📝 Notes Guide
This guide takes you from "create a notebook" all the way to writing, collaborating, and sharing with the full power of the editor.
1. Organizing your notes: shelf → notebook → note
OKNote organizes notes in three levels:
- Shelves: the top-level grouping — think "Work", "Personal", "Study".
- Notebooks: live inside shelves, and can contain sub-notebooks (nested up to 5 levels), e.g. Work → Project A → Meeting notes.
- Notes: the actual content.
The common actions all live in the left sidebar:
- New shelf: the + button to the right of the "Shelves" section header.
- New notebook: hover over a shelf name and click the + that appears; hover over a notebook and click + to create a sub-notebook.
- Rename: double-click a shelf or notebook name and edit it in place.
- Change icon and color: right-click (or long-press) a notebook and pick a new icon and color — makes the tree easy to scan at a glance.
- New note: select a notebook, then click the + at the top right of the note list. You can create either a "Note" or a "Mind map".
- Move a note: simply drag it from the list onto any notebook in the sidebar to file it in its new home.
Starred, pinned, and Trash
- Star ⭐: click the star on a note entry. The "Starred" view in the sidebar collects everything you've starred.
- Pin 📌: open a note and click the pin button in the top toolbar. Pinned notes always stay at the top of the list.
- Trash: deleted notes go to the Trash first (at the bottom of the sidebar). Right-click any note there to restore it to its original location or delete it permanently.
Bulk cleanup
The note list has a "Select" button at its top right. In selection mode, tick multiple notes and an action bar appears at the bottom — bulk delete, move to another notebook, or tag — a real time-saver when tidying up old notes.
2. The editor: more capable than it looks
Open a note and the top toolbar is organized into groups, each worth knowing:
Text styles: bold (⌘B), italic (⌘I), underline, strikethrough, inline code, highlight, superscript/subscript, plus dropdowns for font size, text color, and background color.
Paragraph structure: H1/H2/H3 headings, bulleted lists, numbered lists, task lists (checkable to-do items), blockquotes, dividers.
Insert — this is where the OKNote editor really shines:
| Button | What it inserts |
|---|---|
| 🔗 Link | Web links |
| 🖼 Image | Images (drag a corner to resize, or pick small / medium / large / original) |
| 📎 Attachment | Any file — it also shows up in the Attachment Center |
| ⊞ Table | Tables, with a submenu for adding and removing rows and columns |
| ⬡ Mermaid | Flowcharts and sequence diagrams (drawn with Mermaid syntax) |
| 🧠 Mind map | An inline mind map — edit branches right inside the note |
| 📊 Chart | ECharts data charts: bar, line, and pie, with multiple color themes |
| ∑ Formula | Math formulas (LaTeX syntax, both inline and block) |
| ☑ Checkbox / ◉ Radio | Small clickable inline controls — handy for checklists |
Standalone tools (the larger icons on the right of the toolbar):
- ✍️ Handwriting canvas: a fullscreen canvas with pen, highlighter, and eraser. Sketch, then convert to an image and drop it into the note with one click — perfect for whiteboarding in meetings.
- 📷 OCR and 📄 Scan Document: snap a photo or pick an image, and the text inside becomes editable (Pro).
- ⬇️ Export PDF: export the current note as a beautifully typeset PDF, with Simple and Professional templates (Pro).
Markdown shortcuts: prefer to skip the toolbar? Just type Markdown — # + space at the start of a line makes a heading, - + space makes a list, > + space makes a quote, and bold/italic syntax converts as you type.
Find: press ⌘F inside a note to bring up the find bar; matches are highlighted.
💡 A hidden nicety: when you copy note content into Word, email, or chat apps, the images travel along automatically — no broken image icons.
3. Tags: a second axis across notebooks
Open a note and you'll see a tag bar above the body. Click "+ Tag" to attach an existing tag or create a new one (with its own icon and color). Click any tag in the sidebar's tag section to pull together every note carrying that tag, across all notebooks.
Notebooks answer where a note lives; tags answer what a note is about — the two systems work best together.
4. Search: just hit ⌘K
- Global search (⌘K): full-text search across every note, plus attachment filenames. Matches are highlighted so you land right on them.
- In-list search: the search box at the top of the note list searches only the current notebook — great when you know where to look.
5. Sharing and collaboration
Open a note and click the share button in the top toolbar. Two options:
- Invite collaborators: add other members of your server to the note, with View / Edit / Manage permissions. When several people edit at once, you see each other's colored cursors — changes merge in real time without overwriting anyone.
- Public link: generate a web link anyone can open. You can set an access password and an expiry (1 day / 7 days / 30 days / forever), and revoke it at any time.
Notes that others share with you appear under Received shares in the sidebar.
6. Bringing your old notes in
Settings (⌘,) → Import supports three sources:
- Markdown files (.md / .txt, multi-select)
- Notion export (unzip Notion's Markdown export, then import)
- Evernote (.enex files)
Pick a target notebook and import everything in one batch.
7. Offline and multi-device
OKNote is built local-first: notes are written to a local cache first, so you can create and edit even with no connection, and changes sync to the server once you're back online. A small connection indicator sits at the top right of the editor — green means live sync; when you're offline it says so. Your content is safe either way.
Next up: "📮 Mail Guide" — connecting your mailboxes.