The note’s header

The ⋯ menu at the top right of a note has Pin, Duplicate Note (a copy named “… copy”, with the same folder, tags and people), Show Styling Controls (the Aa style bar), Copy as Markdown, Export as PDF… (the note as you see it, saved as a PDF), and Share…, which hands the note’s file to Mail, Messages or any other share option. It also has the recording and AI actions covered on their own pages.

The ⓘ in the same row, or a click on the note’s date beside it, opens Statistics: words, characters, paragraphs and reading time. Under them are the note’s Created and Updated dates; click the pencil beside one to change it. Created is the date the note is listed and sorted by.

Headings, lists and checklists

• Headings: type # to ###### and a space, or press ⌘1 to ⌘6 while you are typing in a note. ⌘0 makes a heading body text again.
• Lists: - and a space starts a bulleted list (⌘L). 1. or 1) starts a numbered one (⇧⌘O). Return continues a list with the same bullet, so a * or + list carries on as one. Return on an empty item ends the list, or, on a nested item, moves it out one level. Backspace at the start of a nested item moves it out too.
• Nesting: ⇥ moves a list item in a level, under the item above, and ⇧⇥ moves it back out. Lists nest up to eight levels, and a nested item lines up under its parent’s text, so the file reads correctly in any other Markdown app.
• Checklists: - [ ] makes a checkbox (⌘T); click it to tick it. Every checkbox also appears in Tasks, and hovering one shows a ••• menu with the same actions as a task row there.
• Folding and outline: with the cursor on a heading, click the numbered badge in the margin to fold its section. A note with two or more headings has an outline rail on its right edge: hover it, then click a heading to jump there.

Every key is listed in Keyboard shortcuts.

Links between notes

Type [[ to pick a note title and insert a link such as [[Project plan]]. Click a link to open the note, or to create it if no note has that title yet; the pointer becomes a hand over it. A link to a list opens the list. To edit a link rather than follow it, right-click it and choose Edit Link, or move the caret into its brackets with the arrow keys.

Resting on a note link can show the linked note, rendered, without leaving the one you are reading. Choose when in Settings ▸ Editor ▸ Note links ▸ Preview a note link: Holding ⌘ (the default), On hover, or Never.

Web links

• A web address becomes a link as you type it. When you type a space after it, or paste an address, MindLake looks up the page’s title and writes a titled link in its place. If the page does not answer, the address stays as it was.
• A plain click opens a web link in your browser. Hold ⌘ over one to see the site’s icon, page title and full address.
• Each web link shows the site’s icon in front of it. Icons are fetched once per site and kept on this Mac.
• Pasting a link over selected text makes the text a link.
• Links work inside table cells too, note links and web links alike.

Settings ▸ Editor ▸ Web links has a switch for the icons and one for fetching titles, both on. Both fetches go to the web, so turn them off if you want to write fully offline. Settings ▸ Editor ▸ Note links adds markers: Show the note’s type in front of a note link, and Show a link glyph after links (a small square with an arrow, on every link), both off; Use the highlight colour for link glyphs is on.

People, tags and folders

Four tokens file a note as you write. Type one and a space, and MindLake moves it out of the text into the note’s details, shown as chips above the note:

Click a chip to edit it, or its icon to remove it. Right-click a person’s chip for Remove All Attendees, which clears every person from the note at once. The sidebar’s Folders and Tags tabs list each folder and tag with a count. A note you never filed lands in the Inbox folder. See Your vault for how folders map to disk.

Tables in a note

Write a Markdown table, or choose Note ▸ Table, and it draws as a grid. Click a cell to edit it. Each cell has a ⋮ menu, and right-clicking a cell adds a Table submenu that can also duplicate a row or column and sort by a column. Hover the bottom edge of a table to add a row. Hover beside a row, or above a column, for its grip: click the grip to select the whole row or column, or drag it to move it.

A click on a link in a cell follows it; ⌥-click, or click the cell away from the link, to edit the cell. A table wider than the page pans sideways with two fingers on the trackpad.

• Copy Table As on the ⋮ menu copies the whole table as Markdown, CSV, TSV or HTML. Align Column sets a column left, centre or right.
• Full Width, for a table wider than the page, opens it out into the margins. Pinching the table open does the same, and pinching in folds it back.
• Convert to List turns the table into a MindLake list, with a type chosen for each column as a CSV import would. The list is named after the heading above the table (or the note’s name), and a [[link]] to it takes the table’s place. ⌘Z brings the table back. See Tables and canvas.
• Fix Table: lines of pipes that should be a table but do not draw as one, such as a mangled paste, show as text. Right-click them and choose Fix Table to rebuild them as a grid.
• Leave a blank line between two tables. A second table written straight under the first, with no blank line, reads as more rows of the first, as it does in other Markdown apps.

How tables look is set in Settings ▸ Editor ▸ Tables: Corners, Rounded or Square, and Tint alternate rows, which is off.

Pictures, maths and code

• Pictures and files: drag images, videos or PDFs into a note, or use the picture button on the style bar. MindLake copies them into the note’s sources and shows them as thumbnails; double-click one to preview it. More on pictures below.
• Code: fenced code blocks are coloured by language; a mermaid block also draws its diagram.
• Maths: start a line with $$, write LaTeX and close with $$ to render an equation. Inline maths ($…$) is not supported yet.

Diagrams and maths use libraries loaded from jsDelivr, so they need a connection; your note stays on your Mac.

Working with pictures

• Click a picture to select it, ⇧-click another to select the run between them, and ⌘- or ⌃-click to add or remove one. ⌫ deletes the selected pictures from the note, Esc clears the selection, and a double-click previews one.
• Right-click a picture for Show Link (its link shown under the pictures until you switch notes), Full Width (a row of its own), 2×2 Grid (two big columns instead of small thumbnails), Open, View in Sources, Copy Transcript, Copy Text (OCR), Copy Link and Reveal in Finder. Full Width and 2×2 Grid are saved in the note’s Markdown, so they follow it to other devices.
• Backspace on a blank line between two groups of pictures removes the line and joins them into one. At the start of the line of text under a picture, Backspace selects the picture, and a second press deletes it.
• On iPhone, a long press on a picture offers Show Link, Full Width and 2×2 Grid.

Templates

1. Choose File ▸ New from Template.
2. If you have no templates yet, choose Make Starter Templates. MindLake adds two, Meeting and Daily, to a _Templates folder in your vault. It never overwrites a file that is already there.
3. Pick a template from the same menu to start a note from it.

The new note takes the template’s name as its title. It goes into the folder you are looking at, or, when you are looking at a tag, gets that tag, along with any tags the template has.

A template is an ordinary note in the template folder. It can use {{title}}, {{date}} and {{time}}, with a format if you want one, as in {{date:dddd D MMMM}}. Anything else in double braces is left as you wrote it. The menu also has Edit Template and Show Templates Folder. To use another folder, pick it from your folders in Settings ▸ Editor ▸ Templates ▸ Template folder; if the folder does not exist yet, Create makes it.

New notes

⇧⌘N makes a new text note, and ⌘1 does the same when you are not typing in a note. ⌘N does whatever New is set to do, which is to start a recording unless you change it. A new note you leave without doing anything to it (no text typed, no tag, person, recording or file) deletes itself, and Esc on it takes you back to where you were.

File ▸ Convert Document… (⇧⌘O when you are not typing in a note) turns files into notes. Pick one or several: each becomes a note titled after its file, in the folder you are looking at, with the text as Markdown and the pictures and charts inside it as pictures. The original is kept as the note’s source. See Sources.

Typography and colour

Settings ▸ Typography sets the look of every note: the fonts for text, headings and code, the text size (16 points to start), line height, line width, the space after each paragraph and a first-line indent. Open notes change as you move the controls.

Restore Defaults, under the sliders, puts back the system fonts, 16 points, a line height of 1.5, line width Auto, and no paragraph spacing or indent.

Settings ▸ Theme sets how MindLake itself looks:

Colour note types individually gives each note type its own colour, and Colour snippet types individually does the same for the kinds of snippet. The row under each switch shows the result. Click a type in it to choose its colour from the presets, the colour well or Default; choosing one turns that switch on. With Use the highlight colour for link glyphs off (Settings ▸ Editor ▸ Note links), the type glyph in front of a note link takes its type’s colour.

Finding notes

In All Notes, the search field (⌘F) filters as you type, matching titles, text, summaries, transcripts and people. Beside it you can filter by note type, show only untagged notes, pick days on a calendar, change the sort, and switch between cards, rows and a one-line list. Right-click a note to pin it to the top or duplicate it; lists and canvases can be duplicated the same way. ⌘-click or ⇧-click to select several notes, then right-click one of them for Change Type, Add Tag, Add Person, Move to Folder, Pin All, Unpin All and Delete. In an open note, ⌘F opens a find bar for its text. To search the whole vault at once, use ⌘K: see Search and the command bar.

Locked notes

Locking encrypts a note on disk. Open it and choose Note ▸ Lock Note (⇧⌘L). The first time, you set a vault passphrase and MindLake shows a recovery key. Keep the key safe: without the passphrase or the key, a locked note cannot be opened.

• Unlock with Touch ID or the passphrase; one unlock opens every locked note. A locked note shows a padlock in its header, closed while sealed and open while unlocked: click it to unlock, or to seal them again.
• Note ▸ Seal Locked Notes (⌥⌘L) locks them again, and so does locking your screen. Note ▸ Remove Lock… makes a note ordinary again.
• The AI assistant never reads a locked note, and locked notes are left out of the search index. On iPhone, locked notes are read-only and open with Face ID.