Notes

Notes are markdown. The file is markdown, the editor edits markdown, and what you export is what you wrote, with no rich-text layer in between to translate.

The four views#

A control at the top of the note switches how you see it, and your choice is remembered separately for a phone and a computer.

Write

live preview. A heading looks like a heading as you type it, and the markdown symbols step aside except where your cursor is. The default everywhere.

Source

the raw file, with every ## and ** in view. For fixing a broken link or checking a table.

Write and preview

source and rendered page side by side. Computer only.

Read

the rendered page and nothing else.

What you can write#

Headings, bold and italic, ==highlight==, lists, task lists, tables, code blocks with highlighting, quotes, callouts in the > [!note] form, images, footnotes, and math via KaTeX. Type / for a menu that inserts headings, lists, tables, callouts, code, images and links to other notes without leaving the keyboard. Select some text and the formatting buttons appear next to it.

A note that opens with a frontmatter block, as many notes from Obsidian do, shows it as a block of properties at the top instead of a stray rule and a heading.

Checking a task box in the rendered view changes the exact character in the source that produced it. The naive way counts checkboxes in render order, and it quietly checks the wrong line as soon as a note contains a code block with a - [ ] inside it.

Distraction-free mode puts the note full screen with the same toolbar and shortcuts as the normal editor. It has no key, because the obvious key for it is the one your browser already uses for full screen.

Folders, notes and tabs#

The panel on the left is one tree of folders and notes, like a file browser. Drag a note into a folder, or a folder into another folder. The tree refuses a move that would put a folder inside itself.

Right-click in the tree

A note

pin it, move it to a folder, or delete it.

A folder

add a subfolder, rename it, move it, delete it, or set it to weave privately.

Everything else a note can do (copy, export as markdown, share, pin to a family, the privacy settings) is in the note's own actions menu.

Collapse the panel and the note takes the whole width. Open a second note and a strip of tabs appears above the editor, so you can move between the notes you have open. Each workspace keeps its own tabs, and a tab closes by itself when its note is deleted or no longer shared with you.

Linking notes together#

Type [[ to link to another note by title, with suggestions as you type. [[Title|shown text]] changes what the link says, and [[Title#Heading]] points at one section. Links imported from an Obsidian vault resolve the same way.

Every note lists its backlinks, the notes that point at it, so a note gathers its own context without you keeping an index. They are worked out from the database on your device, so they are right offline too.

A card can have notes filed against it, and the note shows that link back. The graph in The Mind reads wikilinks as well: a link says two things are related, and the Mind takes it at its word.

The Inbox#

Press ⌘⇧K anywhere to capture. It works while you are typing in another field, so a thought that arrives mid-sentence does not have to wait. The capture box is one blank field with nothing to choose: the first line becomes the title, and you can rename it later. Press Enter and it lands in the Inbox, online or offline. Close the capture box without saving and your words are still there when you open it again. The mic in the capture box takes dictation: tap it or hold it and talk. See Talking instead of typing.

A short one-line capture is read as you type, the same way a board's add row reads it (see Typing a card in one line). Type "dentist Tue 3pm every 6 months" and the date, time and repeat show as chips. Enter still saves it to the Inbox; Put it on this board beside the chips puts it on a board instead, with the date set. A #word becomes a label on the card and @name assigns someone already on the board; nobody is messaged. A #tag that names a board picks that board.

A list stays a list#

Type or say a list and it shows as a list before you save it. "milk eggs bread butter" becomes four items, and so does "milk, eggs and 2 loaves of bread", one item per line, a numbered list, or a run of dictation with "and" or "next" between the things. Common phrases stay whole ("olive oil", "ice cream", "toilet rolls", "peanut butter"), and an amount goes with the item after it: "a dozen eggs" is eggs, 12, and "2 cans tomatoes" is tomatoes, 2 cans. A sentence that is not a list, like "call mom about the trip", is left alone.

Tap an item to edit it, split it, join it to the next one, move it or remove it. When the split rests on a word The Margin does not know, it says so, so you can check it. Then Add 4 to Groceries (the count and the list are yours) puts each item on your shopping list as its own line with its amount, or Make a checklist keeps a list that is not groceries. Enter still saves your words to the Inbox exactly as written, and Keep as one note hides the list. All of this works offline. The same list shows in the phone app's capture sheet and when you share text into The Margin from another app.

In the Inbox, Not a list is saved with the capture, so the phone and the desktop stop offering it as a list together. Something that arrived by email, a scan or a share is offered as a list only when it plainly is one: bullets or numbers, a heading like "Packing list:", or mostly things you buy. A forwarded email, a letter or a few paragraphs of writing stay one capture, and the Inbox shows them as plain words, without the asterisks of their formatting.

Where a capture probably goes#

A moment after a capture saves, The Margin suggests a short title if you left it without one (with Undo beside it) and, when it is clear, a board or a shopping list it belongs on. The suggestion is a chip under the capture and never files anything by itself. When the suggestion is a shopping list, the capture shows the items it would add, each one editable, so a list never lands on the shopping list as one long line. If the words could only be split by guessing, the same suggestion reads them as separate items too.

Other ways in#

Everything below lands in the same Inbox, and all of it is set up from Settings > Capture.

• The capture page. themarginapp.com/capture opens straight to a blank capture. Bookmark it, or give it a keyboard shortcut in your computer's settings. If you installed the app, press and hold its icon (right-click on a computer) and pick Capture.
• Your browser. Drag Save to The Margin to your bookmarks bar. On any page, click it: a small window shows the page and any text you selected, and Enter saves it. On a recipe page it offers to save the recipe through the recipe importer instead. The bookmark holds no password or key; the window it opens is signed in the way this tab is. If you are signed out, the window asks you to sign in first and then shows the same page and selection, ready to save. A very long selection is dropped on that trip, so select it again if you need all of it.
• Email. Settings > Capture, and the empty Inbox, show your private address, in+…@themarginapp.com. Forward or send any email to it and it becomes a capture: the subject is the title, the message is the note, and PDFs, pictures, calendar invites and office files come along (up to 5 files and 8 MB an email). In the Inbox its card opens with one line, such as "Email · Coach Dana" with her address beside it, and then the message. For a forward, that line names whoever wrote the original. Choose which workspace it lands in, or make a new address if it leaks; the old one stops at once. An address takes up to 50 emails a day, and mail that fails email authentication is turned away. In a Family workspace, an email that looks like it has dates also offers them for the calendar, the way a forwarded school letter does, and nothing is added until you confirm.
• Sharing from another app. In the phone app, pick Margin Share in the iPhone share sheet, or The Margin in Android's share menu, from any app: a page, a link, some selected words or up to four pictures. A sheet shows what came in and which workspace it goes to, and Save to Inbox files it. Words and links are saved on the phone, so a share made offline is kept and syncs later; pictures need a connection. If you installed the web app instead, share to The Margin the same way and it lands in the same Inbox.

A capture that is just a web address opens with a tap and shows a card with the page's title and picture, so a link saved in a hurry is recognizable later. See Links and previews.

Captures are not notes yet. They stay out of your notes list, out of note search and out of memory, and they do not file themselves. An inbox that files itself is an inbox you stop trusting.

Each capture has one question hanging over it, which is where it goes. There are four answers:

e edits a capture first. j and k, or the arrow keys, move through the queue, and acting with nothing selected takes the item at the top. q puts you back in the capture field, and ? opens the command panel with every key listed.

Appending carries on the list you were already writing: a bullet stays a bullet, a numbered list gets the next number, and a task list gets a new unchecked box.

Writing in a note together#

Two people can type in the same note at the same time. Each of you sees the other's cursor in their color, with their name on it, and a line under the title says who else is there ("Sara is writing here too"). Nobody is asked to choose between two versions: both people's words land where they typed them, even in the same paragraph.

The note saves the way it always does, on each device, so the words are kept even if the connection drops mid-sentence. If you lose the connection you keep writing; when you are back, what you typed and what the others typed meanwhile are put together. On the phone the line under the title shows who is there, and the merging works the same; the other cursors are drawn on the web.

Writing together needs a Family or Team plan, like live presence on boards (see Sharing and permissions). It works for anyone who can edit the note: workspace members, and people the note was shared with as an editor. Someone with a view-only share watches the words arrive. A note locked with a PIN or sealed in the vault is never edited together while it is locked.

Version history#

A note keeps its earlier versions, so an edit you regret, a clash between two devices or an assistant's rewrite can be undone. Open the note's menu and pick Version history: pick a version to read it, then Restore this version. The text the note has now is kept as a version first, so a restore can itself be undone.

A version is kept when an edit starts, at most one every ten minutes, and the last 50 are kept. Edits made by an assistant are kept the same way. A note locked with a PIN or sealed in the vault keeps no new versions, and its older versions stay hidden until it is unlocked. Versions are never added to memory. On the phone, the same list is in the note's actions.

An assistant connected over MCP can read the list with get_note_history and bring a version back with restore_note_version.

Scanning paper, and finding the words in pictures#

Scan a document in quick capture (the scan icon beside the microphone; on the phone, the pill under Capture's title) photographs each page and keeps them together as one PDF in your Inbox. A scan needs a connection, because the PDF is made and stored online.

On Pro, Family and Team, The Margin also reads the words in every picture or PDF you attach to a note, a card or a whiteboard. Search finds the file by any word in it, under Words in files in the command panel and on the phone's search. On Free, a scan is still kept as a PDF; its words are not read.

Pasting or dropping a picture into a note stores it as an attachment on the note. Page limits, which files are read, what it costs and storage per plan are in Files and scans.

Keeping a note away from the assistant#

Three settings in the note's actions menu, from lightest to strongest:

Getting notes in and out#

Import a folder of markdown files and the folder structure comes with it. A zipped Obsidian vault brings its whole tree. Importing the same vault a second time updates the notes already there instead of duplicating them, so you can move over in stages. Notion exports work too. See Importing from other tools.

Export one note from its actions menu, or all of them, as markdown. The folders and the wikilinks survive the round trip.