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Note Info, Back and the link graph

Long notes need a way around them, and linked notes need a way between them. This page covers Note Info, with a note’s statistics, contents, comments, highlights and backlinks; Back and Forward; and the link graph.

Note Info

Tap ⓘ beside Edit while reading, or choose Note Info from the … menu while editing. On iPhone, and in a narrow iPad window, it opens as a sheet; otherwise on iPad it’s a column beside the note that stays open as you move from note to note. Its five lists are the tabs of the Mac’s information popover:

List What it shows
Statistics Words, characters, paragraphs, reading time and highlights, and when the note was modified and created.
Table of Contents Every heading, indented by level. Tap one to go there. The arrows beside a heading hide the headings under it.
Comments Every comment in reading order, with the words it’s attached to and the heading it’s under. Tap one to go to it and open it.
Highlights Every highlighted passage under its heading, with its colour. Tap one to go to it.
Backlinks The notes whose calculations use this one, then every note that links here, with the paragraphs that do. Tap one to open it.

With a keyboard attached to an iPad, ⇧⌘I, ⇧⌘A, ⇧⌘B and ⇧⌘H open Statistics, Table of Contents, Backlinks and Highlights, as on the Mac.

Some things to know:

  • Copy Link to here, in a heading’s menu, copies a link that opens the note at that heading. Paste it into another note, or anywhere else.
  • Copy Highlights, at the top of Highlights, copies every highlighted passage as a Markdown list under its headings: a ready-made summary of what you marked. Touch and hold one highlight to copy just its words.
  • Unlinked Mentions, from the Backlinks title, lists notes that name this note’s title without linking to it — good places for a new link.
  • While editing, choosing a heading, a comment or a highlight moves the cursor there without raising the keyboard.

A locked note has no Note Info. A protected note that’s locked on this device is never read for backlinks, so it never appears in another note’s lists.

Detached comments and markers

A comment or a recording marker whose words are deleted is kept aside rather than lost, on iPhone and iPad as on the Mac. Those show here: Detached Comments at the end of Comments, and Detached Recording Markers at the end of Statistics. While you’re editing the note, Reattach puts a comment around the words you’ve selected, or a marker at the cursor. Discard removes one for good.

Back and Forward

Varlig remembers the notes you open — from a list, a link, a widget, a reminder or Note Info — so you can go back to the one before, as in Safari.

  • On iPhone, the note’s … menu starts with Back and Forward, then Recent Notes, which lists the notes either way, nearest first.
  • On iPad, Back and Forward are in the note’s bar, beside the sidebar button. Tap to go one note; touch and hold to see the notes that way. On a keyboard, press ⌘[ and ⌘].

Back and Forward restore the list, search and place you left in the note. The reader returns to the previous block; the editor restores its cursor and scroll position. A protected note that has locked since is listed as Locked note, never by its title. Returning to the list still uses the ordinary back button or the swipe from the edge.

Show Link Graph, in a note’s … menu beside Copy Link, and in View with a keyboard on iPad, draws the note and its neighbours: the notes it links to, the notes that link to it, and the notes that do both. Arrows point toward the note linked to, and each note’s dot takes the colour of its first tag.

Control What it does
Link Depth One hop, or two for the neighbours’ neighbours.
Tag Keeps only the neighbours with a tag, or All Tags.
Show As Graph, or List, which groups the same notes under Links to this note, Linked from this note, Linked both ways and Second hop.
Fit to Screen Brings the whole graph back into view.

Drag to move around, pinch or double-tap to zoom, and tap a note to open it. Touch and hold a note to put it at the centre and see its own links; in the list, that’s Show Its Links. Names that would cover each other wait until you zoom in, as a map drops names.

At most 150 notes are drawn, the nearest first, and the title says when there are more: Showing 150 of 412 linked notes. Notes in the Trash, and protected notes that are locked on this device, are left out. See See the links as a graph.

Copy Link, in the note’s … menu, copies a varlig:// link to the note. Paste it into another note, a message to yourself or a reminder in another app, and it opens the note in Varlig on your iPhone, iPad or Mac. If that note isn’t in the library there, because it was deleted or hasn’t synced yet, Varlig says so: The note this link leads to isn’t in this library.