Hoist#

Hoist lets you "zoom in" on a heading and its descendants, hiding everything else in the document. Inside the hoist, the heading becomes the entire visible note — you can read, edit, fold, and rearrange just that subtree without scrolling past unrelated material.

It's a view-only effect: nothing is added, removed, or rewritten on disk. Unhoist and the full document is back exactly as you left it.

What Hoist is For#

Hoist is most useful in long, structured documents where you want to work on one section at a time:

Novels and long-form writing — hoist a chapter and the rest of the manuscript disappears. The status bar word count, the outline, and the preview all narrow to just the chapter you're drafting. When the chapter is done, unhoist, scroll, and hoist the next one.
Research notes and theses — drill into one argument or sub-section while leaving everything else out of view.
Meeting and project notes — focus on a single agenda item, decision, or sub-project.
Outlining — work on one branch of an outline without the distraction of the surrounding tree.

Think of it as a temporary "single-document mode" carved out of any heading.

How to Hoist#

macOS#

There are two ways to hoist:

Click the ↘ arrow in the right margin next to a heading. The arrow appears whenever the cursor is on a hoistable line.
Fold menu → Hoist / Unhoist Heading ( + Ctrl + H). Place the caret anywhere on a heading and run the command.

To unhoist, click the ↖ arrow next to the hoisted heading, or use the same Fold menu command / shortcut. Unhoist pops one level — if you nested several hoists, you'll return to the previous level rather than all the way out.

iPad#

Tap the ↘ arrow next to a heading in the right margin.
With a hardware keyboard, the Mac menu structure is available — + Ctrl + H toggles hoist.

iPhone#

Tap the ↘ arrow next to a heading. The arrow sits in the narrow right gutter and the tap target is generous, but if you mis-tap, just dismiss the keyboard and try again — nothing destructive happens.

What Changes While Hoisted#

While a section is hoisted, the rest of FoldNotes follows you in:

Editor — only the hoisted heading and its descendants are visible. Word count, character count, and other status-bar stats reflect the visible content.
Inspector → Outline (macOS, iPad) — the outline narrows to just the hoisted subtree. Click any sub-heading to jump within the hoist.
Preview (macOS, iPad) — the rendered preview shows only the hoisted content. Export the preview while hoisted and you export just that subtree.
Find in note — searches the hoisted text.
Fold and unfold — work normally inside the hoist. You can fold sub-sections within a hoisted chapter, and that fold state persists when you unhoist.
Drag and drop — you can rearrange paragraphs inside the hoist. The wider document outside the hoist is unaffected.
Back button (<) — while hoisted, the toolbar back arrow (and Cmd+[) pops one hoist level instead of navigating to the prior note. Tap it repeatedly to unwind nested hoists; once fully unhoisted, it resumes the standard "go to previous note" behaviour.
Forward button (>) — disabled while hoisted. There's no symmetric "redo" for a hoist pop, so the button is greyed out until you fully unhoist; then it resumes note-history navigation.
Close (X) — still works exactly as it does in the full document view: saves the note and returns to the document list. Hoist state is discarded (it's session-only anyway), so the next time you open the note you'll see the full document.

What Does Not Change#

The file on disk is identical. Hoist is purely a view of the document.
Saving is unaffected. Hoisting and unhoisting do not mark the note dirty — they're not edits.
Sync does not see hoist. Other devices viewing the same note in iCloud are unaffected by your hoist state.
Hoist is session-only. Closing the note and reopening it lands you in the full document. Hoist state is not written to front matter.

Special Cases#

Hoist is heading-only. The arrow appears next to headings (#, ##, etc.). Plain paragraphs, lists, and tasks can't be hoisted — if you want to focus on one, wrap it under a heading first.
Hoisting a heading with no children is allowed and just shows the heading on its own. Useful if you want to see a single heading line with the rest of the document hidden.
Remote edits while hoisted (macOS) — if iCloud delivers a remote version of the note while you're hoisted, FoldNotes re-applies the hoist to the same heading after the reload. If that heading was deleted on the other device, the hoist is dropped and you land in the full document.
Heading deleted while hoisted — if you delete the hoisted heading itself, FoldNotes unhoists automatically.

Tips#

Nested hoists — once hoisted, you can hoist a sub-heading inside the current hoist. Each unhoist pops one level.
Pair with Focus Mode — hoist a chapter, then turn on paragraph focus (Ctrl+Cmd+P) for a deeply distraction-free writing session.
Use the Outline tab in the Inspector while hoisted — it doubles as a mini-navigator for the chapter you're working on.