Docs/Left sidebar/Notes tree

Notes tree

The Notes tab is the left sidebar's home base — a tidy tree of the folders and notes in your project. It's where you browse what you've written and where you create, rename, move, and organize notes. For what a note actually is and everything you can put in one, see Notes.

At the top of the panel is the "Notes" title with a running count of how many notes your project holds, kept up to date as you add and remove them. Once you have at least one note, three small buttons appear just below:

Expand all / Collapse all
Open every folder in the project at once, or fold them all shut, in a single click.
Auto-reveal active note
A toggle that keeps the tree in step with whatever note you're editing: open a note and the tree opens its folders and scrolls it into view. Browsing the tree by hand never fights back — it only reveals when you switch notes.

Reading the tree

Folders and notes appear together in a single indented list. A few handy things to know:

Empty folders
Shown, not hidden. An empty folder stays visible so you can open it or drop a note into it.
Every kind of file
The tree lists everything in your project — notes, tables, and other files — each with its own icon so you can tell them apart at a glance.
Last edited
Each note shows a relative time on the right, like "3h ago," so you can spot what you touched recently.
Open vs. select
Click the little arrow to open or close a folder; click the rest of the row to select it without opening it. That way you can select a folder — to rename, tag, or delete it — without it springing open under your cursor.
Keyboard navigation
Click into the tree, then use ↑/↓ to move through the visible rows. Enter opens the note or toggles the folder you're on. Space adds or removes a row from your selection, ⌘A selects everything visible, and Esc clears the selection.
Selecting several at once
⌘-click picks individual rows; Shift-click grabs a whole run between two rows. A small count ("3 of 42 selected") appears above the tree, with a link to clear it. Any action you then choose — delete, tag, and so on — applies to the whole selection.

Creating notes and folders

Right-click empty space in the tree, or the thoughtbase's own row at the top, to get New Note and New Folder at the top level. Right-click an existing folder for the same two options, creating the new item inside that folder instead. This is the place to make a new folder.

The thoughtbase itself

The menu on the thoughtbase's row (and on the empty space below the tree) also has the folder actions that make sense for the whole thoughtbase:

Paste
When you've cut or copied something, paste it at the top level.
Copy Path
Copies where the thoughtbase is on your computer — the full folder path.
Open In
Reveal the thoughtbase in Finder, open it in its default app, or open a Terminal in it.
View Objects
Every type in the thoughtbase, with a count — open one to see all its notes. See below.
Label Version… / View Local History…
Name the current version of every note at once, or look back across the whole thoughtbase's history. See below.

Actions that would change every note at once — adding a tag or property, Format — and Rename and Delete aren't offered for the thoughtbase itself.

Renaming and moving

Right-clicking a note or folder opens a fuller menu — Cut, Copy, Paste, New Note, New Folder, Rename, and more, down to Delete. The most common ways to reorganize:

Rename
Right-click and choose Rename. Links to that note from elsewhere in your project are updated automatically so nothing breaks. Rename a folder and any views of just that folder follow it too.
Move by dragging
Drag a note or folder onto another folder to move it there, or drop it in the empty space below the tree to move it to the top level.
Move by Cut and Paste
Cut a note, then Paste onto the destination folder. Same result as dragging — handy when the two spots aren't both on screen at once.
Copy
Copy a note, then Paste elsewhere to make a duplicate rather than moving the original.
Bring files in
Drag files from your computer onto the tree to add them to your project at the spot where you drop them.
The Notes panel with a trip folder open, showing its notes and subfolders. A right-click menu is open on the folder, offering Cut, Copy, New Note, New Folder, Rename, Copy path, Open In, View Objects and more, with the View Objects submenu listing the folder's types and how many of each it holds.
The Notes panel with a folder's right-click menu open, showing View Objects

Seeing a folder's objects

When a folder holds typed notes — in it or in any folder beneath it — its right-click menu offers View Objects, listing each type there with a count, along with the more general types they belong to. Choosing one opens that type's view as a table, showing only the folder's notes; switch it to a list, gallery or map from there. The thoughtbase's own menu has View Objects too, for every type in the thoughtbase. See Objects for working with the view.

Naming a restore point across several notes

Select the notes you're about to change — several at once, a whole folder, or right-click the thoughtbase itself for everything — then choose Label Version…. The current version of every note in the selection is given the name you type, so a whole set of notes gets one restore point before a refactor or a big AI-assisted pass. Nothing is written into the notes themselves; the name attaches to each note's history, and a named version is never dropped by the usual retention limits.

The same menu's View Local History… opens one timeline for everything you selected — including notes that have since been deleted — where you can see what changed and put the whole selection back as it was at any moment. See Looking back across several notes.

Deleting is calm, not scary

Deleting a note is a normal, everyday action — you get a plain confirmation with a "don't ask again" option, no alarming warnings. A deleted note's history is kept, so you can bring it back from the folder's View Local History….

No notes yet

A brand-new project shows a simple "No notes yet" message where the tree would be. Right-click that empty space and you can still make your first note or folder, so you're never stuck.