Preview, Sharing & Export#

FoldNotes can render your Markdown as formatted HTML and export to multiple formats.

Preview#

Click the preview button in the toolbar (macOS) or tap it (iPhone) to open a rendered view of the current note. On iPad, tap the book to show the preview beside your note. You can also press Cmd+Shift+P (macOS, or iPad with an external keyboard).

The preview:

Supports dark and light themes (follows your system appearance)
Renders all Markdown features: headings, lists, tables, code blocks, images, task checkboxes
Styles FoldNotes-specific syntax: wikilinks, tags, date references, task metadata, admonition callouts
Renders Mermaid diagrams — fenced code blocks with the mermaid language tag are rendered as interactive diagrams (flowcharts, sequence diagrams, Gantt charts, etc.)

On macOS, the preview sits beside the editor (see Preview Beside the Editor below) or opens in a separate window, and either way it updates live as you edit — including across multiple windows viewing the same note. Task checkboxes in the macOS preview are interactive (see Ticking Tasks below). On iPad, the preview sits beside your note and keeps up as you edit (see Preview Beside the Note on iPad below). On iPhone, the preview opens over the note and shows a snapshot of it at the time it was opened; on the iPhone Duo, Facing Pages show it beside your note.

When the editor is hoisted on a heading, the preview scopes to just that heading and its descendants. This is the easiest way to render or export a single chapter from a longer document — hoist the chapter, then open Preview and export. Learn more about Hoist →

Preview Beside the Editor#

Choose View → Preview Beside Editor (Cmd+Option+Shift+P) to dock the preview to the right of the editor, in the same window: write on the left, read the formatted note on the right.

It keeps up as you type. The preview is rendered in the background, so typing stays quick, even in a long note.
It shows what the editor shows. A section you've folded in the editor stays folded in the preview, so the two match.
The two sides scroll together. Scroll the editor and the preview follows; scroll the preview and the editor follows. While you type, the preview keeps the line you're typing in view.
It follows the editor. Open another note and the preview shows that one. Click a wiki-link in the preview and the editor opens that note, with the preview following.
Its commands sit above it. While it is docked, the toolbar gains a section over the preview: Theme, Zoom, Content and Export, as in the preview window, and Detach.
Swipe for the Inspector. On a trackpad, swipe left with two fingers on the preview to show the Inspector beside it, and right to put it away. A wide table or code block still scrolls sideways under your fingers.
Resize it or put it away. Drag the divider to share the window your way. FoldNotes remembers the split, and keeps it when you resize the window. To close the preview, drag the divider to the edge, choose Preview Beside Editor again, or right-click the preview and choose Hide Preview.

Each editor has one preview, docked or in its own window. Detach moves the docked preview into a window of its own — from the toolbar, by right-clicking the preview (Detach Preview), or with Cmd+Shift+P: while the preview is docked, View → Preview reads Detach Preview.

Preview Beside the Note on iPad#

On iPad the preview always sits beside your note: write on the left, read the formatted note on the right. Tap the book in the bar above the note, or press Cmd+Shift+P, to show it. The book fills in while the preview shows; tap it again to put the preview away.

It keeps up as you type, and it shows what the editor shows: a section you've folded stays folded in the preview.
It keeps your place. Scroll the note and the preview follows; scroll the preview and the note follows.
It follows the editor. Open another note and the preview shows that one.
Drag the divider between the note and the preview to share the space your way. FoldNotes remembers the split.
It makes room for itself. When you show the preview, or make the window narrower, the library, then the note list, then the Inspector close to give it room. In a window too narrow for both the note and the preview, the book is hidden and the preview waits; it comes back when there is room again. Open the note list or the Inspector yourself and the preview steps aside while they are open.
Share As is always in the bar, with or without the preview showing: PDF, HTML, Rich Text, Markdown, Bike, Email and Print.

The preview doesn't come back by itself when FoldNotes starts: tap the book to show it again.

Beside the Editor or in Its Own Window?#

Both previews show the same note, keep up as you edit, let you tick tasks, and export the same way. They differ in what they show and how they move:

	Beside the editor	In its own window
What it shows	What the editor shows: a folded section stays folded	The whole note, with every folded section open
Scrolling	Moves with the editor, both ways, and keeps the line you're typing in view	Scrolls on its own. Detached from beside the editor, it opens where you were
Wiki-links	Open the note in the editor, and the preview follows	Open in the preview window, with Back and Forward; the editor stays where it is
Another note in the editor	The preview shows it	The window shows it too
Where it lives	In the editor's window	Anywhere: beside it, behind it, or on a second display

Export takes the whole note from either one, folded sections included (or, when the editor is hoisted, the hoisted part).

Use the preview beside the editor to see what you're writing:

Drafting with formatting in view. Write a chapter and watch headings, lists and callouts take shape; the preview keeps the line you're typing on screen.
Working through a folded outline. Fold the sections you're not working on and the preview folds with you, showing just the part in front of you.
Checking the hard parts as you edit them. A table, a Mermaid diagram or a long list, side by side with its Markdown.

Use the preview window to read on its own terms:

Proofreading the whole note. Read every section, including the ones you've folded away in the editor, without unfolding them.
Reading a linked note while you write. Follow a link to your research notes or a character sheet in the window, then come back with Back. The note you're writing doesn't move.
Reading one part while you write another. Keep the window on an earlier chapter while you draft the next.
Working on two displays. Put the editor on one screen and the preview on the other.
Seeing the note as it will export. Every section, folded or not, the way PDF, DOCX and the other exports will have it.

Following Wiki-Links#

In the macOS preview window, [[wiki-links]] are clickable: click one to follow it and the preview loads that note in place. Use the Back and Forward buttons in the preview toolbar to move through the notes you've visited — a browsing history that's kept entirely separate from the editor, so following a link in the preview never moves your editing cursor or opens new editor windows.

The preview beside the editor works the other way round: it always shows the editor's note, so clicking a link there opens that note in the editor, and the preview follows.

Only links that resolve to an existing note are clickable. A [[wiki-link]] whose target doesn't exist renders as plain text (no underline), so an underlined link in the preview is always one you can follow.

macOS only

Wiki-link navigation and the Back/Forward buttons are available in the macOS preview window only. On iPhone the preview is a static snapshot, and there is no room in its toolbar for navigation controls. To follow a link on iOS, use the link preview card in the editor.

Ticking Tasks#

Task checkboxes in the macOS preview are live. Click one to cycle it through the same four states as the editor:

Click	State	Looks like
1st	In progress	Half-filled amber box
2nd	Done	Blue box with a tick — `done:` and today's date are appended to the line
3rd	Cancelled	Grey box with a dash
4th	Not started	Empty box (back to the start)

The change is written straight to the note, so it's reflected everywhere at once:

On the note you're editing, the edit lands in the document immediately.
On a note you've followed a wiki-link to (see above), the change is written to that note — even though it isn't the note open in the editor. If that note happens to be open in another window, its editor updates too.
From elsewhere — tick a task on the Task Board, the calendar, or a project, and any open preview of that note keeps up automatically. The sync runs both ways.

macOS only

Interactive checkboxes are a macOS preview feature. On iPhone and iPad, tick tasks in the editor.

Figure captions#

Give a picture a description and it becomes a caption, printed beneath the figure in the preview, in every export format, and in a bound manuscript.

The description is the text in the square brackets:

![The north face at dawn](north-face.png)

That renders as the picture with The north face at dawn beneath it. Leave the brackets empty and there is no caption and no space where one would be:

![](north-face.png)

A drawing you named is captioned by that name, with nothing else to do. A drawing you left unnamed appears without a caption.

The picture has to be alone in its paragraph#

A caption is only added when the picture stands on its own line, with a blank line above and below it:

Here is the route we took.

![The north face at dawn](north-face.png)

We turned back at the col.

A picture written inside a sentence stays where you put it, inline, with no caption:

The route follows ![this line](route.png) to the summit.

This is deliberate rather than a limitation. It is the same rule Pandoc and Obsidian use, so a note that captions correctly in FoldNotes captions correctly when you take it elsewhere — and it is the only rule that can tell "a figure with a caption" apart from "a small picture in a sentence", since both are written with the same Markdown.

Pictures you insert from the toolbar are placed this way automatically, so they caption without you thinking about it. It only matters when you are typing the Markdown yourself.

All sharing and export goes through the preview screen. The preview toolbar provides format options that differ by platform:

Format	macOS	iOS	Description
PDF			Print-ready with professional typography
HTML			A single self-contained file — pictures included
HTML Folder			The page plus an `assets` folder holding every file
Markdown			Clean Markdown with front matter stripped
RTF			Rich Text Format for word processors
Email			The note as a formatted message, with its pictures and files attached
DOCX			Microsoft Word document
EPUB			E-book format
TextBundle			Markdown plus its attachments in a single bundle

What travels with each format#

An image can be carried inside almost anything. A document — a PDF, a spreadsheet, a Word file, a recording — cannot be embedded in a page or a PDF, so each format handles it differently.

This table describes macOS. See the note below for iPhone and iPad.

Format	Pictures	Documents & audio
HTML (single file)	Embedded in the page	Named in the text, not carried — a single file has nowhere to put them
HTML Folder	Copied to `assets`	Copied to `assets`, and the links in the page open them
Email	Attached, scaled down for mail	Attached as the real files
TextBundle	Inside the bundle	Inside the bundle
PDF, DOCX, EPUB	Rendered into the document	Named in the text, not carried

Which HTML export do I want?

HTML is one file you can send, upload, or open anywhere — nothing to keep beside it. HTML Folder gives you a folder containing the page and an assets folder with the real files, so a spreadsheet mentioned in your note is a spreadsheet the reader can open. Use the single file when you want one thing to send; use the folder when you want everything to travel.

On iPhone and iPad

PDF carries your pictures today. The other formats — HTML, Rich Text, Print and Email — currently send the note's text without them, and will carry them in a future release. TextBundle, EPUB, Word and HTML Folder are macOS features and are not planned for iOS.

Where email puts your pictures

Mail places attachments at the end of a message, so your pictures arrive beneath the text rather than where they sit in the note. That is how Mail composes a message, not something FoldNotes can change. Captions are left out of an emailed note for the same reason — a caption above nothing is worse than no caption.

Exports can optionally strip FoldNotes-specific syntax so the output is clean for sharing. The defaults live in Settings → Sharing (and Settings → Privacy for comments) on both platforms:

Comments — keep  private (Settings → Privacy)
Strip Tags — removes #tags from the output
Flatten Backlinks — converts [[Note Title]] wikilinks to plain text
Tasks — keep all task content, strip metadata only (due dates, priority), or strip entire task lines

The preview always shows the full note. These options only affect what leaves it — and they apply to every export and share action, including Print and Email.

The Content control#

The preview toolbar's Content button opens a popover for the note you're previewing:

It's seeded from your Settings defaults each time you open a preview.
You can override any option for that preview only — Comments and Tags checkboxes, plus a Keep / Strip metadata / Strip lines task choice — without changing your Settings.
The overrides reset to the defaults the next time you open a preview; they never write back to Settings.
Flatten Backlinks isn't in the popover — it's always applied from your Settings default.

Print#

Both platforms support printing the rendered note from the preview. Print honours the current Content choices, so anything you've chosen to strip is stripped from the printout too.

Theming#

The preview's default theme uses professional typography:

Body text in Charter/Georgia serif
Headings in sans-serif
Code in monospace with rounded borders
Tables with collapsed borders and striped rows

Colours adapt to your system appearance (dark/light mode).

On macOS, choose the preview's theme — Default, GitHub, Swiss or Editorial — with the Theme button in the preview's toolbar, or View → Preview Theme. One choice applies to every preview.