Writing and editing notes

A note contains a title and a body. Its editor also brings together its summary, connected notes, hashtags and saved lookups. Use the title for the thing you want to recognise on the canvas; use the body for the detail you want to keep.

For example, a note titled “Kitchen lighting” might hold measurements, a question about glare and a later observation after trying a different bulb. The body can accumulate those additions over time rather than requiring a new note for every update.

Open and leave the editor#

Right-click a canvas node and choose Open. Glob focuses the note and brings its inline editor into view. The Mac beta ties this transition to canvas zoom.

Click the title or body to edit. Pressing Return in the title moves into the body. Return in the body inserts a new line. Tab from the Mac body returns focus to the title.

Press Escape to close the inline editor and return to the wider canvas. Switching to another note commits the previous draft. Changes also save after a pause in editing; the normal autosave delay is ten seconds. Close the editor normally before quitting when you want to finish an edit. A forced quit is not a save action.

Titles and empty notes#

You can write the body before deciding on a title. When a note with body text has no meaningful title, Glob derives one from its first five words. Give it your own title when those words do not identify the note well.

A new note with neither a meaningful title nor body content is cleaned up when committed or closed. If a blank note disappears, enter some content before leaving it. Creating an empty node is not a way to reserve a permanent position on the canvas.

The timestamped body#

The body groups text into timestamped entries. After a pause of about thirty seconds, the next addition starts a new timestamped entry. Existing entries can also be edited; a changed entry receives an edited time when saved.

The timestamp headers belong to the editor. They are not ordinary body text to rewrite. The body is still one note, and the entries are not separate canvas nodes.

This Mac beta saves the entry text and its timing information. Do not depend on rich formatting pasted into the editor surviving a close and reopen. Markdown characters can remain in your text, but the presence of Markdown text does not imply that every Markdown style is rendered or retained as rich formatting.

When preserving the exact appearance of an external document matters, keep the original document as well as your note. Import Studio is the separate workflow for extracting and reviewing document text.

Hashtags#

Expand Hashtags to inspect and edit a note's tags. Enter a tag and use Add or Return. Glob trims the input, removes a leading #, uses lowercase and turns spaces into hyphens. Re-entering an existing tag does not add another copy.

For example, entering #Home Office produces home-office. Use the chip's remove control to remove that tag from the note. Removing a tag is different from deleting the note.

Connected notes and summaries#

Connected lists notes linked to this one. An empty count means there are no connected notes to show. The list is a reference to relationships already present on the canvas; editing the body alone does not create a connection.

The Summary section is separate from the body. A generated summary can be reviewed, edited and pinned without turning the original note text into the summary. Save & Pin preserves your edited summary against automatic replacement. See synthesis before replacing, regenerating or removing one.

Lookup and Brainstorm#

Right-click a node and choose Lookup to request supporting material about it. The lookup panel shows Looking up... while working, then the result or an error. New Lookup requests another lookup. Saved results can also appear under Lookups in the note editor.

Choose Brainstorm to request suggestions from the note. The panel shows Generating ideas... initially and Loading more... for an additional request. Load More requests another set. A suggestion can be saved as a node, task or idea using its creation controls. Reading a suggestion alone does not add those items.

These are AI actions. They can fail because the provider is unavailable, your account session needs attention, or a response cannot be read. A generated explanation or suggestion needs checking against your own source material. AI settings and troubleshooting explain the controls and common messages.