Notes and the browser

The notes drawer

Notes while you read (⇧⌘N, or View › Notes). A drawer slides in over the right edge of the window, over the stream, the Reader, the browser pane or your posts, with one rolling scratchpad, “Reading notes”. Like any scratch note it stays on your Mac until you make it a draft (⌘D), and it’s listed in your posts with a scratch pill. esc or a click outside slides it away again.

Adding to it:

• → Notes on a post adds a quote of it (![[id]] for a blyg post, a link for a feed post);
• → Notes in the browser adds the page’s link;
• with text selected in a post or a web page, ⇧⌘N (or → Notes) adds it as a quote with its source.

The drawer’s header has ⌘D → draft, Open in editor, and ⋯ › New notes page (a fresh page; the old one stays in your posts). ⌘⏎ opens it in the editor with the publish sheet. The drawer’s editor has @-mentions, spellcheck and paste-a-link-over-a-selection, and its footer says when ⇧⌘D will quote your selection into your draft (see Universal quoting).

Your Markdown notes: the Notes tab

With the bundled markdown-notes extension turned on, the drawer has two tabs: Reading notes and Notes. The Notes tab opens folders of Markdown notes (Obsidian vaults, say), as many as you like:

• a chip per folder switches between them (a folder Burrow isn’t allowed to use yet shows in the warning colour, with Allow…);
• Add folder… picks more (several at once), and Remove from Burrow, beside the chosen folder’s path, forgets it: the folder and its notes stay where they are;
• search, browse, open a note to edit it, or Quote into post / Copy verbatim to put it (or the selected part) in your draft.

There’s no default folder. Until you choose one, the tab says so and offers Choose a folder…. Settings › Notes folders lists the same folders, each with Remove, and has its own Add folder….

The browser pane

A link in a post opens in a pane that slides in from the right, over the reading view. ⌘-click opens it over the whole area, ⌥-click opens your default browser instead, and esc closes it. ⇧⌘B brings back the last page.

The pane has back, forward and reload (⌘[ ⌘] ⌘R), an address field (⌘L), 🛡 (content blocking on or off for this site), ↗ (open in your default browser), → Notes, → Draft (which reads ❝ Quote → Draft while text is selected on the page), and ✂ Clip.

• ✂ Clip (⇧⌘C, or Post › Clip Page to Draft) quotes the passage you selected on the page, or else the page’s main article, in your draft, with the page’s title and link. With no draft open it starts a new one (a thread when the clip is longer than a fragment).

• Extensions run here too. A macro, such as the bundled cross-post, uses this same side pane. You can fold the pane (esc, ×, ⇧⌘B) while it runs: the run goes on and the status bar shows macro running · show pane; click it or press ⇧⌘B to unfold. While a macro runs, the pane’s bar has ■ Stop.

• Content blocking. Ads and trackers are blocked with uBlock Origin’s default filter lists, as WebKit content blockers, downloaded about once a week (a small built-in list until then). 🛡 turns blocking off for one site.

• Privacy. The pane has its own cookies and no access to the app: pages never see your token or keys. On macOS 14 and later, sign-ins in the pane survive a relaunch.

• Downloads go to your default browser.

open-links = browser makes links open in your default browser (⌥-click then opens the pane), and content-blocking = false turns blocking off everywhere. See Configuration.