Configuration

Everything is configurable from a live ~/.notesiderc buffer (vimrc-flavored, in your home directory) or the in-app Settings panel. They're two editors over the same config. Open the file with :config, edit any line, and :w to apply.

Example

" ~/.notesiderc — Noteside configuration

" appearance
set theme        = noteside-light
set sidebar-width = 250

" typography
set editor-font  = Newsreader
set font-size    = 19
set line-height  = 1.75
set tab-width    = 2
set ui-scale     = 100%

" cursor
set cursor       = block
set cursor-blink = on

" updates
set auto-update  = on

" keys
set vim          = on
imap jj <Esc>
bind Ctrl-j find

Settings

If your ~/.notesiderc still has live-preview or relative-numbers lines from an older version, they're read and ignored, with no error and nothing to clean up. The block editor has no source/preview split and no gutter, so neither setting does anything; they simply stop being written back out.

Appearance

• Theme. 53 bundled themes: Noteside Light/Dark (the warm paper default) plus a curated set of base16 palettes. Catppuccin, Gruvbox, Nord, Rosé Pine, Tokyo Night, Everforest, Kanagawa, Solarized, One, Dracula, GitHub, Ayu, Horizon, Neovim, Primer, and more; most families ship both a dark and a light variant. Open the picker with :theme (or :colorscheme), <Space> t, or Settings → Theme. It has two columns (dark · light), opens on your current theme, live-previews as you move, applies on Enter, and reverts on Esc. In the file, theme takes a theme id (catppuccin-mocha, gruvbox-dark, …) or a label; the old light / dark values still work as aliases for the Noteside themes.
• Typography. editor-font sets the writing surface: serif Newsreader or Spectral, or mono IBM Plex Mono / JetBrains Mono / Geist Mono. font-size (16–28) and line-height (1.4–2.1) tune the reading rhythm, and tab-width (1–8) sets how many spaces Tab inserts. The surrounding interface is always Geist Mono; there's no separate interface-font setting.
• Interface size. ui-scale (90%–130%) scales the sidebar, panels, and UI chrome, independently of the editor font-size.
• Sidebar width. sidebar-width (200–420 px). Dragging the sidebar's right edge writes the same setting; double-clicking the edge resets it.
• Updates. auto-update (on by default) checks GitHub for a newer release on launch, throttled to once a day. It never installs anything. A found update just shows a dot on the Settings button and a download link in Settings → About. Turn it off to keep the app fully offline.

Key mappings

• Insert-mode escape. imap <keys> <Esc> still works, and it's the one vim mapping Noteside applies: imap jj <Esc> leaves insert mode when you type jj.
• Other vim mappings. nmap / vmap / :map lines are kept in the file verbatim but are not applied. Noteside's vim layer is a hand-built subset, not a full emulation, so it has nowhere to hang them. Applying a config that contains them says so instead of pretending they took effect.
• Chord rebinds. bind <chord> <command-id> remaps a conventional chord; bind none <command-id> unbinds it. You can also rebind live in the cheatsheet (⌘/), which writes the same bind lines; see Keybindings. A chord has to include Cmd/Ctrl/Alt or be an F-key, so a rebind can never swallow ordinary typing.

The command ids are: find, grep, search, searchNext, searchPrev, commands, palette, notebooks, new, duplicate, rename, pin, unpin, reveal, move, newFolder, toggleFolder, collapseAll, expandAll, renameFolder, deleteFolder, save, saveQuit, quit, reopen, delete, follow, tableAddRow, tableDelRow, tableAddCol, tableDelCol, nextNote, prevNote, nav, fontUp, fontDown, fontReset, uiUp, uiDown, uiReset, settings, theme, config, cheatsheet. For example, bind Ctrl-j find puts the finder on Ctrl-J.