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Getting started

Open a collection, create your first note, and learn the layout.

Opening your first collection

HelloNotes works on a collection: an ordinary folder of Markdown files. There is no import, no library format and no database — you simply point the app at a folder.

The first time you launch it there is already one open: the collection that ships inside the app, a short tour and the user manual, written in HelloNotes. It is a folder of notes like any other, so you can edit it, close it, and bring it back later with Open Default Collection.

To open a folder of your own:

  1. Click the + at the top of the sidebar and choose Open Collection ▸ from Folder…
  2. Pick any folder containing .md files — or an empty folder to start something new.

File ▸ Open… (⌘O) does the same from one screen that also lists the collections you have opened recently. An existing Obsidian vault works as-is: choose Open Collection ▸ from Obsidian Vault… or pick the vault’s folder, and it opens directly, wiki-links, tags, aliases and front matter intact.

The layout

The window is three regions, each about one thing: the collection on the left, the note in the middle, and what the note is on the right.

  • The sidebar is the collection. At its top are the collection’s tools as named rows — Mind Map, Assistant, Ask Your Library and Git (a collection connected straight to a cloud account has no Git row) — and below them a single tree: Recents and Bookmarks pinned first (each spans every open collection, which is why neither is a folder), then one row per open collection, with its folders and notes beneath it exactly as they are on disk. The + in its header makes a folder and opens or creates collections. The header also holds the sidebar’s own toggle; while the sidebar is hidden, that toggle is the first button of the bar over the note, so the sidebar can always come back.
  • The note is in the middle. The bar over it has three buttons — + for a new note, a magnifying glass for searching and finding, and a gear for Settings — then the tabs of the notes you have open, then Note Actions, the menu of the open note’s own commands. Along the bottom are the four views: Edit, Preview, Markdown and Split.
  • The right panel is what the open note is: its Summary & Outline, Tags, Links, Properties, History and Graph. The last button in the bar shows or hides it, and the row of icons along its top chooses what it shows. The note beside it stays live, so you can keep typing with the panel open.

The Mind Map, the Assistant and Ask Your Library are about the whole collection rather than one note, so they open as tabs beside your notes. Choosing a note puts them behind it; their tab brings them back. HelloNotes opens no window of notes on its own — a second one appears only when you ask for it, with New Window or Open in New Window. (Settings, on the Mac, is the usual settings window.)

Several collections can be open at once, and a pinned place that is empty is left out rather than shown empty. Searching is deliberately library-wide: Search Notes, under the magnifying glass (or ⌥⌘F), opens a search field in the bar, looks across every open collection, and shows the results in the sidebar, grouped by collection.

The layout follows the space available, not the device. In a window taller than it is wide — an iPad in portrait — the sidebar lies across the top instead, folders on the left and the notes in the chosen folder on the right. In a narrow window, and on an iPhone, there is room for one thing at a time: four tabs along the bottom — Notes, Search, Tags and AI — with the open note in a strip above them that brings it up full screen.

Creating your first note

  1. Press ⌘N, or choose New Note from the + in the bar.
  2. A file is created where you are — in the folder of the note you have selected, or at the top of the collection — and opened for editing.
  3. Type as you would in any Markdown editor. Formatting appears as you type — see The editor.

A note’s title is its filename. It is shown above the body as a heading you can edit in place: click it, type, and press Return to go back to the text. Renaming there renames the file and rewrites every link to that note elsewhere in the collection — as does Note ▸ Rename… (⇧⌘R).

Saving

There is no save command, because there is nothing to remember to do. A note is written to disk when you stop editing it — when you leave the text, switch to another note or another app, close the window or quit. A save that works is never announced; the bottom bar says Save failed only in the one case that matters, when your words are not on disk.

If a note changes on disk while you are editing it — a sync client, another app, another device — HelloNotes tells you rather than silently picking a winner, and offers Reload or Keep Mine.

Where to go next