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Editing Bike Files in iOS#

Bike is a fast, elegant outliner — FoldNotes iOS can open a .bike outline directly and edit it in place — you work on the original file and save straight back to it. The outline is never copied into your collection, never gets FoldNotes front matter, and never touches your note list or search. You're just editing a Bike file, in FoldNotes — and the changes are waiting in Bike on your Mac.

This is open‑in‑place editing

FoldNotes edits the original .bike 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.

How to open a Bike file#

Tap the icon of a Bike in the toolbar of the FoldNotes Collection list, then choose a Bike file. A short note explains that it's edited in place; tap Choose File to open it. (iOS is Bike‑only for open‑in.)

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

Make sure the file is downloaded#

A .bike file stored in iCloud Drive may be a cloud placeholder — listed, but not actually downloaded to the device. FoldNotes needs the real file contents, so download it first:

In the Files app, a not‑yet‑downloaded file shows a small cloud icon with a download arrow. Tap the cloud icon to download it. To keep it on the device so it's always ready, long‑press the file (or folder) and choose Keep Downloaded.

Tip

If a Bike file opens empty or won't open, it's almost always still in the cloud — download it as above and try again.

Staying in sync with Bike#

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

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

Keep backups

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

What round‑trips faithfully#

FoldNotes preserves the things that make a Bike outline a Bike outline:

  • 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 — Bike's light grey "note" rows are preserved: edit a Bike file that has notes and they round‑trip back as notes, never demoted to ordinary rows. (For now they appear as regular text while you're editing in FoldNotes; their note‑ness is kept intact on save.)
  • Inline formatting — bold, italic, inline code, ~~strikethrough~~, highlight, and links.

Tasks and completion times#

Open‑in cooperates with Bike's own task model. Bike tasks are either open or done, so in an open‑in file FoldNotes' checkbox toggles between those two states. When you tick a task, FoldNotes writes the completion time into Bike's native data-done attribute (ISO‑8601 UTC) — exactly what Bike records when you tick a task there — so done dates travel correctly in both directions.

Note

FoldNotes' four‑state tasks (in‑progress /, cancelled -) and inline task metadata written into the text (due:, priority: tokens) are FoldNotes‑only conventions a .bike can't carry, so they're not offered here. Priority and due dates are instead set as native Bike row attributes — see Row attributes just below.

Row attributes — priority, due dates, and more#

Recent Bike releases add row attributes: small pieces of data attached to a row that Bike renders as badges — a priority, a due date, or any custom attribute you invent. FoldNotes reads, shows, and edits them, and writes them back in Bike's own format — so a badge you set in FoldNotes shows up in Bike, and one set in Bike is preserved when you edit the file here.

The Row Attributes editor — priority, due date, and any custom attribute

A row that carries attributes shows a small @ at the end of its line. Tap the @ to open the Row Attributes editor, where you can set a priority (High / Medium / Low), a due date, or add any custom attribute by name and value — and add more to a row that already has some. On a hardware keyboard (iPad), press ⌥⌘A.

You can also reach it while typing:

  • On a task line, type / — the Row Attributes editor opens straight away.
  • On any other row, type / and choose Row Attributes… — the same editor, for a plain paragraph. (Bike lets you attach attributes to any row, not just tasks, so FoldNotes does too.)

These live in the Bike file, not the text

Attributes are stored as Bike's own row attributes — nothing is ever added to your outline's text. Priority is written as Bike's 1–3 (High = 1), a due date as a plain date. They stay with their row when you drag it around the outline, and they remain fully editable in Bike, where the same badges appear. (Bike's own row‑attributes panel is ⌘⇧A.)

What's switched off while editing a Bike file#

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

Disabled while editing .bike Why
Tables Bike has no table row type
Images Bike stores images as links, not embeds
Footnotes & comments No equivalent in the Bike format
Four‑state tasks & inline task metadata Bike tasks are open/done only; set priority & due as row attributes instead

Everything else — typing, folding, headings, lists, quotes, code, inline formatting, links, and row attributes — 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: Outline and Words (document stats). The collection‑only tabs — Note Graph, References, Properties — are hidden, since a file edited in place isn't part of your collection.

Where the file stays#

Because it's edited in place, the Bike file stays exactly where you opened it (your iCloud Drive, the Bike folder, a shared folder — wherever). It doesn't appear in your FoldNotes note list, search, graph, or backups, and it gains no id:/fn-… front matter. It's a Bike file the whole time — FoldNotes just edits it.