Themes, fonts and icons

Make Varlig comfortable to look at for hours: pick a theme, set the fonts and the width of the page, arrange the sidebar, and choose an icon you like. Most of this is in Varlig › Settings… (⌘,), and changes show straight away. On iPhone and iPad, see Themes and Settings on iPhone and iPad.

Themes

Open Settings › Themes and click a theme to use it. Each theme shows as a small picture of Varlig in its colours — the sidebar, the note list and a page — and the one you’re using is ringed. Search themes at the top finds one by name.

• System, under Appearance, follows your Mac: the Light theme in light mode and Night in dark mode. It’s the default, and its picture shows both.
• Light, Night, Paper, Forest and Rose, under Varlig, are Varlig’s own themes. Night is the dark one.
• Your themes holds the ones you make, below.
• From Bear has dozens more palettes, held to the same contrast as Varlig’s own.

A theme colours the whole window, not only the page: the sidebar and its tiles, the note list, Settings and the popovers. Choosing any theme other than System keeps Varlig in that theme, whatever mode your Mac is in, and the fonts and layout below work with all of them.

Make your own

New Theme… under Your themes starts from the theme you’re using, and you can keep up to 12. Give it a name, then choose three colours on Palette — Background, Body text and Accent — and Varlig works out the rest: headings, secondary text, the sidebar, the note list, code, the selection, tag pills and rules. To go further, Workspace, Text, Code and Details let you set any of those yourself, from the sidebar’s background to each syntax colour and the checkboxes. A live preview shows the result as you go.

The three palette colours are held to a contrast a reader can actually read. If the text is too faint on the page, Create Theme (Save Changes for a theme you’re editing) stays off and the sheet says by how much and which way to move: “This text color is too faint on this background (1.7:1). Reading text needs 4.5:1. Choose a darker text color, or a lighter background.” Fix contrast moves the colours into range for you. Everything Varlig derives is nudged into range too, so a selection can never swallow the words inside it.

Whether a theme is light or dark follows from its page colour rather than being a separate choice, so exports carry the theme’s own ink and paper instead of whatever mode your Mac happens to be in. Deleting the theme you’re using puts you back on System.

Fonts

Settings › Typography has four fonts. Click Aa beside one to choose a font from the macOS Fonts panel, and the reset arrow to go back to the default. A preview at the top of the pane shows a note in your fonts, size and spacing as you change them, and names the font the sidebar, the note list and Settings use.

Headings scale with your text: a Heading 1 is nearly twice the text size, and Heading 2 about a third larger. JetBrains Mono comes with Varlig, so it works even though it isn’t installed on your Mac. If a font you chose is later removed, Varlig uses the system font.

Size and spacing

The sliders in Settings › Typography shape the page:

View › Zoom In (⌘+), Zoom Out (⌘−) and Actual Size (⌘0) change the font size too, without opening Settings. Actual Size goes back to 15 pt.

Restore Typography Defaults resets the interface, text, heading and code fonts and all five sliders. It does not change spelling settings.

Layout

Choose how much of the window you see from the View menu:

The View menu also has Toggle Style Bar (⇧⌘Y) for formatting buttons above the note, Show Word Count for a running count at the bottom of the editor, and Show History Navigation for Back and Forward buttons. The menu at the top of the note list sets the size of note previews and shows the list as a gallery of cards; see Date headings and the gallery.

The sidebar

The sidebar floats beside your notes in the theme’s colours. At the top, beside the window’s buttons, sit the iCloud button, which shows what sync is doing, and the gear for Settings.

Tiles come first: Notes, Today, Pinned, Todo, Journal and Reminders to begin with, each with its colour, its symbol and how many notes it holds. Your tags follow, each on a square of its own colour with its icon and note count, and a tag’s subtags share its colour. Every place that isn’t a tile comes last, as a row: Untagged, Locked, Review, Templates, Clippings Inbox, Archive, Trash and so on.

Each place keeps its colour in every theme — Today blue, Pinned orange, Reminders red, Todo green, Journal purple — worked out from the theme so it always reads clearly.

Customize the sidebar

View › Customize Sidebar… chooses which places are tiles, and their order:

• Drag the tiles to reorder them.
• The minus button turns a tile into a row; the plus button beside a row makes it a tile. The sidebar holds up to eight tiles.
• Restore Defaults puts back the six you started with.

A preview at the top shows the result. You can also right-click any tile or row and choose Show as Row or Show as Tile, and Customize Sidebar… is in the same menu. Right-clicking a tile also offers what that place can do, such as Today’s Note on Journal or Empty Trash… on Trash.

Your tiles are kept on this Mac, so another Mac, or your iPhone, can arrange its own. When you use a tag as a workspace, a bar at the top of the sidebar names it, with a menu of recent workspaces and a button to leave it; the Notes tile’s right-click menu switches workspaces too.

App Icon

Open Settings › App Icon to change Varlig’s icon in the Dock and in Finder.

• Classic is the default.
• Colors: Ruby, Raspberry, Rose, Tangerine, Gold, Forest, Jade, Ocean, Arctic, Lake, Navy, Lavender, Violet, Mist and Midnight.
• Special editions: Playful, Retro, Spectrum and Ink.

If the Dock icon changes but Finder still shows the old one, Varlig isn’t in a folder it’s allowed to change. Move it into your Applications folder and choose the icon again.