Editing Bike Outlines#

FoldNotes is a Markdown outliner: your notes are plain .md files, outlined with folding headings and indentation, and they stay yours in a folder you can read with anything.

Bike is an excellent Mac outliner, and it keeps its outlines in a different format — a .bike file is readable HTML, an open format you could open in a browser or recover with a text editor years from now. That openness is what makes this page possible: FoldNotes edits those files directly, with no conversion and no import.

Open in place, and still a Bike file#

FoldNotes opens .bike and .biked files in place, on macOS and iOS. You work on the original file, wherever it lives, and save straight back to it. The outline is never copied into your collection, never gains FoldNotes front matter, and never appears in your note list or graph. It stays a Bike file the whole time.

Everything FoldNotes writes is written in Bike's own vocabulary — its @status values, its priority numbers, its attribute names — so an outline edited here opens in Bike as though it had never left. Where the two apps have different conventions, the file's format decides: a Bike outline is counted and displayed the way Bike does it, and your own notes keep FoldNotes' conventions. Neither is bent to match the other.

What you can do with an outline here#

FoldNotes brings its own tools to bear on your Bike rows:

Your outlines on iPhone and iPad. Bike is a Mac app; FoldNotes is on both, and on iOS it is free. Your Bike folder becomes a browsable, searchable library you can read and edit anywhere.
Every row from every outline, in one table. A database view of your Bike rows puts them all in one place — filtered, grouped, sorted — so "everything due this week" is one question rather than a dozen files. The same rows work as a Kanban board.
Search every outline at once — with regular expressions. Full-text search across your whole Bike folder, matching the outline as you read it rather than the raw file. On macOS and iPad the * toggle switches the field to a regular expression, and hard-won patterns can be saved to a library that syncs across your devices. Results say which outline and which folder each hit came from, and open it in place. See Searching Your Outlines.
A record of when things were finished. Ticking a task here writes the date onto the row, so the outline carries its own history of what was done and when.
Your properties on Bike rows. A Context, a Stage, a Rating defined in FoldNotes can be set on a row and filtered by, alongside Bike's own attributes.
Preview, share and export — a rendered preview of any outline, and a PDF or other formats from it.

Use both apps on the same outline, on the same day, and each one finds what the other left.

Bike 2, currently in beta — and Bike 1 is safe

Bike packages (.biked), task statuses, and row attributes are features of Bike 2 — currently in beta. The released Bike 1 has none of them; FoldNotes reads and writes both generations, and editing plain .bike outlines works with any Bike.

Nothing FoldNotes writes can break a file for a Bike 1 user. We've verified this against Bike 1.22.2: it preserves every attribute FoldNotes writes — statuses, flags, estimates, custom attributes — through its own edits and saves. It simply doesn't display them (badges are a Bike 2 feature), so a task state set here is invisible there, not lost — it appears the moment the file is opened in Bike 2 or back in FoldNotes.

iOS: requires FoldNotes 1.2.0 or later

Everything on this page applies to FoldNotes iOS version 1.2.0 onwards. Earlier iOS versions opened a single Bike file at a time; 1.2.0 replaces that with the full library described here.

This is open‑in‑place editing

FoldNotes edits the original file and saves straight back to it — round‑tripping your changes to Bike. The outline stays a Bike file the whole time: it's never copied into your collection, and never becomes a FoldNotes note.

Getting to your Bike files#

On the Mac, add the folder that holds your .bike files to the sidebar's External Files section — see External Files for folders, sub‑folders, sorting, standalone windows, and linking. Everything below about editing applies there.

On iOS, tap the Bike icon in the toolbar of the Collection list and choose your Bike folder — typically Bike's own iCloud Drive folder — once. From then on:

The document list shows your outlines the way it shows notes: name, BIKE or BIKED badge, when each was last modified, a task circle for outlines that contain tasks, and — for a .biked — the first few pictures it carries. Tap one to edit it in place.
Create new outlines from the compose button — a plain .bike, or a .biked package if it will carry attachments.
Search across the whole folder from the binoculars. A scope switch at the top of search — like the Mac's — restricts results to your notes, your Bike files, or both.
Preview any outline and share it as a PDF.

The task circle on an outline#

Outlines get the same task circle notes get — green for resolved, blue for remaining, red for overdue, with the count beside it (see Tasks). It reads Bike's own four states, and one of them is worth knowing about:

Bike state	Counts as
todo, started	remaining
done	resolved
canceled	neither

A cancelled row leaves the total altogether. It is not waiting to be done and it was not achieved, so counting it either way would misdescribe the outline — an abandoned one would otherwise read as finished.

Overdue means a row that is still open and whose due date has passed; a done row with a date in the past was finished late, not overdue.

How a cancelled task counts here#

Cancelling is the one state two sensible apps disagree about, and each file is counted the way its own app counts it.

In a Bike outline a cancelled row leaves the count altogether — it is not waiting to be done, and it was not achieved. An outline of seven tasks with one cancelled and none finished reads 0/6, in the file list and on the row in the editor alike, which is exactly what Bike shows for the same outline.

In your own notes a cancelled task counts as resolved and stays in the total, so the same seven would read 1/7. There are two reasons. The total never shrinks as you tidy up — a note that read 3/10 last week cannot read 3/8 today without ten tasks having become eight. And a section where everything is either done or abandoned has nothing outstanding left in it, so it reaches ✓ rather than sitting at 3/4 for good.

So the rule follows the file, not the screen: nothing about this changes as you move around the app.

From FoldNotes for Mac build 58, and FoldNotes for iOS 1.2.7

Before those builds a Bike outline was counted two ways at once — the circle in the file list used Bike's rule while the badge on a row in the editor used FoldNotes', so one outline could read 0/6 in the list and 1/7 in the editor. If you are seeing that, updating fixes it. Your notes are unaffected either way.

The circles appear a moment after the list does

FoldNotes works the counts out by reading the outlines in the background, because unlike your notes, Bike files are not in its cache. On a large folder the circles and pictures arrive a beat behind the list. This is also why an outline that iCloud has not downloaded shows neither — nothing is read, and nothing is downloaded, just to draw a list.

The bottom status bar shows External · .bike (or .biked) while you're editing, so it's always clear you're working on a file outside your collection.

Make sure the file is downloaded (iOS)

A file in iCloud Drive may be a cloud placeholder — listed, but not downloaded. If an outline won't open or shows a download notice, open the Files app and tap the file's cloud icon; long‑press the folder and choose Keep Downloaded to keep the library ready offline.

Seeing every outline at once

Editing happens one outline at a time, as it should. When you want the whole folder in view — every row from every outline, filtered and grouped — that is a Database View of your Bike rows, and on macOS a Bike Board as well.

What round‑trips faithfully#

The rule FoldNotes holds to: a save never destroys something another tool put in the file — whether or not FoldNotes understands it.

Outline structure — headings, indentation, and nesting.
Row identity and links — every Bike row keeps its own id, so cross‑document links (bike://…) that point into this outline keep working after you edit it.
Lists, quotes, code, and rules. Consecutive Bike code lines are joined into one tidy code block.
Note rows and log rows — Bike's light grey note rows and Bike 2's row logs are preserved with their type, never demoted to ordinary rows. Log entries display with their date and what changed.
Row attributes — Bike's own, and any you invent — travel verbatim. See Row attributes below.
Inline formatting — bold, italic, inline code, ~~strikethrough~~, highlight, and links.
<head> metadata, document-level details and unknown attribute values — carried through untouched, including attributes another tool wrote and ones a newer Bike may add.
Blank rows — an empty row is a row you made, kept where you put it, with anything indented beneath it still attached.
Outlines deeper than six levels — Bike has no depth limit and neither does FoldNotes. Rows below the sixth heading level are shown as ordinary indented rows here rather than as headings, but they stay headings in the file and in Bike, at their real depth.

Tasks — Bike's own states, FoldNotes' checkboxes#

Bike 2 tracks a task's state with a status — todo, started, done, or canceled — and FoldNotes' four checkbox states map onto it exactly:

FoldNotes checkbox	Bike status
`[ ]` open	todo
`[/]` in progress	started
`[x]` done	done
`[-]` cancelled	canceled

Cycle a task's checkbox in a Bike file exactly as you would in a note — every state you set is written as Bike's own @status, so it shows as the matching badge in Bike.

Older Bike files track completion the previous way, with a @done date. FoldNotes reads those files too, and never migrates a file's vocabulary — updating an outline to the new status format is Bike's job, offered by its own prompt when you open the file there. A done row's recorded completion date is preserved verbatim (and shown — see the chits below) for as long as you leave that row alone.

Note

Inline task metadata written into the text (due:, priority: tokens) is a FoldNotes‑only convention a .bike can't carry, so it isn't offered here — due dates and priority are set as native Bike row attributes instead, where Bike shows them as badges.

Row attributes — in plain sight#

Bike 2 attaches small pieces of data to rows — a priority, a due date, an estimate, a coloured flag, a status — and renders them as badges. FoldNotes shows them the same way: a row's attributes appear as small chits after its text — the due date, P1–P3, the estimate, the status, and the flag as a flag glyph in its actual colour. A done date recorded by an older Bike file shows as a ✓‑date chit. Nothing is ever added to your outline's text — these live in the file as Bike's own attributes.

To edit them, open the Row Attributes editor:

Click / tap the chits on a row.
Right‑click the row (Mac, and iPad with a pointer) and choose Row Attributes… — it's also in the long‑press menu on iOS.
Type / on a row and choose Row Attributes… (on a task line, / opens it straight away). On the Mac it's also Format ▸ Row Attributes… (⌥⌘A).

The editor offers every Bike attribute out of the box — on a new outline as much as an old one:

Priority — None / Low / Medium / High (written as Bike's 1–3, High = 1).
Due — quick picks for Today, Tomorrow, +1 Week, or pick any date from a calendar.
Estimate — Bike's presets, 5m to 1w.
Flagged — Bike's seven colours, each shown with its coloured flag.
Status — on ordinary (non‑task) rows, where Bike allows a status too; on task rows the checkbox owns it.
Custom attributes — add any name and value. A custom attribute's value control offers the values your outline already uses for that name, and stays freely editable.

Everything is written in Bike's own format and vocabulary, so a badge set in FoldNotes appears in Bike, and one set in Bike survives editing here. (Bike's own attributes panel is ⌘⇧A.)

Estimates, and the Σ a parent shows#

An estimate is the one attribute that means something added up, and Bike draws that total on the parent row as Σ3h. FoldNotes does the same, on both platforms.

A row's own estimate reads as ≈2h in its chits. The ≈ is Bike's, and says this is an estimate rather than time actually spent — which matters more when a parent beside it is showing a total. (In a table column or a CSV export the value reads plainly, without the mark: a column of ≈ would be noise.)
A parent row shows Σ plus the work still to come beneath it, however deep, alongside its task count — Σ3h 0/6, or Σ3h ✓ when everything under it is resolved. A parent whose children carry estimates but no tasks shows the total on its own.
A finished row leaves the total. Done and cancelled rows drop out of the Σ, the same way they drop out of the count, so ticking a task makes the total fall. That is the point of it: the badge answers "how much is left", not "how much was ever forecast".
Folded or unfolded makes no difference. The badge is always-on, the way Bike's is, so folding a section away never changes what it says.

A total is added up Bike's way: everything reduces to one figure at seven days to a week and twenty-four hours to a day, then reads back as days, hours and minutes. A day plus twenty-five hours is 2d1h; a week plus eight days is 15d. Weeks go in but never come out — 1w1d would make you do the arithmetic, 8d would not. A row's own estimate is untouched by this and keeps the spelling its file uses, so a row can read ≈1w while the parent above it reads Σ15d.

From FoldNotes for Mac build 58, and FoldNotes for iOS 1.2.7

Earlier builds added up every estimate including finished ones, and never turned hours into days — so an outline totalling 2d 3h 30m in Bike could read 1d34h30m in FoldNotes.

Notes don't have estimates

The estimate is a Bike row attribute, so the Σ appears only in an outline. Nothing changes about the badge on a note.

What FoldNotes adds of its own#

Two things on a row come from FoldNotes rather than Bike. Both are written in Bike's file, in a namespace of our own (fn-) that can never collide with Bike's names.

A completion date. Bike records that a task is done, but not when — current Bike keeps no date on the row at all. So when you tick a task here, FoldNotes writes the date and shows it as a ✓ date chit; unticking it takes the date away again. It's the only record of when anything was finished, so it's worth knowing it exists.
Your properties. If you've defined properties in FoldNotes — a Context, a Stage, a Rating — you can put their values on a Bike row, and they show as chits reading Context: Work. A rating shows as stars and a checkbox as Yes/No, the same as everywhere else in FoldNotes.

Bike shows these too

Bike notices attributes it finds in a document and lists them in its own Settings ▸ Extensions ▸ Attributes panel, marked In open document — a completion date appears there as Fn-done, with its badge switched on. So a date written here is visible in both apps. If you'd rather Bike didn't show it, turn that badge off there; the date stays in the file and FoldNotes keeps showing it.

Choosing which chits appear — Settings ▸ Bike#

A row has one line for chits, so with several attributes in play you'll want to pick. Settings ▸ Bike lists them in three groups:

Bike — Due, Estimate, Flagged, Priority, Status.
FoldNotes — the completion date, then a switch for each property you've defined.
Other — anything written by another tool, or by a newer Bike than this build knows, as a single switch.

The section appears once you've added a Bike folder. Hiding a chit changes only what is drawn — the attribute stays in the file, and Bike still shows it unless you turn it off there as well. The two apps' settings are separate; neither can read the other's.

If a row has more chits than fit, they stop at the edge and end with a count — +2 — rather than running off. Click it to open the Row Attributes editor and see the rest. Bike's own attributes are kept first, then yours, then anything unrecognised.

Row timestamps aren't shown

Bike has a document setting, Save row created & modified attributes, that stamps every row with two timestamps. FoldNotes keeps them in the file untouched but doesn't draw them — on every row of a long outline they crowd out everything worth reading, and Bike doesn't badge them either.

Attachments and `.biked` packages#

Bike keeps attachments in a .biked package — an outline plus its own assets folder. FoldNotes opens .biked on both platforms:

Pictures render in the editor, sized naturally or by the size you set; documents (a PDF, a spreadsheet, a recording) show as file thumbnails. Tap or click one to Quick Look it.
Add attachments — by drag, paste, or the attachment picker — and the file is always copied into the package's own assets folder, never referenced out of it, so the package stays complete and portable. (Adding requires a .biked; a plain .bike has nowhere to put a file.)
Display modes round‑trip. Bike shows an attachment inline, as a thumbnail, or full size — set it from FoldNotes' Edit Markdown Link popup and Bike picks it up, and vice versa. FoldNotes' own editor sizing (the | 200 width qualifier in the alt text) travels alongside without disturbing Bike's setting.
Previews show non‑image attachments as labelled chips — a DOCX or MOV badge with the file's name — and tapping a chip previews the file.
On the Mac you can also export any FoldNotes note as a Bike Package, pictures and documents carried inside — see Preview & Export.

FoldNotes never absorbs a package's assets into its own attachment library. A .biked's files stay its own.

Staying in sync with Bike#

Because FoldNotes edits the original file, changes flow both ways:

Your edits save straight back — visible in Bike on your Mac, and on any other device.
Edits made in Bike — or on another device — appear automatically. While the file is open, FoldNotes reloads it when it changes.
If it's changed in two places at once and you have unsaved edits, FoldNotes asks which version to keep. Nothing is overwritten without you choosing.

Keep backups

As with any file you edit across devices and apps, keep backups of anything important.

What's switched off while editing a Bike file#

To keep the round‑trip faithful, FoldNotes disables editor features the format can't carry — the commands disappear from the palette, menus, and toolbar so you can't accidentally add something that wouldn't survive the save:

Disabled while editing Bike files	Why
Tables	Bike has no table row type
Adding attachments to a plain `.bike`	Only a `.biked` package has an assets folder to put the file in
Footnotes & comments	No equivalent in the Bike format
Inline task metadata (`due:`/`priority:` in the text)	Set as native row attributes instead

Everything else — typing, folding, headings, lists, quotes, code, inline formatting, links, four‑state tasks, attributes, and .biked attachments — works as usual.

Open item: superscript & subscript

Bike supports superscript and subscript; FoldNotes does not yet — these spans are dropped on a Bike round‑trip.

What's in the Inspector#

For a Bike file, the Inspector shows just the tabs that apply — document stats and outline on iOS; Outline, Info, and Tasks on the Mac. The collection‑only tabs (Note Graph, References, Properties) are hidden, since a file edited in place isn't part of your collection.

Where the files stay#

Because they're edited in place, your Bike files stay exactly where they are (your iCloud Drive, the Bike folder, a shared folder — wherever). They don't appear in your FoldNotes note list, graph, or backups, and they gain no id:/fn-… front matter. Removing the folder from FoldNotes disconnects it and touches nothing on disk.