HanNote Manual

A guide for getting started with HanNote — from creating your vault to editing and syncing, step by step.

Getting started — creating a vault

Everything you keep in HanNote lives in a vault — a local store on your own device, with note contents encrypted under your vault password. When you first launch the app, you'll see a screen for creating a new vault or opening an existing one.

1. Choose where to store the vault. (The default location works fine.)
2. Set a vault password. It encrypts every note and attachment.
3. Once the vault is created, a five-word key phrase is generated automatically. You'll use it to sync with your other devices.

Sections and folders

Notes live in folders, and folders are grouped into sections. A section sits one level above folders — use it to separate folders that serve different purposes, such as work and personal records, and keep the sidebar tidy.

Folders you already had are filed into a Home section automatically, so there is nothing to move.

Working with sections

• Create, rename, delete — hover over a section name and click the ⋯ button that appears.
• Add a note or folder — the ＋ button in the same place creates one inside that section.
• Collapse and expand — click the section name.
• Reorder — drag a section up or down. You can also drag folders and notes into a different section.

Ordering and moving items

Inside favorites, sections, and folders you can drag items into the order you want. Sub-folders appear above notes, and reordering happens within each of those groups.

As you drag, a blue insertion line between rows shows where the item will land. Drop it onto a folder instead and it moves inside — empty and collapsed folders included.

Finding where a note lives

Open a note and its place shows under the tab bar as section › folder. Click any crumb to go there. Turn it off under Settings ▸ General if you'd rather not have it.

Previewing inside a folder

Open a folder and a preview panel sits on the right. Pick an item in the list and its details appear at the top, its contents below.

• Files — shown the same way Finder shows them when you press the space bar. Images, PDFs, text, video, audio, and Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents can all be checked without opening another app, with the kind, size and dates alongside.
• Notes — an excerpt of the body plus tags, when it was created and changed, and the character and word counts.
• Subfolders — how many folders, notes and files they hold.

Drag the divider between the list and the panel to change its width. The button that opens and closes the panel is at the right end of the folder screen's bottom bar. The width and whether the panel is open are the same across every folder tab and every panel, and survive a restart.

Daily notes and the calendar

Use daily notes when you want to keep a record by date. Today's note opens in one step, and is created for you if it doesn't exist yet.

• Mac — click Daily Notes in the sidebar to open the calendar panel.
• iPad — Daily Notes in the sidebar opens a calendar tab.
• iPhone — tap Daily Notes on the home list.
• Windows — click Daily Notes in the sidebar to open the calendar view.

Views

Four views are available: Monthly, Weekly, Daily, and List. In the Daily view you can pick a date and create that day's note directly, and turning on daily notes only narrows the list to dated records.

Keeping it tidy

If you don't use daily notes, choose hide from the sidebar in Settings to take the item out of the list.

On the daily-notes page, right-click a note's name for open folder, open note, and delete.

To-dos

Checklist items scattered across your notes can be read on one page. Click To-dos in the sidebar and every checklist item in the vault appears, grouped by the note it came from.

• Ticking an item here writes back to its note. If that note is open, it updates on screen too.
• Show completed items above the list decides whether finished work stays in view, and the remaining count sits alongside it.
• Anything nested under a checklist item is shown with it.
• Click a note's name to jump to that note.

Databases

Keep records as structure, in rows and columns. It suits anything where the same kind of entry repeats — books you have read, contacts, work in progress.

The important part is that every row is itself a note. Open a row and the block editor you already use opens, ready for as much body text as you like, with the same encryption, syncing, trash and version history any other note gets.

Creating one

• Choose New database from the sidebar's ＋ menu, a section's ＋ menu, or a folder's right-click menu.
• To put one inside a note, add an inline database block in the editor. You can then read the note and work the table right there.
• Click a column header to name it and set its type, and use New row to add entries.

Five layouts

The same records, seen differently.

• Table — rows and columns, the plain view.
• Board — a column per value of whichever column you pick, records as cards. Drag a card to another column and that value changes.
• Gallery — laid out as cards.
• Calendar — placed on a calendar by a date column.
• Timeline — spans as horizontal bars.

Saved views

Sorting, filters, grouping, column widths and which columns show are saved together as a view, and tabs along the top switch between them — "this month" and "everything" as two views, say.

• Sorting can chain several columns, and rows with no value always come last regardless of direction.
• Filters work on conditions like contains, equals, is not, is empty, greater than and less than.
• Grouping splits the records into sections by the values of a column.
• A hidden column still counts for sorting, filtering and grouping, so you can filter on something you are not showing.
• View tabs can be reordered, and views sync to your other devices.

Column types

• Text, number, checkbox, date and URL — the basic types.
• Select — pick from options you set up. Each option can have a color, and a cell can hold several of them.
• Relation — points at rows in another database, linking a row in "books" to one in "authors", for instance.
• Backlink — the reverse of a relation. On the author's side, the books pointing at them appear on their own.
• Formula — a value calculated from other columns.
• Rollup — gathers values across the rows a relation connects and computes over them, a total or a count.

A number column has its own display format — currency symbol, percentage, decimal places, thousands separator.

Working with rows

• Click a row number to select it, and select several to delete them at once.
• Open as note in a row's ⋯ menu opens that row as a note.
• Drag rows into the order you want; that order syncs too.
• The calculation row under the table shows a total, average or count per column.

Block editor

Notes in HanNote are made of blocks. Paragraphs, headings, lists, to-dos, images — each is a block you can restyle in one step and move anywhere in the document.

Slash commands

Type / anywhere while writing to open the styles and commands menu. Pick headings, lists, to-dos, toggle lists, quotes, dividers, and more — instantly.

Toggle lists

A toggle list is a block you can fold. Click the triangle in front of it and everything inside is hidden, which is handy for keeping detail tucked away in a long note. You can nest other blocks inside one to build up levels.

Restyle with shortcuts

Shortcuts are the fastest way to restyle a block. For example, Cmd+1 (Ctrl+1 on Windows) turns the current block into Heading 1. See the shortcuts table below for the full list.

Styling part of a block — quick-edit toolbar

To restyle only part of a block, select the text you want by dragging. The quick-edit toolbar appears, letting you apply bold, italic, colors, highlights, and more on the spot.

Moving blocks

Grab the handle on the left side of a block and drag it to move the block anywhere in the document.

Drawing tool

The drawing tool lets you add hand-drawn sketches to a note — great for quick idea sketches and simple diagrams.

Styling notes

Make each note look exactly how you want. In note settings, you can adjust:

• Note width — narrow, normal, or wide
• Cover and background images — apply images to the note cover and background
• Background colors — for the screen and for the note area
• Font, text color, and highlight color
• Line spacing and block spacing
• Zoom — scale the whole note up or down

File attachments

Store any file in a note or folder — no need to keep notes and their related files in separate places.

• Images — displayed right inside the note.
• PDFs — read inline, right in the note, and mark up with the highlighter, pen or text, saved into the file.
• Word, PowerPoint, and other documents — open them in their own apps to edit and save; the updated file is kept in your vault.
• Any other file — attach it and open it whenever you like.

Add files by dragging them into a note or choosing them from the attachment menu. Attachments are stored alongside your notes as the original files — they are not encrypted. That is deliberate: open a Word document or PDF in another app, edit it, and the change lands in that very file inside the vault.

Dragging files in

Drag a file from Finder or any other app onto the HanNote window and it is attached right where you dropped it. There are four places to drop.

• A folder or note in the sidebar — the file goes into that folder or that note.
• The file list in a folder screen — drop onto the list as a whole or onto a row in it.
• The body of an open note — a line appears between blocks as you drag, showing where the file will land.
• A tab along the top — hover for about half a second and the tab opens, so you can check what is there before dropping. A folder tab takes the file into that folder; a note tab adds it at the end.

When there are many files or large ones, you see the progress as they come in, and anything that could not be brought in is named along with the reason.

You cannot drop onto the attachments, tags, calendar, tasks, graph, or trash screens, or onto a section name. A no-entry cursor appears there.

Marking up a PDF

You can mark up a PDF opened inside a note, and what you add is saved into the PDF file.

• Pick highlight, draw, or text from the toolbar above the PDF and use it on the page. The cursor takes the shape of whichever tool you chose.
• If the PDF has form fields, you can fill them in as usual.
• Erasing something you marked is saved too.
• Saving happens automatically; a badge next to the filename shows how it's going.

Managing attachments

Click Attachments in the sidebar to see every attachment in the vault on one page — images placed in notes, cover images, and files filed into a folder on their own.

• Each file shows which note or folder it belongs to. Double-click that column to open it.
• Deleting a note also clears away the attachments only that note used; files another note still uses stay put.
• If you don't need it, turn Show attachments off under Settings ▸ Sidebar.

Multi-panel view

Open up to four documents side by side, and compare translations or related documents at a glance.

1. Tap the square icon at the top right of the screen.
2. Choose the number of panels and their layout.
3. Open the document you want in each panel.

Reading mode

When you want to focus on reading, or to present without the editing tools getting in the way, switch to reading mode.

1. Tap the eyeglasses icon at the top of the screen.
2. Editing locks, and you can only scroll through the content.
3. Tap the eyeglasses icon again to return to editing.

Adjusting the text size

On Mac, hold Shift and scroll, or press + / -, to step the size by 10%. Scrolling without Shift still scrolls as usual.

On iPad, pinch with two fingers.

On Windows, press Ctrl++ / Ctrl+- to step the size, and Ctrl+0 to return to normal. Esc — or the eyeglasses icon again — leaves reading mode.

The text reflows rather than the screen magnifying, so lines never run off the side. The size you settle on is remembered, and applies the next time you open reading mode.

Printing

You can print a note exactly as it appears on screen.

1. On Mac, choose File ▸ Print, or press Cmd+P.
2. Check the preview in the system print dialog and print.

iPhone and iPad print too; on both the system print sheet acts as the preview.

On Windows, choose Print from the menu or press Ctrl+P to open the print dialog. Margins are set in that dialog rather than in the page setup below.

The editing toolbar is left off the page. Styles you set on the note — font, block spacing, note background colour — are kept, so the printout matches what you were looking at.

Setting the margins

Choose File ▸ Page Setup… to open the Print tab in Settings. Set the top, bottom, left, and right margins in millimetres; the values you choose apply to every print from then on, on Mac and on iPhone and iPad alike.

Syncing devices

HanNote syncs automatically without any server — your devices exchange data directly, peer to peer.

Adding a device

A new device asks to join with the five-word key phrase, and a device you already use approves it.

1. On a device you already use, find the automatically generated five-word key phrase.
2. Install HanNote on the new device and open the join screen.
3. Choose participant, enter the key phrase with your name and email, and send the request.
4. The request appears on the device you already use. Press Approve.
5. On the new device, choose a folder for the vault and set the password for that device.

Owners and participants

When joining you pick owner or participant.

• Participant — sends the key phrase with a name and email, then waits for an owner to approve.
• Owner — supplies the key phrase together with the owner password. Another owner device that is already running verifies it, and the join completes with no approval step.

The owner password can be changed under Settings ▸ Users, where a participant can also be made an owner. An email is only a label telling people apart; on its own it grants nothing.

Removing a device

A device can be removed from the vault in Settings. The removed device locks the vault and asks whether to move its copy to the trash or leave it alone.

• Moving always means the trash, never a permanent delete. Emptying it is up to you.
• Only that device's copy moves. The vault on your other devices is untouched.
• A device that is approved again picks its original folder back up instead of downloading every note over again.

How syncing works

• When your devices are on the same LAN or Wi-Fi network with the app open, they find each other and sync quickly, automatically.
• Alongside notes and attachments, your folder structure, section names and order, favorites, and sidebar arrangement are kept in step too.
• Synced notes are always delivered encrypted.
• No cloud account or server setup is needed.
• The key sync runs on is not derived from anything anyone types: it is generated at random and delivered sealed to each device. The key phrase is the invitation you use to ask to join, not the key itself.

Document links

Link from one document to another inside your vault, or embed external web links in your notes.

• Document links — create links that jump straight to other notes, and weave related documents into your own personal wiki.
• External links — add web addresses as plain links or as rich bookmarks with a preview.

Search

There are two, depending on how wide you want to look.

Across the whole vault

Cmd+K searches the entire vault. Highlight a result and a preview pane shows the start of that note, so you can tell whether it's the right one without opening it. You can also narrow the search to a folder or by condition.

Within the open note

Cmd+F searches only the note you're looking at.

• Every match highlights as you type.
• Enter or Cmd+G moves to the next match and Shift+Enter to the previous one, wrapping around at either end.
• A counter reads 3/12, so you know where you are.
• Esc closes the bar and hands the cursor back to where you were editing.

Importing

Documents made in other apps can come into HanNote as notes. What you can bring in today: Evernote (.enex), web pages (.html), ebooks (.epub), Markdown (.md), PowerPoint (.pptx, .ppt), and a note file (.mmp) exported from HanNote. You can also pick a folder and bring in everything inside it.

Importing starts from three places.

• Right-click a folder in the sidebar ▸ Import… — the file lands in that folder.
• Right-click empty space in the sidebar ▸ Import… — it lands at the top of the vault.
• On the Mac, File ▸ Import… — into whichever folder is selected in the sidebar, or the folder holding the note you have open if none is.

HanNote works out what kind of file you picked, so there is only one Import… command. For most formats one file becomes one note, named after the file. Ebooks and folders are the exception — they build folders and split the contents up, as described below.

Evernote (.enex)

Import a file exported from Evernote and each note becomes a note. The body and attachments come across, and so does this:

• Tags — they arrive as the note's tags.
• Created and modified dates — kept as they were, so imported notes sort by their real history instead of piling up as made today.
• Checkboxes — they arrive as task lists.
• The author and the source web address are kept in the note's details too.

Web pages (.html)

Pick a saved web page and HanNote asks how you want it first. There are two answers.

• Convert to a note — headings, paragraphs, lists, tables and formatting such as bold, color and highlighting become blocks, and the page's images come in as attachments. From then on it is an ordinary note you can edit freely.
• Keep as an HTML file — the page and the images and scripts it uses are stored untouched, so opening it later looks the way it did when you saved it. Choose this when you want the material kept exactly as it is.

Ebooks (.epub)

A book becomes a folder named after it, with one note per chapter. Note titles come from the names in the book's table of contents.

Links that ran between chapters become links between notes, so you can jump from one chapter to another as you read. The book's images come in too.

Importing a whole folder

Pick a folder instead of a file and HanNote walks through it, importing each file the way its kind deserves. Subfolders are recreated as HanNote folders with the same structure.

A file it cannot bring in does not stop the rest, and you are told afterwards which files were skipped.

Markdown (.md)

Headings, paragraphs, lists, task lists, quotes, code blocks, rules and tables all carry over, and so do bold, italic, strikethrough, code and links.

PowerPoint (.pptx, .ppt)

Each slide is drawn as an image and they go into one note, in order. HanNote asks once before doing it this way.

HanNote notes (.mmp)

An .mmp file is a single note exported from HanNote. It carries the body and settings together with every attachment the note uses, so it can move to another person or another vault without the vault password.

On import, the attachments it carries come in as fresh attachments in this vault and the note's references are pointed at them. It always arrives as a new note, leaving the original untouched.

Exporting a note

To export a note as .mmp, use File ▸ Export… on the Mac, or Export… in the note's properties. Windows exports the same way. The note you are looking at is saved under its own name.

If any attachment the note uses has not synced to this device yet, HanNote does not quietly leave it out — the export fails and says so, rather than handing someone a file with holes in it.

Shortcuts

Use Cmd on macOS and Ctrl on Windows.

More shortcuts are listed in the in-app help.