Skip to content

Links & Tags#

FoldNotes connects your notes through wiki-links, organises them with tags, and supports footnotes for references.

Link to another note by wrapping its title in double brackets:

See [[Meeting Notes]] for details.
Discussed in [[Project Plan]].

Wiki-links are clickable in the editor — Cmd+click (or just click, depending on your settings) opens the linked note. If the target note doesn't exist, FoldNotes offers to create it.

Peek at a linked note without leaving the current one:

  • macOS — hover over a wiki-link with your pointer
  • iPad with pointer — hover over a wiki-link with a trackpad or mouse
  • iPhone / iPad touch — double-tap a wiki-link

A preview card appears showing the title and opening lines of the linked note. Tap, scroll, or type anywhere to dismiss it. Tap the link itself to navigate to the note.

In the macOS preview window, wiki-links are clickable and navigate the preview itself — click through from note to note and use the toolbar's Back/Forward buttons to retrace your steps, without disturbing the editor. Links that don't resolve to a note render as plain text there. Learn more →

The Inspector's References tab and the fn backlinks command show which notes link to the current note. This creates a bidirectional knowledge graph without any manual effort.

fn backlinks "Project Plan"          # Notes that link to "Project Plan"
fn backlinks "Project Plan" --context  # Include surrounding paragraphs

Tags#

Add tags anywhere in your note using # followed by the tag name (no space):

#project #meeting #urgent

Tags can be nested using / as a separator:

#project/alpha
#project/beta
#work/meeting

Tag Autocomplete#

When you type #, FoldNotes shows a tag helper with autocomplete suggestions drawn from your existing tags. The helper understands hierarchical tags — typing #project/ shows all child tags under project. Press Return or Tab to accept a suggestion, or keep typing to filter the list.

Tag Rules#

  • Tags start with a letter. #1 and #42 stay ordinary text, so an issue number or an ordinal never becomes a tag; digits are fine after the first letter (#q3review)
  • Tags must be preceded by whitespace or appear at the start of a line
  • Tags in headings are suppressed (the # is heading syntax, not a tag)
  • Tags inside code blocks are ignored
  • Tags are case-sensitive: #Project and #project are different tags

Browsing Tags#

The sidebar can filter notes by tag. Tags with custom icons appear with their icon in the sidebar. The command line tool also supports tag queries:

fn tags                    # List all tags with note counts
fn tags "project/alpha"    # Show notes with this tag
fn list --tag project      # Filter notes by tag

Reorganising Tags by Drag and Drop#

Tags live in your notes as #text, so reorganising a tag means rewriting it in the notes that carry it. FoldNotes does that for you with a drag.

Select a tag in the sidebar, select some or all of its notes in the list, and drag them onto another tag. The tag you were viewing is replaced by the one you dropped on, in every note you dragged. Everything else in the notes is untouched, and the change is written to the files, so it is there on your other devices too.

That one gesture covers the usual reorganisations:

You want to Do this
Merge #meeting into #meetings View #meeting, select all its notes, drop them on #meetings. #meeting disappears from the sidebar.
Nest #alpha under #project View #alpha, select its notes, drop them on #project/alpha (or any tag under #project).
Move a whole branch View the parent tag — #work — and drag from there. Every note under #work/… moves to the tag you drop on, and each keeps its own sub-path: #work/meeting becomes #clients/meeting. Icons move with the tags.
Split a tag Drag only some of the notes. The rest keep the old tag.
Remove all tags from some notes Drop them on Untagged. FoldNotes asks first.

Dropping notes on Archived or Trash archives or trashes them, as you would expect.

Where it works

On the Mac, and on iPad when the sidebar and the notes list are both on screen. The drag has to start from a tag's view: from All Notes there is no tag to replace, so tag drops are not offered there. iPhone shows one pane at a time, so there is nowhere to drag to — use the Mac or iPad for reorganising.

Renaming to a new name

The tag you drop on has to exist already. To rename #meeting to a tag no note has yet, add the new tag to one note first, then drag the rest onto it. A plain Rename command is on the list.

Footnotes#

FoldNotes supports footnote references and definitions:

This claim needs a source[^1]. Another point[^note].

[^1]: Smith, J. (2025). *Evidence-Based Claims*. p. 42.
[^note]: This is a longer footnote that can span
    multiple lines when indented.

How Footnotes Work#

  • References ([^label]) appear inline in your text. They're styled as superscript links.
  • Definitions ([^label]:) appear at the end of your note (by convention) and contain the footnote content.
  • Multi-line definitions are supported — indent continuation lines with spaces or a tab.
  • Bidirectional navigation — click a reference to jump to its definition, click the definition's back-arrow to return to the reference.

Footnote labels can be numbers ([^1]) or text ([^note], [^source-2025]). They're matched by label, not by order.

Bare URLs in your text are automatically detected and become clickable:

Check out https://foldnotes.io for more info.

Standard Markdown links also work:

[FoldNotes](https://foldnotes.io)

Both styles open in your default browser when clicked.

Date References#

Type @ on a non-task line to insert a date reference via a date picker. Date references appear as @YYYYMMDD in the Markdown and are styled with your accent colour in the editor.

On task lines, @ inserts a due:YYYY-MM-DD metadata entry instead.