Skip to main content

Links & the graph

Ideas connect. φ lets you link one document to another the moment you mention it, then shows you those connections two ways — as a list beside the page, and as a graph of the whole vault. Nothing leaves your Mac; the link index is built and queried locally.

To link to another document, type [[ anywhere in the text. A small menu opens and filters as you keep typing — pick the document you want with the arrow keys and Enter, or click it.

Links are by identity, not by title: once you've linked to a document, renaming it later won't break the link.

Linking to something that doesn't exist yet​

If no document matches what you typed, the menu offers Create "…" at the top. Choose it and φ makes a new document with that title and links to it — a quick way to capture an idea before you've written the page for it. You can also follow an unresolved link later from the Links panel (below).

Hold ⌘ and click any wiki-link in the editor to open the document it points to. If that document doesn't exist yet, ⌘-clicking creates it.

Open the right panel (⌘] toggles it) and choose the Links tab. It always reflects the document you're reading — including edits you haven't saved yet — and has three sections:

  • Outgoing links — every document this one links to. Click any entry to jump there.
  • Unresolved links appear in the same list, marked with a + icon. These are [[titles]] you've written that don't match a document yet. Click one to create that document and open it.
  • Backlinks — every document that links to this one. This is how you find what references the page you're on, even though you never linked outward from it.
  • Linked dates — any dates you've referenced with /date, each linking to its day in the calendar.

The graph view​

The graph is a map of how your vault hangs together. Open it from View → Go to → Graph (⌘G then G).

Each dot is a document, and each line is a link between two documents. A dot grows a little as more links point to it, so your hubs stand out. Documents with no links at all (orphans) appear dimmed. Private morning pages never appear in the graph.

Reading and moving around​

  • Click a dot to open that document.
  • Scroll to zoom; drag the background to pan. Zoom out for an overview — labels fade away so you see the shape; zoom back in and titles return.
  • The layout arranges itself live and frames the whole graph for you until you pan or zoom, after which it stays put.
  • The toolbar has Fit graph to view to re-frame everything, Refresh links to rebuild from the latest content, and Graph options to tune the layout (link distance, forces, node size, whether orphans show, and more).

Finding where you are​

The graph shows the whole vault. To orient yourself within it, open a document first, then open the graph — the document you're in is marked as the active dot, so you can spot it and explore its neighbors outward from there.