Headings and text styles

Give a note structure with headings, and make the important words stand out. Everything on this page is ordinary Markdown: type the symbols, or use the Format menu and its shortcuts. Varlig hides the symbols as you write, so the note stays easy to read.

Headings

Start a line with one to six # signs and a space, or put the cursor on the line and press ⌘1 to ⌘6. Press the same shortcut again to turn the heading back into ordinary text.

# Holiday plans
## Things to pack
### Documents

The # signs stay hidden, even while you edit the line. When the cursor is in a heading, an icon in the margin shows its level; click it to change the level, fold the section, or Copy Link to here to link straight to that heading from another note. See Tags, links and backlinks.

You can also underline a line to make it a heading: === underneath makes a Heading 1, and --- makes a Heading 2.

Fold a section

Press ⌘’ with the cursor in a section to fold its body out of sight, and again to unfold it. Format › Unfold All opens every section. A list item with indented items below it folds the same way.

Folds are a way to see the shape of a long note. As soon as you type anything, every section unfolds again.

For a quick way around a long note, View › Toggle Table of Contents (⇧⌘A) lists its headings.

A table of contents in the note

Format › Insert Table of Contents writes a list of links to the note’s headings below the line your caret is on, nested by level, between two comment lines:

<!-- contents -->
- [Before you go](varlig://open-note?id=…&header=Before%20you%20go)
  - [Packing](varlig://open-note?id=…&header=Packing)
<!-- /contents -->

Each link is the one Copy Link to here copies, so clicking it jumps to that heading. The note’s title line and headings inside code aren’t listed.

The list doesn’t follow your edits by itself. Format › Update Table of Contents rewrites it for the headings the note has now, and Insert Table of Contents in a note that already has one updates it instead. Each is one undo step. Other Markdown apps hide the comment lines and show the list as the heading titles, whose links open the note in Varlig.

Both commands work in notes in your library that you can edit, and a table of contents can’t go inside code, maths, a table or front matter.

Bold, italic and more

Select some words and press a shortcut, or type the symbols around them. With nothing selected, a shortcut switches the style on for what you type next; press it again to switch it off.

The ferry is **not** refundable, so _double-check_ the date.
Bring the ==blue folder== and ~sign~ the forms, but ~~print the maps~~.
Booking reference: `LX-4821`

*italic* and __bold__ work too. With the cursor inside a style, its shortcut removes it.

Highlight colours

Choose Format › Highlight Color for green, red, blue, yellow or purple, or Default. In the Markdown, the colour is an emoji straight after the opening ==:

The emoji stays hidden unless the cursor is inside the highlight, where it becomes a colour control.

View › Toggle Highlights (⇧⌘H) lists every highlighted passage in the note, in its colour, under its heading, and Copy Highlights copies them all as a Markdown list. See Note info.

Quotes and callouts

Start a line with > for a quote (⇧⌘T). Press Return and the quote carries on; press Return on an empty quote line to leave it.

A callout draws attention to something. Choose Format › Callout and a type, or type > [!TIP] with an optional title after it:

> [!TIP] Before you leave
> Check the passports are in the front pocket.

> [!WARNING]
> The last ferry leaves at 18:30.

The type is one of NOTE, TIP, IMPORTANT, WARNING or CAUTION, in capitals. Without a title, the callout shows the type’s name. With the cursor in a callout, Format › Callout changes its type.

Separators

Format › Line Separator (⌥⌘S) draws a line between topics. To type one, put --- on its own line with an empty line above it. Without the empty line, --- turns the line above into a heading.

Footnotes

Format › Footnotes › Footnote (⇧⌘E) adds a numbered reference such as [^1] at the cursor, and a matching [^1]: footnote text line at the end of the note, ready for you to write. The reference shows as a small raised number you can click. Renumber Footnotes tidies the numbers after you’ve moved things around.

The castle opens at nine.[^1]

[^1]: Closed on Mondays in winter.

Pronunciation readings

A reading sits above a word to say how it’s pronounced — furigana over kanji, a transliteration over a name. Write the base text in square brackets and the reading in braces straight after:

子どもの頃に[漢字]{かんじ}を覚えました。

Select the words and choose Format › Add Reading…. The prompt is headed Reading for “漢字”, with Reading in the field; Add inserts the markup as one undo step.

With the caret inside a reading, right-click for Edit Reading… and Remove Reading — the buttons in the prompt are then Save and Remove Reading, and removing one keeps the base text. A read-only note offers Show Reading… instead.

In the editor the reading shows small and raised above the base text, and the brackets stay out of the way until the caret or the selection moves into the annotation, like other Markdown. Note titles, list excerpts, backlink excerpts and word counts use the base text only.

The ]{ has to be adjacent, with nothing between the bracket and the brace, so [漢字] {かんじ} is ordinary text. A base text holds no [ or ], a reading holds no { or }, neither holds a tab or a line break, and both are at most 120 characters. One reading per base text, and no nesting. Code, maths, an existing reading and commented text can’t take one.

Each export renders a reading the way that format can:

The <rp> brackets in the HTML and EPUB output mean a reader that doesn’t support ruby still shows the reading in parentheses rather than dropping it.

Dates, emoji and special characters

• Today’s date: Format › Current Date inserts the date and time (⇧⌘7), the date (⇧⌘8), a short date (⇧⌘9) or the time (⇧⌘0), in your Mac’s format. The same menu has ISO 8601 versions, such as 2026-09-16, for notes that sort by date.
• Emoji: type a colon and the start of a word, such as :ten, and pick from the suggestions. Varlig inserts the emoji itself.
• A symbol on its own: put a backslash before a character to stop it being formatting, so \#1 stays as text rather than becoming a tag.

Move and indent lines

Shifting a line moves it by two spaces, which is how lists nest. See Lists and todos.

Prefer buttons?

View › Toggle Style Bar (⇧⌘Y) shows formatting buttons above the note. And when a note is finished, Note › Make Read-Only protects it from accidental edits.