Folders

Organize notes into real subdirectories. Group, move, and fold them from the mouse or the keyboard.

A folder in Noteside is a real subdirectory of your notebook. Moving a note moves the .md file; the filename stays the same. Nothing is a tag, a database row, or a symlink. Open the notebook in Finder or ls it and you'll see exactly what the sidebar shows.

Folders nest as deep as you like. A nested folder is shown as one group labeled with its full path, so work/projects is a single section rather than a tree you have to unfold twice.

⌘ is Cmd on macOS, Ctrl elsewhere. Everything on this page works with the mouse and with the keyboard.

Folder groups come first, in alphabetical order. Then a hairline, then the loose notes that live at the notebook root.

Each group has a header: a chevron, a folder icon, and the folder's name. Click the header, or press Enter/Space on it, to collapse or expand the group. The folder holding the note you have open is highlighted in the accent color, so you can tell where you are even when the note's own row is scrolled out of sight. Notes inside a folder are indented under it. An empty folder is just its header: expand it and the chevron turns down with nothing beneath, and it's still a place you can drop a note.

⌘J / ⌘K step to the next and previous note in the order you see them, skipping over anything hidden inside a collapsed group. Which groups are collapsed is remembered per notebook, on that machine. It isn't part of your config file.

Pinned notes stay in their folder

A pinned note floats to the top of its own group, not to the top of the sidebar. Pin inside a folder and the note stays where it belongs.

Making a folder

The New folder button sits in the sidebar footer, next to New note. That's the one always-visible way to make your first folder. From the keyboard it's :mkdir (also :folder), or New folder… in the command palette. A name with a slash in it nests: typing work/projects creates both levels.

Right-click a folder header, or click the ⋯ button that appears when you hover it, for the folder menu:

New note here, a new note in that folder
New subfolder…
Rename folder…
Collapse all / Expand all
Delete folder

Where new notes go

A new note (⌘N, :new, or the New note button) lands in the folder of the note you currently have open. With no note open, or with a root note open, it goes to the notebook root. Use a folder header's New note here to aim it somewhere else.

Moving a note

Right-click a note (or use its ⋯ button) → Move to folder…. From the keyboard: :mv (also :move), the <Space> m leader, or the command palette.

The picker lists every folder in the notebook, plus:

Notebook root, to move the note back out to the top level
New folder…, where you type a name and Noteside creates the folder and moves the note into it in one step

Moving the note you're editing keeps your cursor where it is and carries any unsaved edits with it.

Drag and drop

Drag a note row onto a folder header to move it there. Noteside asks first, with Enter to confirm and Esc to leave the note where it was, so a slip while clicking a row never relocates a file. Dragging a note out of a folder reveals a notebook root · drop here zone at the bottom of the list; dropping there moves it to the top level. Dropping a note back onto its own folder does nothing.

Drag a note onto another note and Noteside offers to group them: type a folder name and both notes move into it. The new folder is created next to the note you dropped onto, so dropping onto a note that lives in journal gives you journal/<name>.

Renaming and deleting

Renaming a folder renames the directory on disk. Every note inside follows it, and if one of them is the note you're editing, your buffer comes along too.

Deleting a folder deletes everything inside it. Noteside confirms first and tells you how many notes are about to go. It's permanent, with no trash.

Folder commands

Command	Does
`:mkdir` · `:folder`	New folder (`a/b` nests)
`:mv` · `:move` · `<Space> m`	Move the open note to another folder
`:fold` · `:collapse`	Collapse or expand the open note's folder
`:renamefolder`	Rename the open note's folder
`:rmdir`	Delete the open note's folder (with confirm)
`:foldall`	Collapse every folder
`:unfoldall` · `:expandall`	Expand every folder

The three that act on "the open note's folder" are the keyboard path; a folder header's menu covers every folder, empty ones included. All of them are in the command palette too.

With folders sitting above the loose notes, a notebook with many open groups puts the root notes a long scroll away. :foldall, then opening the one group you want, is the fast way back.

Notebooks vs. folders

A notebook is the whole folder you opened; folders are the subdirectories inside it. The line under the Noteside wordmark in the sidebar shows the open notebook's name. Click it to switch notebooks, the same thing ⌘O does. See Getting started for more on notebooks.

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