Organizing and search
The notes sidebar — creating notes and folders, renaming, and finding notes by name.
knowdust keeps organizing simple on purpose: notes, folders, and a search box. This page is short because there isn't much to learn — which is the point.
The sidebar
Press Ctrl/Cmd + B — or click the logo in the top left — to show or hide the notes sidebar. It lists every note and folder you have. Click a note to open it; click a folder to open or close it.
Hiding the sidebar is worth making a habit: with it closed, the workspace is nothing but your words.
Creating notes and folders
New note at the top of the sidebar creates a note — type a name, press Enter, start writing. The folder button beside it creates a folder the same way.
To file a note into a folder, select the folder first, then create the note inside it.
Renaming
Click the note's title in the header above the editor, type the new name, press Enter. The note keeps its entire version history across renames.
Deleting
Select a note or folder in the sidebar and click the small trash icon that appears on it. Deleting removes the note from your notebook — if there's any chance you'll want it back, export it first.
Search
The search box at the top of the sidebar filters your notes as you type. It matches names — of notes and folders — not the text inside notes. Folders whose contents match stay visible, so a note never hides just because it's filed away.
Two habits make name-search go a long way:
- Give notes names you'd actually search for ("reading notes — spring" beats "notes 7").
- Keep a note's title as a
#heading on its first line too — future you will thank you when the file is exported.
What about tags, backlinks, nested folder trees…?
Not here, deliberately. knowdust is a notebook, not a knowledge-graph workstation. A flat, readable list of well-named notes in a few folders scales further than most people expect — and everything stays exportable as an ordinary folder of markdown files, with no proprietary structure to untangle later.
Something on this page wrong or unclear? Tell us — it'll be fixed.