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Daily Notes#

Daily notes give you a fresh page for each day — perfect for journaling, logging meetings, or capturing quick thoughts.

Creating a Daily Note#

Click the calendar icon in the sidebar header or use the command palette to open today's daily note. If one doesn't exist, FoldNotes creates it automatically.

Each daily note:

  • Is stored in .daily/YYYYMMDD.md (e.g. .daily/20260403.md)
  • Starts with a heading like # Thursday 3 April 2026
  • Has a special daily field in its front matter linking it to the date
  • Cannot be renamed (the filename is the date)

The sidebar can show a calendar view that highlights days with existing daily notes. How you open a day differs by platform:

  • Mac: a single click selects a day — you can also move the selection with the arrow keys. Double-click a day (or press Return on the selection) to open that day's note, creating it if it doesn't exist yet. The click/double-click split is deliberate: it keeps a stray click from creating a note for a random day, and it powers keyboard navigation.
  • iPhone / iPad: tap a day to open or create its note.

Opening a note from the calendar always switches the sidebar to the Daily Notes view, so the note you opened is highlighted in its own list. All your daily notes also live in the Daily Notes section of the Library, just below Favourites.

Appending to Daily Notes#

The quickest way to add to today's daily note is via the command line tool:

fn daily append "Met with Sarah about the design review"

Or use an Apple Shortcut for hands-free voice capture.

Tasks in Daily Notes#

Daily notes support the same task syntax as regular notes:

# Thursday 3 April 2026

- [ ] Review PR #42 due:2026-04-03 priority:high
- [x] Send weekly report done:2026-04-03
- [ ] Book flight for conference

Tasks from daily notes appear in the Inspector's Tasks tab alongside tasks from all other notes.

Overdue Tasks#

Pull a list of what's overdue and what's due today into a daily note:

  • macOS: Edit > Insert Overdue Tasks
  • iOS: Tap the editor menu (three dots) and choose Insert or Refresh Overdue Tasks

FoldNotes lists every unfinished task that is overdue, and every task due today, each with a link to the note it lives in:

<!--fn:noindex-->
## Overdue

- Ring the bank — [[Money]]

## Due Today

- Send the draft — [[Book Proposal]]

<!--/fn:noindex-->

It's a snapshot of the moment you insert it. Run the command again for an up-to-date list; it replaces the old one. Tasks in archived or trashed notes are left out.

Activity Summary#

You can add an activity summary to any daily note that lists which notes you created or modified on that day. This is useful for reviewing what you worked on, or revisiting an older daily note to recall what happened.

To insert or refresh the summary:

  • macOS: Edit > Refresh Activity Summary (++shift+cmd+R++)
  • iOS: Tap the editor menu (three dots) and choose Refresh Activity Summary

The summary goes into the note between two markers:

<!--fn:noindex-->
## Activity

### Created
- [[Meeting Notes]]
- [[Project Plan]]

### Modified
- [[Travel Itinerary]]
- [[Reading List]]

*Activity summary — updated 3:45 PM*
<!--/fn:noindex-->

The section lists notes as [[backlinks]], grouped into Created and Modified (a note appears under Created if it was created that day, even if also modified). Other daily notes are excluded from the list.

You can refresh the summary at any time — FoldNotes replaces everything between the two markers, so anything you write outside them is kept.

Tip

If you revisit an older daily note, refreshing the summary will show the activity for that day, not today.

The activity summary uses backlinks so you can click through to the referenced notes. If a note listed in the summary has since been trashed or deleted, clicking its backlink will do nothing — FoldNotes silently ignores the click rather than offering to create a new note with that name. This is intentional: the summary is a historical record, not a prompt to recreate old notes.

Generated sections aren't searched or indexed#

The overdue list and the activity summary are FoldNotes' own copies of things that live in your other notes, so they sit between <!--fn:noindex--> and <!--/fn:noindex--> markers. Noindex means noindex: everything between those markers is left out of

  • search in FoldNotes — Search All Notes on the Mac, iPhone and iPad, regex search included
  • Spotlight on your Mac, iPhone and iPad
  • tasks and tags — a task in the overdue list is counted once, in its own note, never again in the daily note
  • backlinks and the graph — the links in these sections add no backlinks and no lines to the graph

So searching for a task finds the note it lives in, not every daily note that listed it. Everything you write yourself, outside the markers, is searched and indexed as usual, and the markers themselves don't show in Preview.

Daily notes from before this version

Spotlight keeps the old text of a daily note until the note is indexed again. Run Reindex Spotlight once after updating — the File menu on the Mac, Settings › Export & Maintenance on iPhone and iPad — and older daily notes drop out of Spotlight results for their generated sections too. Search inside FoldNotes needs nothing: it skips them straight away.