The canvas

The canvas gives your notes and tasks a place and a structure. You can arrange a few thoughts around a question, connect related ideas, or build a tree with parents and children. The list panel shows another view of the same material.

Move around#

Drag empty canvas to pan. With a trackpad, use two-finger scrolling to pan and pinch to zoom. A mouse wheel usually zooms around the pointer. If your wheel pans instead, hold Ctrl or Cmd while scrolling to zoom. On a touchscreen, drag empty space with one finger or use two fingers to pan and pinch together.

Click a node to select it. Its attached preview lets you edit the title and body. Double-click the node to open its larger editor. If an editor is already open, clicking another node moves that editor to the new selection. Click empty canvas to clear the selection and close the editor. Panning keeps the selected node and its attached preview, which moves with the node.

Drag a node to move it. Nodes can settle around one another after a move. Glue in the node menu stops a node moving by itself; you can still drag it. Unglue lets it settle again.

Create a node or task#

Double-click empty canvas. Type the new node’s title in the small field beneath it.

• Press Enter to finish the title.
• Press Tab to continue into the body, including when you want a body without a title.
• Press Escape or click away to leave the title field. A blank, abandoned node disappears.

The lightbulb control says New nodes are ideas. Click it to change to New nodes are tasks; double-clicking empty canvas then creates a task. Click again to return to ideas.

In the normal navigation mode, right-click empty canvas for Create node and Create task. These choices specify the kind directly. The New note keyboard shortcut creates at the centre of your view.

You can also drag an existing note, task or list from the list panel onto the canvas. This places the existing material there. See capture and lists for the behaviour of each drop target.

Select and move several nodes#

Turn on Select — drag nodes to move in the toolbar. Drag a rectangle on empty canvas to select nodes inside it. Drag any selected node to move the group. Click the Select button again, or right-click the canvas, to return to navigation.

To act on a group, return to navigation and right-click empty canvas or a node in the selection. With two or more nodes selected, the menu offers:

Delete or Backspace also asks to delete the current selection. These keys keep their normal text-editing meaning while you are typing in a field.

A node can appear in more than one place. On a private canvas, Delete removes its placement on the current canvas. If another canvas or a note/task list still holds it, it stays available there. If it has no remaining place, it goes to the trash. This differs from deleting a whole project.

Connect nodes#

The Edge button changes what a drag does. Its colour tells you which connection you are drawing:

Click Edge once to enter cyan mode. Further clicks alternate cyan and orange. Right-click anywhere on the canvas to leave the tool. A hint at the top names the active mode.

An ordinary link contributes to the graph’s structure and arrangement. An orange bridge connects ideas without pulling them together or making one the other’s parent. On touch, dragging empty canvas continues to pan while this tool is active; it does not cut connections.

Make a parent or a zone#

On a private canvas, there are two different drop targets around a node:

• Drop inside its visible disc to make the dragged node its child. You cannot make a node its own child or put it under one of its descendants.
• Drop near an eligible node, outside its disc, to join its zone. Zone members sit around their owner without an ordinary parent link. The approach highlight helps identify the target.

For example, you can connect research questions as a tree, then gather short reference notes around one question as a zone. A zone member must have no children. Zones do not nest inside other zones. An ordinary link between a member and its zone owner prevents that membership; adding a new ordinary link can also release a member. Bridges leave zone membership intact.

On a private canvas, a zone also groups material into its owner’s note list or task list, where members are listed under the owner. A node keeps its own kind when it joins: a note dropped into a task’s zone stays a note, and the owner keeps its kind too. Use Task in a node’s context menu if you want to change it.

Drag a member away to leave the zone. Drag the owner to move its members with it. See nodes and the editor for Make Root Node, Keep Parent and Split.

Read bodies and folded groups#

Hold Shift outside a text field to show body previews across the canvas. Release it to return to your earlier view. Show note bodies in the toolbar holds the same preview mode open; Hide note bodies turns it off.

These bulk previews show bodies and date divisions. They are read-only. Glob fits a readable subset into the visible space, so a crowded canvas may leave some bodies out. Click a node for its attached editable preview, or open the editor to read longer material. Bulk previews disappear when you zoom far enough out and return when you zoom back in.

As you zoom out, descendants fold into their parents. The bottom-right control switches between Hold nodes open when zoomed out and Let nodes fold together when zoomed out. It changes folding without moving the camera. Dragging a collapsed parent carries its folded descendants.

Show cluster polygons at every zoom draws outlines around clusters. With it enabled, dragging any node in a cluster moves that cluster together. Hide cluster polygons returns to the ordinary display and drag behaviour.

Project View, the eye at the bottom left, opens the project’s synthesis view. Close it to return to the canvas. The corner controls stand aside while the full canvas editor is open.

Go inside a node#

A node on a private canvas can have a canvas of its own. Position the pointer over its disc and keep zooming after reaching the close-up limit. The node swells as you press past the boundary, then opens into its interior. This is different from double-clicking, which opens the editor.

The breadcrumb marked Inside shows the trail. Its earlier names return you to an enclosing canvas. Escape, while no editor or other overlay has priority, leaves one level. Browser Back follows the trail too. To leave by zooming, first reach the interior’s zoom-out limit, pause, then make another deliberate zoom-out gesture.

Inside a node, you can pan, arrange its contents and create nodes on that canvas. Switching projects leaves the current trail. Some commands are unavailable inside a node. If you see That cannot be made inside a node yet — leave the node first., return through the breadcrumb and repeat the command on the enclosing canvas.

Find a node#

With a private canvas visible on a small screen, choose Find a node. Type part of a title or body. The canvas travels to its best matching node on the current canvas and shows the matched title. no match means it found nothing in that canvas’s candidates.

Press Enter or Hold this view to keep the new position and close the field. Press Escape to return to the view you had before searching. For filtering rows and finding material beyond the current canvas, use search.