Note menu

The note menu contains various actions and configurations for the current note. It can be found in the Note buttons area (to the right of the Title).

Every split has a note menu of its own, which acts on the note displayed in that split. Entries that don't apply to the current note are still listed but grayed out, while entries that only exist for some notes (described in Note-specific entries) appear only on those notes.

Navigating the note

These entries are the row of icons at the top of the menu, each with a short title. Hovering one shows its full name and its keyboard shortcut. In Quick edit on a phone, where only Find is left, it is listed as an ordinary entry instead.

•  Find opens the Search in note bar, to find and replace text inside the current note. On the desktop application, the same bar opens with Ctrl+F.
  • It is available on Text, Code, Mind Map and Spreadsheets notes, Collections, PDF files, and any note displayed as Note source.
•  Attachments switches the note to the list of its Attachments, where they can be uploaded, opened, downloaded, renamed or deleted.
•  Note map opens the Connections tab of the Right Sidebar, which shows the Note Map (Link map, Tree map) centered on the current note.

Note properties

The toggles in this section take effect immediately:

•  Shared publishes the note via Sharing, by cloning it into the Shared Notes tree.
  • Turning it off removes the clone from that tree. If the note exists only as a shared note, Trilium asks for confirmation, since unsharing it deletes it.
  • The toggle is unavailable on the root note, on the Shared Notes note itself, and on system notes.
•  Protect the note encrypts the note, turning it into one of the Protected Notes. If no protected session is active, Trilium asks for the password first. Only the current note is affected, not its children.
•  Bookmark adds the note to the Bookmarks that are displayed in the Launch Bar, or removes it from them.
•  Template marks the note as one of the Templates (by adding the #template label), which makes it available when creating a new note.
•  Full width lets the note use the whole width of the window instead of the limit set in Content width by adding the #fullContentWidth label. It is not listed for note types that are always displayed at full width.

The two submenus in this section:

•  Note type changes the type of the note to any of the Note Types; the current one is checked. If the note already has content, Trilium asks for confirmation first, since the content generally doesn't carry over. Converting between note types.
  • For a Code note, the language is chosen in the Status bar instead.
•  Editable controls when the note opens as read-only (see Read-Only Notes):
  • Auto (the default): the note is editable, unless it is long enough to be opened as read-only automatically.
  • Read-only: the note always opens as read-only, but can still be edited after pressing Edit note.
  • Always editable: the note is always editable, regardless of its length.

Importing, exporting and printing

•  Import files opens the import dialog, which imports files as children of the current note. See Import & Export. It is unavailable on Saved Search notes.
•  Export note opens the export dialog with Only this note selected; select This note & all descendants there to export the whole subtree.
• Print/export to PDF… prints the note or saves it as a PDF file. See Printing & Exporting as PDF, including which note types and collections can be printed.

Some note types add their own export formats right below Export note:

• Export as image, on Mermaid Diagrams and Mind Map notes, downloads the diagram as PNG (raster) or SVG (vector).
• Export to Excel (.xlsx) and Export to CSV (.csv), on Spreadsheets, download the spreadsheet in those formats.

Revisions

These entries manage the Note Revisions of the note:

• Note revisions… opens the revisions dialog, where previous versions can be previewed, compared with the current one, downloaded or restored. The arrow beside it opens the entries that save a revision right away. On mobile, tapping it opens those entries, with Note revisions… as the first one.
  • Save revision saves a revision of the note right away, instead of waiting for the next automatic snapshot.
  • Save named revision… also saves a revision right away, but first asks for a short description of the changes, which is shown in the revisions dialog.

Note-specific entries

The following entries only appear on some notes:

• Edit note appears at the top of the menu when the note is currently read-only. It enables editing until the note is closed.
• Word wrap appears at the top of the menu on Code notes, and sets whether long lines wrap in this note:
  • Auto (the default) follows Options → Code Notes → Wrap lines in code notes.
  • On and Off override it for this note only, by setting the #wrapLines label.
• Convert into attachment appears on an image note that has no children and a single parent which is a Text note. After a confirmation, it turns the image into an attachment of its parent note and opens it there. See Attachments.
• Re-render note appears on a Render Note, and runs its script again to refresh the output.
• Board properties appears on a Kanban Board, and configures its columns, card attributes and card templates.
• Calendar properties appears on a Calendar that creates events, and configures its event templates.
• Geo map properties appears on a Geo Map, and configures its map settings and the image of an image map.
• Table properties appears on a Table, and configures which notes it shows.

Advanced

The Advanced submenu groups the actions that are needed less often:

• Open externally (desktop application only) saves the note to a temporary file and opens it in the application that the operating system associates with it. Trilium watches the file: each time it is saved, a notification in the window it was opened from offers to upload the modified version back into the note, keeping the current content as a revision. It is unavailable on Collections and Saved Search notes.

• Open with... (desktop application only) works like Open externally, but lets you pick the application to open the file with. See Open with below.

• Note source shows the Note source, the content of the note exactly as it is stored.

• Convert to Markdown note (on text notes) and Convert to text note (on Markdown notes) switch the note between rich text and Markdown. After a confirmation, Trilium saves a revision and converts the content; the revision allows going back if some formatting was lost. See Converting between note types.

• Compress images opens a dialog that reduces the size of the images in the note. It lists the images found and how much space they take, and offers to:

  • Resize the images larger than a chosen size.
  • Keep, or compress, JPEG images.
  • Keep, optimize, or convert to JPEG the PNG images.
  • Process child notes as well, to include the images of the notes beneath this one.

  Compressing cannot be undone. Images can also be compressed automatically on upload, see Images.

• View OCR text (on image and file notes) shows the text extracted from the note via Text Extraction (OCR). If the note has not been processed yet, the dialog offers to Process OCR.

• Open note on server (desktop application only, listed when Synchronization is configured) opens the same note on the sync server, in the web browser.

Open with

Open with... in the Advanced submenu opens the note in an application you choose, instead of the one the operating system associates with its type. As with Open externally, Trilium saves the note to a temporary file, watches it, and offers to upload the modified version back into the note. The entry is available only in the desktop application; attachments offer the same action.

• On Windows, the system's Open with dialog lists the installed applications.
• On Linux, the application chooser comes from the desktop portal (xdg-desktop-portal), so it works in the Flatpak as well.
• In the Flathub version, Open externally also goes through the desktop portal, which can show the application chooser the first few times a file type is opened, as the system's policy decides; Open with... always shows it.
• On macOS, a file picker opens in the Applications folder; the note opens in the application you select there, as with Open With → Other… in Finder.

If the application chooser cannot be shown (such as when no desktop portal is running on Linux), Trilium reports an error instead of opening the file. Open externally still opens it in the default application.

Adding an application to the chooser on Linux

The portal lists only the applications registered for the file's type. Text editors generally register for plain text but not for HTML, so they are missing when opening a text note, which is saved as an HTML file.

To make an editor appear without changing the default application, add it under [Added Associations] in ~/.config/mimeapps.list, using the name of the editor's .desktop file:

[Added Associations]
text/html=org.gnome.TextEditor.desktop;

The Open with other application entry of most file managers adds the same line.

Deleting the note

Delete note opens the deletion dialog for the current note and its subtree. The dialog lists the notes that will be deleted and the relations that will be broken, and offers to:

• Also delete the other clones of the note, if it is cloned elsewhere. Otherwise, only the current placement is removed and the note stays in its other locations. See Cloning Notes.
• Erase permanently instead of the usual soft deletion. This cannot be undone.

Notes deleted without erasing can be brought back, see Restoring Deleted Notes.

Limitations

• The note menu is not available on launchers.
• On the notes of Options and of the in-app help, most entries are grayed out, since these notes cannot be imported into, deleted or have revisions. Of the two, only the in-app help can be exported, see Import & Export.
• The Note properties section is only listed when the note itself is displayed, not its Attachments or its Note source.
• In Quick edit, Note map, Full width and Convert into attachment are not listed.

Mobile support

On the Mobile Frontend, the note menu opens as a sheet from the bottom of the screen. Besides the entries above, it contains the items that the desktop layout places elsewhere:

• Two more icons in the row of icons at the very top of the sheet, which reads  New split, Note map, Find and  Child note from left to right: New split opens a Split View while there is none in the tab, and Child note creates a note under the current one.
• Backlinks and Note paths, below the row of icons, which open the Backlinks and the other locations of the note.
•  Attachments and  Attributes, under them, which open the attachments and the attributes of the note, each with the number the note has. Links made by the content of the note are not counted as attributes. Attributes is unavailable where the note cannot be edited. On mobile, Attachments is listed here instead of in the row of icons.
• The custom buttons of the note type (such as Download on a File).
• Close this pane, on the second note of a Split View.
•  Note settings, below Protect the note, which opens Shared and Bookmark, then Note type, Template and Full width, on a page of their own, together with the language of the note: the content language on Text notes (see Content language & Right-to-left support), and the language of the code on Code notes. The choices of Editable are listed at the end of that page, under their own heading, instead of in a further submenu.
•  Note info, below Note settings, which opens the dates, type, ID and size of the note on a page of its own, ending with Show similar notes (see Similar Notes).
• Note map opens the map in a popup instead of the right sidebar.