Markdown notes

A note can show as markdown: headings, lists, checklists, code, quotes, tables and links, as GitHub writes them. A note is plain text unless you say otherwise, so someone who never writes markdown never sees a * turn into a bullet.

Turning it on

• While writing: the M↓ markdown switch on the capture box's bottom row (desktop and phone). Once on, it stays on for every note you write on that device until you turn it off. While it's on, the box types in monospace, so you can see you're writing markdown. A ? beside the switch opens the common formats, each as you type it and what it makes (below the box on the desktop, above the sheet on the phone).
• Afterwards: a note's ⋯ menu has show as markdown (or show as plain text). This works on any note: older ones, Google Keep imports, one you forgot to mark.

Only notes can show as markdown: links, pictures and files never do. Your notes on an item stay plain. A dropped .md file stays a file item: it isn't turned into a note.

What's kept, and where

The note's text never changes. An item is its content (its hash), so changing the text would make it a different item and cut it loose from its tags, notes, reminders, history and place on the map. What you say about the note is kept beside it instead, by the note's hash:

• whether it shows as markdown, and when you said so;
• each box you ticked or unticked, and when, by its place among the note's boxes (the third box is always the third, because the text never changes).

What the text says (- [x]) is where each box starts. Each device's changes sync, merged field by field: the newest wins for each box and for the switch. They go in backups too (markdown.jsonl), and they're deleted with the note.

Search, sync, the sensitive check and export see the note's text exactly as typed. Copying the text gives the boxes as written, not as ticked.

On the card

• Headings stay close to the text's size, so a card doesn't shout.
• A line break stays a line break, as in a plain note.
• A box is - [ ] words, as GitHub writes it, or as people type one: [ ] words, [] words or [x] words at a line's start, or - [] words. Those are read as boxes for showing and counting; the note's text stays as typed.
• Boxes tick from the card (and from the opened item). On the phone, a tap on a box ticks it; a tap anywhere else opens the card, as before.
• The footer says markdown, and for a checklist how many boxes are ticked (☑ 2/5, green when all are).
• A long note folds like any other (Settings › List › Card length), faded at the cut, since a list or code block cut mid-line looks broken. A box below the fold needs more first.
• Each tick and each switch is an edit of yours, in the item's history ("ticked 'fix the timer'").

Left out on purpose

• HTML in a note shows as typed, never as HTML.
• Pictures (![](…)): showing one would fetch from the web just because a card was on screen. Its words show instead.
• Headings underlined with --- or ===: plain notes do that by accident. Write # headings.
• Links open only if they're web addresses. A bare address shows as plain notes show it (the site, then the end of the path); a link with words of its own shows its words.