Notes & notebooks

Notes live in Views (ways of looking at all your notes) and Notebooks (folders you make). A note belongs to one notebook or to none.

Create a note

• Click ＋ New in the List header, or press ⌥NAltN. If a notebook is selected, the new note goes into it.
• The first line is the title. # A heading as the first line makes a nice title; Rename in the Note bar sets it too.
• Notes save on your device as you type — there is no Save button to remember. See Sync & devices for when they reach the cloud.

Views

Tags you write in notes (#work) appear under Tags at the end of the Sidebar — click one to see its notes.

Notebooks

• Make one: click ＋ next to Notebooks, type a name, press ↵Enter.
• Rename or delete: point at the notebook and use ✎ or ×. Deleting a notebook keeps its notes — they stay in All notes.
• Make it private: the 🔒 button next to a notebook — see Protection & private notebooks.
• The Templates notebook: if you save a note as a template, Sidekick Note makes a notebook called Templates for it. Your templates and card presets live there as ordinary notes: open, edit or delete them like any other. A note you start from a template is created outside it, so it never turns into a template by accident (Templates).

The Sidebar and the Editor follow your click

Clicking a View, a Notebook or a #tag in the Sidebar always shows its notes:

• If you had folded the Note list away, it unfolds again. Clicking a #tag inside a note also leaves Focus mode, so you can see the list.
• The Editor opens the first note of the new list, so what you see always matches what you picked.
• If the list is empty, the Editor shows the Editor empty state: “No notes in name yet” with a ＋ New note button. The empty Trash says “Trash is empty.”
• A locked private notebook shows “🔒 name is locked — unlock it in the Note list”, and the Note list shows the Unlock card.

Star and pin

• Star: ☆ in the Note bar (★ when on). Starred notes are in the Starred view.
• Pin to a page: done in the Chrome extension — a note pinned to a page (or a whole site) opens first when you visit it. In the web app the note shows a 📌 chip. See Chrome extension.

Note icon and cover

Give a note an emoji Note icon and a Note cover — a wide picture at the top, like a notebook sticker and a cover page.

• In Read or Split mode, point at the top of the note and click ☺ Add icon or ▭ Add cover. Or use the Note menu (⋯) → Add icon… / Add cover….
• The Cover gallery has original covers in three groups — Gradients, Patterns and Retro (Hercules, Amber, C64, CGA, Mac 1984) — plus the images already in the note.
• Click the icon to change it; point at the cover for Change cover or Remove. Remove icon and cover is in the Note menu.
• The icon also shows on the note’s Note card in the Note list (and in the Chrome extension).
• Both are stored inside the note and protected like the rest of it. Front matter works too: icon: 🚀 and cover: g:aurora.
• When you publish the note, the page shows the cover and icon, and the link preview uses them (Sharing a note).

Move a note

The notebook chip at the start of the Note bar is a menu: pick another notebook (or none). Moving a note into or out of a private notebook asks first, because the note is sealed again with the other key.

The Note menu (⋯)

• Plain text (no formatting) — the note is shown exactly as typed, no Markdown.
• Never send to AI — cloud AI will refuse this note; see AI: menu, chat and privacy.
• Add icon… / Add cover… — see Note icon and cover.
• Copy as Markdown / rich text / HTML — for pasting into e-mail, docs or a website.
• Print / Save as PDF — plain black on white, or in your theme’s colours (Settings → Markdown).

Trash and restore

1. Delete: Trash in the Note bar moves the note to the Trash.
2. Restore: open the Trash view, pick the note, click Restore.
3. For good: Delete forever on one note, or Empty trash in the List header. Notes in the Trash are deleted for good 30 days after they were trashed.