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Varlig Guide

Get more out of every note.

Write notes in plain Markdown and work out the numbers right beside the plan: a trip, a shared bill, a recipe or a quote for a job. Take the tour, borrow an idea, or look up exactly what Varlig understands.

Take the quick tour Browse ideas
calc
# Weekend in Lisbon
hotel = €145 * 2 gives €290.00
flights = €89 * 2 gives €178.00
food = €60 * 3 gives €180.00
total = hotel + flights + food gives €648.00
total / 2 gives €324.00

Plain Markdown, neatly styled

Headings, checklists, tables, links and tags are ordinary Markdown. Type the symbols or press a shortcut, and Varlig styles the note as you write, with a calc block wherever the numbers are.

Your first noteMarkdown at a glanceTags and linksKeyboard shortcuts
You type
# Moving day
Keys handed over on **Friday**, so the van is booked for ==8 am==. #home/move

- [x] Book the van
- [ ] Redirect the post
- [ ] Ask [[Sam and Ana]] about the sofa

```calc
van = £85
fuel = £36
(van + fuel) / 3
```
Varlig shows

Moving day

Keys handed over on Friday, so the van is booked for 8 am. #home/move

  • Book the van
  • Redirect the post
  • Ask Sam and Ana about the sofa
calc
van = £85 gives £85.00
fuel = £36 gives £36.00
(van + fuel) / 3 gives £40.33

Write it the way you’d say it

Discounts, conversions and speeds read the way you would write them on paper. Names you define, like hotel above, carry through the rest of the note, so changing one number updates every answer that uses it.

Budgets and billsPlanning a tripCookingPercentagesUnits and conversions
calc
20% off £80 gives £64.00
2.5 hours in minutes gives 150 min
5 km / 25 min in km/h gives 12 km/h

Get started

New to Varlig? Five minutes here and you’ll know your way around.

A quick tour of VarligNotes, calculations, tags, search and privacy: the essentials in five minutesYour first noteHeadings, lists, todos, links and tags in plain Markdown, with sums where you need themYour first calculationAdd a calc block, name values and watch answers update as you type

Ideas

Real plans you can copy into a note and make your own.

Budgets, bills and shared costsMonthly budgets, yearly subscription costs, fair bill splits and checking sale discountsPlanning a tripTrip budgets in any currency, shared costs, arrival times and driving costsCooking and recipesScale recipes, turn cups into grams, convert oven temperatures and price portionsFreelance work and invoicesTimesheets to invoices, day rates, VAT, deadlines in workdays and project quotesHome and garden projectsPaint, flooring, gravel and seed quantities, with costs and DIY conversionsRunning and fitnessPace, finish times, splits, weekly distance and a training plan counted from race dayStudy and sciencePhysics with units, statistics on lab results, equation solving and quick maths checks

Writing

Plain Markdown, neatly styled: headings, todos, tables, pictures, code and more.

Markdown at a glanceEvery kind of formatting in one place: what to type, what you get and the shortcutHeadings and text stylesHeadings, bold, highlights and their colours, quotes, callouts, footnotes and datesLists and todosBulleted and numbered lists, nesting with Tab, and todos you can tick offTablesInsert a table, move between cells, add rows and columns, and set alignmentPictures, files and linksAttach pictures, PDFs and files, find text in them, and add web links and link cardsCode, formulas and diagramsCode blocks with syntax colours, TeX formulas, Mermaid diagrams and front matter

Organise and find

Tags, links and search, so every note is a moment away.

Tags, links and backlinksGroup notes with nested tags, connect them with links, follow backlinks backFinding anythingJump to notes with Quick Open and narrow search with tags and filters

Make it yours

Settings, themes, fonts and shortcuts, so Varlig works the way you do.

SettingsEvery option in Settings, pane by pane, with what it does and its defaultThemes, fonts and iconsChoose a theme, set fonts, size and line width, pick a layout and an app iconKeyboard shortcutsEvery Varlig keyboard shortcut in one place, grouped by what you’re doing

Your data

Keep private notes private, back up your library and take notes anywhere.

Privacy and lockingWhere notes live, note passwords, locking the app and exactly what goes onlineImport, export and backupsBack up and restore, move to a new Mac, and bring notes in from other apps or take them out

Calculations

Every kind of calculation, with examples you can paste straight into a note.

Writing a calculation lineOne sum per line, comments and labels, naming values, and if/then conditionsNumbers and notationThousands, decimals, 5k and 2.5M, numbers in words, constants and other basesOperators, comparisons and conditionalsOrder of operations, remainders, comparisons, and/or/not and bitwise mathsPercentagesPercent of, on and off, discounts and tips, and “what percent is…” questionsRoundingDecimal places, whole numbers, rounding to a step, and rounding up or downWord-based mathematicsHalves and doubles, factors and primes, roots, combinations and random picksUnits and conversionsConverting units, maths with units, feet and inches, temperature and your own unitsMoney and currenciesAmounts and symbols, adding money, converting currencies and prices per unitRates, speed, pace, fuel and transfer timeRates per hour or per kilo, speed and distance, running pace, fuel and downloadsDates and the calendarWriting dates, days until and since, workdays, weekdays and date formatsClock times and durationsClock times, adding hours, time between times, timesheets and lap timesTime zonesThe time elsewhere, converting a meeting time, summer time and zone namesVideo timecodes and framesTimecodes, frame rates, clip lengths and changing frame rateFinance, inflation and taxSavings growth, loans and mortgages, returns, inflation, tax and tipsCooking, sound, screens and mechanicsCups to grams, notes and frequencies, screen pixels, torque and time savedLists and statisticsLists of values, averages and spread, and transforming listsVectors and matricesVectors, matrix maths, solving simultaneous equations and decompositionsComplex numbersWriting and combining complex numbers, their parts and functionsSummation, equation solving and calculusSums and products, solving equations, derivatives and integralsYour own functionsDefining functions like tip(bill) once and reusing them through a noteNatural-language phrasesHow Varlig reads everyday phrases, splitting bills, and what it can’t read

Reference

Look things up: every function, phrase, unit and currency the calculator knows.

Built-in function referenceEvery built-in function, grouped by what it doesPhrase referenceEvery everyday phrase Varlig understands, by topicUnit catalogueEvery unit symbol and name, family by familyCurrency referenceEvery currency and cryptocurrency code, and how amounts are shownHolidays and time-zone namesNamed holidays and the time-zone codes and places you can useReading results: display and precisionHow answers are rounded, shortened and formattedAdvanced maths: features and limitsWhat the lists, matrices, solving and calculus features can and can’t doErrors, diagnostics and limitsWhat error messages mean, and the size limitsKnown quirks and gotchasLines that don’t do what you expect, and what to write instead

Help

When something isn’t working, start here.

TroubleshootingMessages you might see and what to do: calculations, locked notes, imports and more