Tags, links and backlinks

Tags and links let you organise notes from inside the notes themselves, with no folders to maintain. Tags gather related notes in the sidebar, links take you from one idea to the next, and backlinks show you every note that points back.

Tag a note

Type # followed by a word, anywhere in a note:

Slow-cooked chickpea stew for Sunday. #recipes #vegetarian

The tag appears in the sidebar straight away. Click it to see every note with that tag, or click a tag inside a note to jump to the same list.

A few things to know:

• A tag starts right after the #, with no space. # Shopping with a space is a heading, not a tag.
• A tag starts with a letter, number or underscore, and can contain letters, numbers, underscores, hyphens and slashes.
• The # must start a word, so C# isn’t a tag. To write a # that isn’t a tag, put a backslash before it: \#1.
• Capitals don’t matter: #Recipes and #recipes are the same tag.
• Anything that looks like a tag inside code or YAML front matter is ignored.
• A tag inside a calc block does a different job: it labels that line so you can add it up with total of #food, and it doesn’t put the note in the sidebar. Write the tag in the note as well when you want both. See Tags.

As you type a tag, Varlig suggests tags you already use that contain what you’ve typed, which keeps spelling consistent. You can switch suggestions off with Autocomplete tags, wiki links and emoji in Settings › General.

New tags from a paste

Pasted text can carry hashtags you never meant as tags. When a paste into a note adds tags your library doesn’t have yet, it pastes as usual, then a notice under the note names them, such as Added 3 new tags: #draft, #q3, #todo, with Keep and Make Literal. Keep, or ignoring the notice, keeps them as tags. Make Literal puts a backslash before each of those hashtags (\#q3) so they stay plain text, in one undo step.

Hashtags in code, escaped ones and tags you already use don’t count. A second paste into the same note adds to the notice, and undoing the paste or switching notes clears it. Markdown files you open in place, dropped text and pastes into a table cell aren’t checked.

Nested tags

Use a slash to put one tag inside another:

Kick-off call with the Acme team. #work/clients/acme

The sidebar shows acme inside clients inside work. Choosing work shows notes from all of its subtags too, so you can look at a whole area or zoom in on one part. To see only the notes tagged work itself, turn on Hide Subtag Notes in the note list’s Preview Style menu.

Tags with spaces

To use a tag with more than one word, close it with a second #, with no space before it:

Borrowed from Sam. #reading list#
Ideas for spring. #home/garden plans#

Make tags work for you

Right-click a tag in the sidebar for these options:

When a tag is selected in the sidebar, or you’re using a tag as your workspace, a new note (⌘N) gets that tag automatically. Choose whether it goes at the top or bottom of the note with Add tags at in Settings › General › New notes.

View › Tags sorts tags by title or note count, reverses the order, and expands or collapses the whole tree.

Recently added tags

Imports and pastes can bring in tags you didn’t want. Manage Tags…, in the … menu beside the sidebar’s Tags heading, lists them under Recently added: the tags first used in the Last 7 days, Last 30 days (to begin with) or Last 90 days, newest first, each with its note count and date, such as 3 notes · imported Sep 24, 2026 or 1 note · first used Sep 20, 2026. Choose one to select it for Rename, Merge Into… or Remove Tag.

A tag is dated by the earliest note that uses it or one of its subtags. Nothing is stored for the tag itself, so the dates follow your notes through backups and sync. Imported notes count from the day they were imported, even when the import kept their original dates. A tag added later to an older note is dated by that note, so it doesn’t show as recent; pastes are checked when they happen instead.

Retag many notes at once

Select several notes, then choose Note › Add Tag… or Note › Remove Tag…. Before anything changes, the sheet says how many notes will change and lists them by title — the first six, then and 4 more — how many already have the tag, and which are skipped and why: Read-only, In Trash or Locked. One Undo reverts the whole batch.

Manage Tag… in a tag’s context menu also holds Merge Into…, which moves every note from one tag into another, subtags included, after showing you what it will do. Hashtags inside code stay as written.

Renaming a tag to a name that’s already a tag, in any capitals, would merge the two, so Varlig asks first. As you type, Manage Tag… says so under the name — #b already exists. Renaming will merge the two tags: #a has 3 notes and #b has 4. — the button becomes Rename…, and nothing changes until you click Merge Tags in the sheet that follows, with the same list of notes.

Retagging deliberately leaves editing dates alone, so tidying up your tags never reshuffles your notes or fills up Today.

Filters and saved searches

Edit › Filter by Tags… builds a search without syntax: mark tags to include or exclude, choose Match All or Match Any, and add words to look for. The sheet shows the query it built, so you can learn the syntax as you go.

Give the filter a name and Save Search puts it in the sidebar under Saved Searches, where it can be renamed or deleted later. Saved searches live in the library, but aren’t included in library backups.

Archive

Note › Archive Note moves a note out of the way without deleting it. Archived notes appear only in Archive (⌥⌘9) — not in All Notes, tags, search, Today, Pinned or Review — and Unarchive Note brings one back.

Sorting

The note list’s options menu sorts by Modification Date, Creation Date or Title, and flips the order. Each view — a section, a tag, a workspace, a saved search — remembers its own choice, so your project tag can stay alphabetical while All Notes stays newest-first.

Manual Order is the fourth choice: drag notes into whatever sequence you want, and that view keeps it. Because the choice is per view, a project tag can be arranged by hand while your journal stays on dates. Dragging several selected notes moves them together, and one undo puts them back.

A note the arrangement doesn’t know about sorts to the top, newest first, so a note you’ve just written — or one that arrived in the view because you tagged it — appears at the top without disturbing anything you placed. Pinned notes stay first, as they do under every sort. The order is saved in the library, but isn’t included in library backups. It isn’t synced, and iPhone and iPad sort by date or title.

Date headings and the gallery

When a view is sorted by a date and you aren’t searching, its notes are grouped under headings: Pinned, Today, Yesterday, Previous 7 Days, Previous 30 Days, then this year’s months and earlier years. The date used is the one the list is sorted by, modified or created. Click the title at the top of the note list for its menu; to turn the headings off, clear Group by Date under Preview Style.

View As › Gallery, in the same menu, shows the list as cards: each note’s first picture, or its first lines on a page, with its title and date underneath, in the same date groups. Drag the divider to widen the notes pane for bigger cards; the gallery remembers its own width. A card’s right-click menu is the same as a row’s. View As › List goes back.

Link notes together

Type [[ and Varlig suggests notes straight away; keep typing the start of a title to narrow the list, then pick one and the link is complete. Select some text and press ⌘D to turn it into a link, or press ⌘D with nothing selected to start one.

Menu ideas are in [[Dinner party]].

Click a link to open that note. If no note has that title yet, clicking the link creates one with that title, so you can link to an idea first and write it later. A link that names its note by identifier, such as one from Note › Copy Link to Note, never makes a note: if that note isn’t in your library, because it was deleted or hasn’t synced to this Mac yet, Varlig says so.

When you rename a note by editing its first line, links to it in your other editable notes update to match.

Give a link a label

Add | and the words you want to show:

See [[Dinner party|the menu]] for quantities.

The note shows “the menu”, and the link still opens the Dinner party note.

Link to a heading

Add / and a heading name to jump straight to a section. Varlig suggests the note’s headings after you type the slash. Start with / to link to a heading in the current note:

[[Dinner party/Shopping list]]
[[/Budget]]

You can also right-click the level icon beside a heading and choose Copy Link to here, then paste the link into another note.

Backlinks

Backlinks show which notes link to the one you’re reading. Choose View › Toggle Backlinks (⇧⌘B), or click the ⓘ button at the top of the note.

• Backlinks lists every note that links here, with the surrounding text, so you can see why each one points here.
• Unlinked Mentions lists notes that mention this note’s title without linking to it. They’re good candidates for new links.

Links you paste from Note › Copy Link to Note count as backlinks too.

See the links as a graph

Note › Show Link Graph opens a Link Graph window for the note you’re reading, and so does the graph button beside the menu in the Backlinks tab of the ⓘ popover.

The note you started from sits in the centre. Around it are the notes it links to, the notes that link to it, and the notes that do both. Each one is labelled with how it’s connected: Links to this note, Linked from this note, Linked both ways or Second hop. It’s a look at one note’s neighbourhood, not a map of your whole library.

Two controls at the top change what’s drawn:

At most 150 neighbours are drawn, so a hub note with hundreds of links can’t stall the window. When there are more, the header reads Showing 150 of 412 linked notes and the footer adds Only the nearest 150 are drawn. The ones kept are the nearest first, then alphabetical, so the same library always draws the same graph.

Every note in the graph is an ordinary button, and the footer says how to use them: Tab or arrows choose a note · Return opens it. Opening one reveals that note in the library and re-centres the graph on it, clearing the tag filter as it goes.

A few limits worth knowing:

• The graph follows [[wiki links]] only. A web address that happens to point at another note isn’t a link here.
• Notes in the Trash and protected notes are left out, along with their connections.
• There’s no zoom, no dragging and no way to export the picture.
• The second hop isn’t labelled with which first-hop note reached it.
• Locking the app closes every graph window.

Build a connected notebook

Tags and links do different jobs, and they work best together.

• Use tags for broad areas such as #work, #home or #recipes, and nested tags for projects inside them. A note can have as many tags as it needs.
• Use links for specific connections. Link a meeting note to the project it’s about, or a recipe to the dinner party it’s for.
• Make a hub note for anything big, such as a trip or a house move. Link from it to each detailed note, and let the backlinks lead you back.
• Check Unlinked Mentions now and then. They often reveal connections you hadn’t noticed.
• Pin what you use most. Note › Pin Note (⌘⇧P) keeps a note at the top of the list. Note › Archive Note moves a finished note out of the way without deleting it.

To find notes by tag, links or content, see Finding anything.