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Using Other Apps with FoldNotes#

FoldNotes notes are plain Markdown files (.md). There's no proprietary format and no hidden database holding your writing hostage — your notes live as ordinary text files, and you can open, read, and edit them in any app that handles Markdown: Obsidian, iA Writer, Drafts, VS Code, even a basic text editor. It's just text you own, so you can read it, back it up, and move it elsewhere whenever you like.

This page explains how to edit those files elsewhere safely, the one small thing to leave alone, and where your notes actually live.

Where your notes live#

By default your collection sits in FoldNotes' own folder inside iCloud Drive, synced automatically across every device signed into your iCloud account. That shared folder is what keeps your Mac and iPhone in step — but it also means a couple of things are worth understanding before you start moving files around:

  • iCloud mirrors deletions, too. iCloud Drive is a live mirror, not a backup. If you delete the collection folder — or empty large parts of it — on one device, that deletion syncs to all the others once they catch up. The same goes for individual notes.
  • A copy is a snapshot, not a live link. You can copy the whole folder to an external drive, a Git repo, or another machine for safekeeping — and it's a good idea to. But that copy is frozen at the moment you made it: it won't keep syncing, and edits you make in it won't flow back into FoldNotes.

So treat the iCloud folder as your working store, and keep the occasional copy somewhere outside iCloud if your notes matter to you. Because it's just files, backing them up is as simple as dragging the folder.

For power users

Plain UTF-8 Markdown files play nicely with command-line tooling. You can grep (or ripgrep) across the whole collection, track history with git, back up with rsync, or drive everything from the built-in fn command-line tool. When scripting bulk edits, leave the front matter and the hidden .attachments/, .daily/, and .views/ folders alone so FoldNotes stays in sync.

The one rule#

At the very top of every FoldNotes note is a small block fenced by --- lines, called the front matter:

---
id: 550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000
created: 2025-02-15T10:30:00Z
title: Garden Renovation
fn-folded: 0,5,12
fn-cursor: 42
fn-tasks: 2:A1B2C3D4,7:E5F6A7B8
---
Everything below the second --- is your note. Edit this freely.
- [ ] Order the topsoil project:home/garden

Edit the body freely — but leave the front matter alone

Everything below the closing --- is yours to change in any app. The block between the --- lines is FoldNotes' bookkeeping. Don't reword, reformat, or delete those lines — especially id: and anything beginning with fn-.

That's the whole rule. If you stay below the front matter, you can do anything you like.

Why the front matter is there#

It looks technical, but each line earns its place — and together they're why FoldNotes feels instant and keeps everything in plain files instead of a database:

  • id: is the note's permanent identity. It's what lets you rename a note, move it, or have it appear in links and search results reliably — even across your Mac and iPhone. Without it, a renamed or re-synced note could look like a brand-new one.
  • fn-folded: / fn-cursor: remember which sections you'd collapsed and where your cursor was, so reopening a long note drops you exactly where you left off.
  • fn-tasks: is the quiet hero (see below) — it lets FoldNotes track each task as the same task over time without re-scanning your whole library.

The fn- prefix marks FoldNotes' own keys so they never clash with anything you add. The plain keys (id, created, title) are deliberately left unprefixed so other Markdown tools understand them too. None of it locks your note in — it's a handful of lines that let the app stay fast and flexible while your content remains 100% portable text.

How your tasks stay intact#

Here's the reassuring part: your task content can never be lost by editing in another app. A task's text, its checkbox state, its due date, priority, project, and any comments all live in the body — so FoldNotes simply re-reads them from the file. The file is always the source of truth; FoldNotes conforms to it, never the other way around.

FoldNotes also keeps a stable, invisible identity for each task (that's what fn-tasks: records). It re-finds each task by its wording, not its line number — so the everyday edits you'd make elsewhere keep everything connected:

You do this in another app Result
Tick or untick a checkbox ✅ Task identity kept
Change a due:, priority:, or project: value ✅ Kept
Reorder, insert, or delete lines and sections ✅ Tasks keep their identity — they're matched by wording, not position
Add a brand-new task (- [ ] …) ✅ FoldNotes adopts it next time it opens the note
Tweak a task's wording slightly ✅ Kept
Completely reword an existing task ⚠️ Treated as a new task — its history starts fresh (the words are all that's left to recognise it by)

Why this matters: because identity is anchored to your text and to fn-tasks:, things like a task's history and any links to it survive being edited on your iPhone, in Obsidian, or from a script. Delete the fn-tasks: line, though, and FoldNotes loses those connections and has to start the tasks' identities over — the tasks and their text are fine, but their history resets. That's the practical reason for "leave the front matter alone."

Do / Don't#

Do, freely:

  • ✅ Edit, rewrite, and reformat the body — paragraphs, headings, lists, tags (#like/this), links ([[Note]]), images.
  • ✅ Tick and untick tasks, and change their due: / priority: / project: values.
  • ✅ Reorder, add, and delete lines and whole sections.
  • ✅ Add new tasks, tags, and links.

Don't:

  • ❌ Change, reformat, or delete the front-matter block (between the --- lines) — above all id: and the fn-… lines.
  • ❌ Edit the same note on two devices at the same time. Let sync settle first (wait until your note list stops shuffling). If two devices change one note at once, the most recent save wins and the other's edits can be lost.

Worth knowing:

  • ⚠️ A few Markdown apps "tidy" front matter automatically — reordering it, re-quoting it, or stripping keys they don't recognise. If an app removes id: or the fn-… lines, your note can reappear as a duplicate after syncing, or tasks can lose their history. Most popular editors (Obsidian, iA Writer) leave unknown front matter untouched — but it's worth testing your app once on a throwaway note before trusting it with real ones.

A few formatting habits worth knowing#

FoldNotes reads GitHub-Flavoured Markdown, and like all Markdown it leans on a handful of structural conventions. None of these are unique to FoldNotes — they're standard GFM — but if you're typing (or pasting, or scanning) text in another app, a quick glance keeps everything coming back the way you meant:

  • Block markers belong at the start of a line. Headings (#), tasks, fenced code blocks (```), and table rows (|) are only recognised when they begin a paragraph. A # partway along a line is just a tag, not a heading.
  • Tasks have a fixed shape: - [ ] (or - [x] when done), followed by the task text.
  • Leading spaces mean indentation. FoldNotes uses the tab as its indent unit, so spaces at the very start of a line are read as indent levels and tidied into tabs (roughly four spaces per level — and even one space counts). If you want a line flush left, start it flush left.

That's really the lot. And it's why — although any text editor can open your notes — a GFM-aware editor (Obsidian, iA Writer, VS Code with a Markdown extension, and friends) gives the smoothest round-trip: it already shares these conventions, so what you write lands the way FoldNotes expects. A plain editor is perfectly fine too; you're just keeping the rules in your head rather than letting the app keep them for you.

What FoldNotes does when it sees your outside edit#

When you switch back to FoldNotes, it notices the file changed, re-reads it, re-attaches your tasks by their wording, and shows a brief "Updated externally" notice. Whatever the file says is what you get — if you kept your edits to the body, everything comes through exactly as you left it, tasks and all.

So: treat FoldNotes notes as the portable Markdown files they are. Write in whatever app suits the moment. Just keep your hands off those few lines at the top, and FoldNotes will keep being fast, flexible, and perfectly in sync with your text.