Search and Links

Search and links

Find your notes and link them together. Beta 4 has the core search, quick switcher, links, backlinks, tags, and a graph view. Everything except start-up is untested by hand, so check the test checklist before you rely on a feature.

Search

Search runs on your PC and updates within 100 ms as you type, across 10,000 pages. It uses an index that OpenNote builds in the background after each save. The index is only a cache. You can delete it, and OpenNote rebuilds it from your notes.

Feature	Status
Instant search	Built. Finds typed text, handwriting recognized, transcripts, and commands.
Filters	Built. Narrow by notebook, tag, date, and type.
Saved searches	Built. Keep a search under a name.
Advanced search	Built. "Exact phrases", AND, OR, NOT, and a minus sign. Operators such as tag:, in:, type:, before:, and after:. Regular expression mode.
Command palette	Built. Ctrl+K opens one box for search and every command.
Quick switcher	Built. Ctrl+O finds a page by name, recent pages first.
Find and replace	Built. Works on one page or a whole notebook.
Text in pictures	Built. Search finds text in images on shown pages when enabled.

Locked sections stay out of results while they are locked.

Links

Feature	Status
Page links	Built. Type [[ for autocomplete and link to another page.
Backlinks	Built. Every page lists the pages that link to it.
Paragraph links	Built. "Copy link" works on any page, heading, or paragraph. Links open OpenNote from Outlook, Word, Teams, or a browser.
Page embeds	Built. Type ![[ to show a page, heading, or paragraph live inside another page.
Graph view	Built. Shows pages as dots and links as lines. A Connections list works with keyboard and screen readers.
Canvas of cards	Built. An open board of cards joined by labeled arrows, in the open JSON Canvas format.
Renames	Built. Renaming or moving a page updates every link to it.

Tags and properties

Feature	Status
Line tags	Built. Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+9 tag a paragraph as To do, Important, Question, Idea, or a custom tag.
Tags pane	Built. A Tags pane collects tagged lines and open checkboxes, and can save a summary page.
Tag tree	Built. Organize tags in a hierarchy.
Page properties	Built. Fields on a page, such as status, due date, course, or rating, stored at the top of page.md.
Collections	Built. A saved view of pages chosen by a search, a tag, or properties, shown as a table, list, board, calendar, or gallery.

Each tag shows an icon and a name, so color is never the only signal.

Protected sections

Not yet built. Password-protected sections are planned to be encrypted on disk and unlocked with Windows Hello. They lock again after a chosen idle time, and when Windows locks or sleeps.

Related pages

• Notebooks, sections, and pages
• On-device intelligence, for finding notes by meaning
• Keyboard shortcuts