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Naming Notes#

A note's name is its filename. There is no separate title field — what you see in the note list, the toolbar and the window title is the name of the .md file in your collection, and renaming a note renames that file on disk.

Because of that, FoldNotes has to answer one question carefully: when should the app choose the name, and when should you?

The one rule#

Until you name a note yourself, its name follows the first heading. Once you name it yourself, it stops.

Everything below is that rule in detail.

Heading tracking#

A brand-new note has no name of its own. It's created with an internal identifier for a filename and shows as Untitled in the note list, and while it stays that way its name follows your content:

  1. You type # Project Plan at the top.
  2. About two seconds later the file becomes Project Plan.md.
  3. You change the heading to # Project Plan v2.
  4. The file renames again, and every [[Project Plan]] elsewhere in your collection becomes [[Project Plan v2]].

This is the ad-hoc capture mode: start typing, let the note name itself, and change your mind as often as you like.

The details, if you need them:

  • Only the first H1 (# Like this) is used. Deeper headings and other content are ignored once an H1 exists.
  • Renaming is debounced by about two seconds, so it doesn't fire on every keystroke.
  • Long headings are truncated to 60 characters at a word boundary.
  • Characters that can't appear in a filename are stripped (see Characters and reserved names).
  • Every rename rewrites the backlinks pointing at the note, so nothing breaks.

Naming it yourself#

The naming banner appears at the top of the editor for an unnamed note, with a suggestion already filled in from your content. Type a name and press Enter (or Enter on iPhone and iPad), or click Name.

That's a deliberate name, and it locks — the note keeps it no matter what you do to the heading afterwards. The heading becomes ordinary content, free to carry emoji, formatting or a longer descriptive line without touching the filename or the links pointing at it.

These are the gestures that lock a name:

Gesture macOS iPhone & iPad
Confirm a name in the naming banner ✓ ✓
Type a name in the banner, then carry on into the note ✓ ✓
Rename from the title in the toolbar ✓ ✓
Rename from the title bar ✓ —
Create a note by following a [[wiki-link]] ✓ ✓
Create a note from a template ✓ —

Following a link to a note that doesn't exist yet counts as naming it: you typed the name inside the [[ ]], so that's the name it keeps.

Names that are applied for you#

If you never touch the banner and navigate to another note, FoldNotes quietly applies whatever it was suggesting rather than leaving the note as Untitled.

That is not a deliberate name — you didn't choose it, so the note stays in heading-tracking mode and editing the heading later will rename it again.

The distinction is whether you typed. A name you put in the field is kept and locked the moment you leave it, even by clicking straight into the note. A suggestion FoldNotes put there is applied only as a fallback, and stays open to revision.

Dismissing the banner with ✕ hides it for the rest of the session; it returns the next time you open the note, and the note stays unnamed until you name it.

Notes that are never renamed#

Three kinds of note ignore all of the above:

  • Daily notes have system-assigned names (20260812.md) so that the calendar and the date links can find them. The friendly date heading inside is content, and editing it does nothing to the filename.
  • External files opened from outside your collection keep their own name in their own location. FoldNotes never renames a file it doesn't own.
  • Notes in the trash are left alone until you restore them.

When the name is already taken#

If a name — suggested or typed — matches a note that already exists, a number is appended: Meeting Notes → Meeting Notes 2. Nothing is ever overwritten.

When you type the name yourself, the field turns orange to warn you before you commit, and the de-duplicated name is offered so you can accept it or type something else. During heading tracking it simply happens, quietly.

The name as it lands on disk is what other notes link to. After a collision, [[Meeting Notes]] still resolves to the original and [[Meeting Notes 2]] to the new one. Wiki-link resolution is an exact name match — there is no fuzzy lookup, so whatever the note ended up being called, including any appended number, is what goes between the brackets.

Characters and reserved names#

These characters can't appear in a name and are stripped as you type: : / ? * " < > | \ #

Full stops are allowed — Chapter 1.2 is a perfectly good name, and the .md extension is preserved for you.

Untitled, Untitled 2 and so on are reserved, case-insensitively, as are bare identifiers — both are how FoldNotes marks a note you haven't named. Typing one is rejected with a note in the placeholder.

Why did my note rename itself?#

Almost always: it was never deliberately named, so it's still tracking its heading, and something changed the first H1 — often pasting content in above the old heading, or converting a line to an H1.

To stop it, name the note deliberately using any of the gestures in the table above. To confirm the state of an existing note, look for fn-name-locked: true in its front matter — that flag is what heading tracking checks, it travels with the file, and it syncs between your Mac and your devices.