Keyboard shortcuts

Press ← or → to navigate between chapters

Press S or / to search in the book

Press ? to show this help

Press Esc to hide this help

First steps

Five minutes with n0te, from the first open to your first edit.

Open a note

Press super n, or type n0 in a terminal. A window opens with the switcher: your most recently changed notes, and a box to type in.

Type a few letters of the note’s name. Matching is fuzzy, so lnch finds Projects/Acme/Launch plan, and letters that start a word count for more. ↑ and ↓ (or ctrl n and ctrl p) move through the list, Enter opens the note, and esc closes the window.

From a terminal you can name the note directly:

n0 "Launch plan"

n0 returns as soon as the window is up, so your shell is free while you read. The first n0 of a session takes about a third of a second, because it starts n0te’s service. After that, opens are close to instant.

Find your vault

n0te uses the vault Obsidian has open, or the one it opened last, straight from Obsidian’s own config. Nothing to set up. To use a different one, pick it in Settings (ctrl ,), or set vault in ~/.config/n0te/config.toml.

Without a vault, n0te still opens any file by path.

Read

The note opens as a page in your theme’s colors and iA Writer Quattro. Move with the keyboard:

  • j and k step to the next and previous block: a paragraph, a heading, a list item, a code block, a table.
  • space and b page down and up; gg and G go to the top and bottom.
  • tab lists the note’s headings; type to jump to one.
  • / finds text in the note; n and N step through the matches.

The status line at the bottom shows where you are: the file’s path on the left, and on the right something like READ · 812 words · 3/9 done · 4/31, which is the word count, the tasks done, and the block you’re on.

Click a link, or press Enter on a block that holds only a link. gd follows the first link in the current block. Wikilinks to notes that don’t exist yet are dimmed; following one creates the note, as in Obsidian.

ctrl o goes back and ctrl i goes forward, like a browser. So do alt ← and alt →, and your mouse’s back and forward buttons.

Edit

Press e (or Enter, or double-click). The block you’re on turns into its markdown, in a quiet box, and everything else stays a page. Type. Press esc and it’s a page again.

There’s nothing to save. n0te writes the file a second after you stop typing, and again when you press esc, switch windows or close. See Editing for the rest: new blocks with o, ticking tasks with x, moving list items, editing the whole note at once.

Do anything else

ctrl k (or :) opens the palette: notes, headings in this note, and every command, with its key next to it. If you forget a key, type what you want: uncheck, obsidian, wrap. ctrl p is the same palette with notes only.

Press q to close the window. Everything is already saved.

Next