Your library, and finding things
A library isn't something you import into. It is a folder on your disk. This page is about creating, arranging and finding things inside it.
Create, rename, move, delete
The tree in the middle of the sidebar is the folder itself. Right-click is the main menu:
- Right-click empty space or a folder: new note, new folder, new drawing, new diagram. The new thing is created in the folder you clicked.
- Right-click a file: rename, duplicate, copy, open in a new tab, copy path, reveal in Finder, delete.
- Drag a file onto another folder in the tree to move it.
A new document is also ⌘N. The file name is the document name, and renaming is in that right-click menu.
“Delete” in the sidebar does not go through the Trash, and deleting a folder takes what is inside it. Folding Mirror asks first — read the name when it does.
If you delete the wrong thing: checkpoints for the whole library are running in the background, and a moment from before the deletion will usually bring it back.
Changes you make in Finder — renaming, moving, deleting, editing in another program — show up immediately. Folding Mirror watches that folder; there is no “refresh” step.
Several libraries
The bottom row of the sidebar is the current library, and clicking it switches: recently used ones are listed right there, with Open Other Library… at the bottom for a new folder.
Switching clears the open tabs and Folding Mirror opens a document for you in the new library — documents from two libraries never mix in one row of tabs. Which is why one library for work and one for writing works well: switching over means a different set of things, and neither disturbs the other.
Tabs, back and forward
Several documents can be open at once, and the rules are a browser's:
| What you're doing | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| New tab | ⌘T |
| Close this tab | ⌘W |
| Reopen the one you just closed | ⇧⌘T |
| Back (to the previous document) | ⌃⌘← |
| Forward | ⌃⌘→ |
Every document remembers how far you had read. Close the tab, quit, restart the machine — it opens on the same line, with no scrolling back.
Two ways to find things
You know its name: quick open
Press ⇧⌘O (or ⌘P), type a couple of letters, and it matches on file name, title and path; arrows to choose, return to open. For moving between documents day to day, this is the fastest thing here.
You only remember writing it: search the library
Press ⇧⌘F, or click the search box at the top of the sidebar. Results come in two groups, name matches and text matches, each with the sentence it was found in. Clicking a result lands on that line — it doesn't just open the document and leave you to look again.
Whole words and fragments both match. To search the document you're in, that is ⌘F.
Outline and mentions
The side panel next to the editor has two regulars. They share one place, and only one is open at a time:
- Outline (⌃⌘1): the whole document by heading level, click to jump. It follows the caret — whichever section you're writing is the one lit up. This is how you navigate something long.
- Mentions (⌃⌘2): who cites the current document, and on which line.
Both also have buttons in the right-hand group of the toolbar.
What wiki links are for
Write [[another file's name]] in any document and it becomes a link you can click. What separates it from an ordinary link is the other direction: open the “mentions” panel in the document being pointed at and you see which documents mention it, and where.
No index to build, no tags to apply — Folding Mirror is already watching those brackets across the library. A Markdown link, [the words shown](../work/standup.md), shows up in mentions just the same.
No obligation. Wiki links suit writing where one idea is mentioned by many pieces; if your material is naturally divided by folder, folders and search are enough. Nothing is withheld from you for not using them.
The library on disk
Put the sidebar and Finder side by side and it is the same tree:
.mdis plain text and opens in any editor.img/,drawings/anddiagrams/travel with the document that cites them; see the inserting page..fm/holds Folding Mirror's checkpoints. It is one hidden folder inside the library, and it never puts commits into a Git repository of yours.
So the folder is fine in a cloud drive, in iCloud, or in Git — Folding Mirror has no sync of its own and doesn't need one. If two machines edit the same document at once, the conflict is your sync tool's to handle, exactly as it would be with any other program writing .md.