Documents side by side
Sometimes the page you're writing needs another one open beside it: the research for this chapter, the chapter before, what you wrote on this day last year. φ opens up to three documents side by side, and you can write in each of them.
Open a document beside this one
- With a document open, click Split view in the bar above the page, or
press
⌘\. An empty pane opens beside it, and the sidebar slides in. - Find the second document anywhere, in any mode. Nothing on the page changes until you choose.
- Click it, and it fills the empty pane.
To search by name instead, use Find by name in the empty pane. Changed
your mind? Close the empty pane with its ×, or ⌘W.
Other ways in
Any of these opens a document beside yours straight away:
- ⌥-click a document in the list, a chapter in a project's outline, a research link, or a linked document in Info → Links.
- ⌘⌥-click a
[[wiki link]]in the text (in read mode, ⌥-click). - Open beside, in a document's right-click menu in the list.
- Open beside…, in the document's ⋮ menu or the command palette
(
⌘P). It starts with what's useful here: a chapter's research and the documents linked to it, the same day in earlier years for a journal entry, then what you opened recently. Typing searches everything. - In
⌘K, ⌥↵ opens the highlighted document beside instead of in place of the one you're in.
A document that's already open beside isn't opened twice; it becomes the one you're in. With three open, a new one takes the place of the rightmost pane you're not writing in.
Write in one, read in another
Click into a pane to write there. That pane, marked by a thin line of its
mode's colour along the top, is the one everything acts on: the Info
panel, Find (⌘F), Details…, the document's ⋮ menu and ⌘W. Each
pane shows its own word count.
A pane can hold a document from any mode, and opening one beside never changes the mode you're in. A note next to a chapter is still Write: the sidebar is Write's, and closing the note leaves you there.
Each pane has a small head with its title and:
- Add a pane (+, on the last one): another empty pane.
- Pane options (⋮): Open alone, Move left, Move right, Close pane.
- Close pane (×).
A plain click in the list opens a document in place of the pane you're in.
The sidebar while split
With more than one pane open, the sidebar and the list step aside to give
the pages room. Click Sidebar (☰, at the left of the bar above the
panes) or press ⌘0, and they slide in over the panes. Pick a document,
press Esc, or click outside to send them away.
Going somewhere that isn't a document, such as a board or the calendar,
shows it in the usual layout. Back (⌘[) returns to your panes, and on
Home, Continue brings back the split you were last writing in.
Size the panes
Drag the line between two panes, or click it and use ← →. φ remembers
the widths for each vault on this computer. When the window is too narrow
for every pane, the ones that don't fit fold into slim tabs at the right
edge; click one to bring it back.
Press ⌘. and the panes stay while everything around them goes. Each
pane's buttons appear when you point at its head, and the dimming and
typewriter scrolling apply only to the pane you're writing in.
Back to one page
Close panes with ×, ⌘W on the one you're in, or ⌥⌘W to close all
the others. When one is left, the usual layout comes back with that
document open.
| To | Press |
|---|---|
| Open an empty pane beside | ⌘\ |
| Show the sidebar over the panes | ⌘0 |
| Go to the previous or next pane | ⌃⌘← · ⌃⌘→ |
| Close the pane you're in | ⌘W |
| Close the other panes | ⌥⌘W |