Tips & shortcuts

The basics

• Double-click any empty space to make a note, then just type.
• Drag a note from anywhere to move it; drag the bottom-right corner to resize.
• Click a note to work in it — the caret lands where you clicked. Every other note stays plain, so the board looks clean.
• Right-click a note, or use the ⋯ above it: the colours are right at the top, one click each, then paste, copy, fullscreen and delete. Reminders are set from Remind me under the note.
• Press Esc to step out of a note when you are done writing. Press it again and it clears the selection; once there is nothing left to close, it takes you back to the start of the page.
• Leave a note empty and it clears itself away — no tidying up after a note you decided against.
• Paste onto the canvas with no note open and whatever is on your clipboard becomes a note where your cursor is. ⌘/Ctrl+P does the same without the paste.
• Hold ⌘/Ctrl while dragging to move a note in neat steps along the grid.

Writing in a note

There is no toolbar. You format by typing, the way you already write:

• - starts a bullet list, and 1. a numbered one.
• [] makes a checkbox you can tick.
• # makes a heading, > a quote.
• Type a sum — 120*0.15 — at the end of a line and its answer waits after it, dimmed. Tab or Enter writes it in; Esc, or just carrying on, and it goes.
• / lists what you can put on the board from here — a timer, for now. Pick one and it appears right beside the note; the note keeps its words.
• Type an address — example.com — and it becomes a link as you pass it.
• ⌘B, ⌘I, ⌘U for bold, italic and underline. ⌘K to link the selection.
• ⌘⌥1 / ⌘⌥2 / ⌘⌥0 for large, small and normal text.
• ⌘Z undoes inside the note you are writing in, and on the board it brings back a deleted note.
• Paste anything. Text arrives clean, without fonts and colours from the page you copied it from. Screenshots paste straight in.

Formatting

• ⌘B / ⌘I / ⌘U — bold, italic, underline, as anywhere else.
• Links just work. Type or paste a web address and it becomes clickable. Paste a link you copied from a page and the link comes with it.
• ⌘K turns the selected words into a link, or edits one you already have.
• Clicking a link opens it in a new tab.
• ⌘⌥1 makes a line a title, ⌘⌥2 makes it small print, ⌘⌥0 puts it back to normal.

Pasted text never brings someone else's fonts and colours with it — only the words and any links.

Clipping from the web

The fastest way to lose something worth keeping is having to open a tab, paste, and find your way back. This closes that to one gesture, on the page you are already reading.

• Press ⌥⇧S on any page — or click the Easy Note icon, or right-click and choose Clip to Easy Note.
• Drag a box round what you want. A small readout follows the cursor with the exact size, so it is not a guess.
• Esc cancels at any point, mid-drag included, and takes the overlay off the page.
• Let go and a small Save / Cancel bar appears against the selection. Save keeps the picture and the page it came from, and you stay where you are.
• It works on ordinary web pages, and says so plainly when it cannot — chrome:// pages, the Web Store and the built-in PDF viewer are off limits to every extension.

Easy Note asks for no access to any website. The permission it uses is granted by your click and expires with it, and nothing is read from the page but the pixels inside the box you drew.

The Capture tray

Clips do not land on a page. They wait in a strip along the bottom until you know where they belong — filing something the moment you grab it is the decision you were trying to avoid making.

• Drag a clip onto the board to drop it exactly where you want, or onto a page in the sidebar to file it without looking.
• × removes one, Clear all empties the strip. Both offer an undo, and neither is permanent until that offer fades.
• Older clips fade a little so your eye goes to what is recent. Nothing is ever hidden, sorted away or deleted on its own.
• The chevron collapses the strip to a single line without losing anything, and an empty tray takes no room at all — the board keeps its full height.

Moving around

• Scroll to move around the board, or hold Space and drag it.
• ⌘ / Ctrl + scroll, or pinch on a trackpad, to zoom. Zooming follows your cursor.
• Lost a note? Click Fit in the bottom-right — everything on the page comes back into view.

Back to the start

Every page starts at its top-left corner and grows right and down, so wandering off across the board is never a problem.

• Esc on an empty board takes you back to the start of the page, at the zoom you are using — once there is nothing left for it to close.
• Click the page's name again in the sidebar to do the same.

Tidying up

• Drag a box across empty space to select several notes, or hold Shift and click them.
• Drag any selected note and the whole group moves together.
• The toolbar that appears will line them up, space them evenly, or snap them into a grid.
• Set a reminder with Remind me under the note — now, 15 minutes, an hour, this evening, tomorrow, in 3 days, in a week, or a time you pick. When it comes round the note hops to catch your eye, Chrome shows a notification if you have allowed it, and the reminder stays until you click it to dismiss it. Close the tab and come back tomorrow and it is still waiting.
• A reminder on another page puts a quiet count beside that page's name. Click the count to go to the note; click again to step to the next one. Nothing hops or flashes.

Pages

• Double-click a page name to rename it. Enter saves, Esc cancels.
• Right-click a page, or use its ⋯, to rename it, add a sub-page inside it, or delete it.
• Drag a page up or down to reorder it. Drop it on another page to nest it inside.
• Drag notes onto a page to move them there — the row fills in before you let go, and a whole selection goes together.
• Hold them over the page instead of dropping, and that page opens underneath the notes still in your hand — so you can put them down somewhere you chose rather than posting them into a page you cannot see.
• Esc abandons a drag at any point and puts everything back, including the page you were looking at when you started.
• Deleting a page with notes in it asks twice. An empty one does not ask at all.
• Drag the sidebar's edge to resize it; double-click that edge to reset the width.
• Each page remembers its own position and zoom.

Finding things

• Tap Space, or press ⌘F, to open search across every page. Before you type it lists every note — most recently edited first, or by reminder, or A–Z / Z–A. Typing narrows whichever list you are on; Tab steps between them.
• Click a result, or press Enter, and Easy Note opens that page and shows you the note, picked out but not opened — click into it when you want to write. The zoom you set is left alone.
• Clips still sitting in the tray are left out — they are already on screen, and search is for finding what you have filed.

Every shortcut

Light and dark

The 🌗 button in the bottom-right cycles through light, dark, and whatever your system is set to. The choice is applied before the page draws, so opening a new tab at night never flashes white at you.

Note colours stay as you picked them in either theme — a yellow note is yellow at midnight. Notes with no fill are just text, so those follow the board.

Sharing your screen

Click 🙈 in the bottom-right, or press Alt + B, and every note goes blurred — along with search results, which would otherwise show the same text. Page names stay readable so you can still find your way around.

• The setting sticks, so notes are already blurred the next time you open a tab. They never flash readable first.
• Hovering a note does not reveal it — a stray cursor cannot uncover anything.
• Click into a note and that one note becomes readable while you type, so you can still work with the blur on.

Syncing

Click the cloud in the bottom-right and sign in with Google, and your notes follow you to every computer you use Chrome on. They go into a private folder that Easy Note cannot see out of — it has no access to anything else in your Drive.

Sync checks every couple of minutes, so give it a moment after editing elsewhere, or press Sync now.