The window

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ ☰ Notr  ↶ ↷ 💾          Page title            [Search notebooks] Export │  title bar
├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ File  Home  Insert  Draw  History  Review  View  Table  Help        ⌃ │  ribbon
│ [command groups …]                                                     │
├───────────┬─────────────┬──────────────────────────────┬─────────────┤
│ Notebooks │ Section     │                              │ Search      │
│ ▸ groups  │ + Add page  │          the page            │ (when open) │
│ sections  │ pages …     │                              │             │
├───────────┴─────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴─────────────┤
│ Saved on this Mac · 9 notes · 2 strokes                 −  100%  +  ⛶ │  status bar
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Title bar

From the left: Show or hide notebooks, the Notr name, Undo, Redo and Save. The current page's title is in the middle when the window is wide enough. On the right, Search notebooks opens the search pane as you type, and Export saves a .notespace backup.

Drag an empty part of the title bar to move the window; double-click it to zoom.

Ribbon

The ribbon holds every command, grouped by tab:

The arrow at the right end of the tab row collapses the ribbon to its tabs, and Notr remembers the choice. Leaving the Draw tab switches a drawing tool back to Select.

The same commands are in the macOS menu bar (File, Edit, Insert, Format, View, Help) where they have shortcuts.

Notebook pane

Lists every notebook. Click a notebook to fold or unfold it. Inside, sections come first and section groups after them, each indented under its parent; click a group to open or close it. The colored bar in front of a section is its color. Click a section to show its pages.

Section and Group under each notebook add a section or a section group. The + at the top adds a notebook. Right-click a notebook, group or section for more; see Organizing notebooks.

When you select a page elsewhere (from search, say), the pane opens the groups on the way to its section without changing which groups you keep closed.

Page list

Shows the pages of the current section with their subpages indented. A disclosure arrow in front of a page folds its subpages. A ★ marks a favorite. Drag a page by the grip at the right to move it; see Moving pages.

Order switches to Recent, which lists the pages by when they were last changed. It is a view only: the saved order doesn't change, and pages can't be dragged in this view.

Click a page to open it. With the list focused (F6), the arrow keys move between pages, ← and → fold and unfold, F2 renames and ⌫ deletes.

The page

Each page has a title, a date line and paper. Everything below the header is free-form: text containers, tables, pictures and attachments and ink, placed wherever you put them.

Hovering over a note container shows its outline. A selected container shows a grip along its top edge (drag it to move the container) and a handle at its bottom-right corner (drag it to resize).

Scroll to move around the page; hold Shift to scroll sideways. Hold Space and drag, or drag with the middle button, to pan. ⌘-scroll zooms around the pointer.

Command palette

⌘P (or View › Command Palette…) opens a field with a list under it. Type part of a name to find any command in the ribbon, a few more from the menus (save, export, duplicate, move or delete the current page, and the current section's commands), a page, a section or a template. Letters only have to come in order, so "rect" finds Rectangle and "qplan" finds Quarterly plan; case and accents don't matter. Each row shows where the item is and, for commands, its shortcut.

↑ and ↓ choose, Return opens, Esc closes. Commands act on the current page, note or selection, as their ribbon buttons do. With nothing typed, the list starts with what you opened from the palette lately, then your pages.

Search pane

Opens on the right with ⌘F or when you type in the title bar's search field. See Search and replace.

Status bar

On the left: whether your work is saved, how many notes and strokes the page has, the active drawing tool and the kind of the selected note. On the right: zoom out, the zoom level (click it to return to 100%), zoom in, and Full page view.

The File view

File on the ribbon opens a full-window view with New notebook, Open / Import, Save, Export notebook, Export Markdown, Export HTML, Export PNG and About Notr, a card for each notebook with its number of sections and pages, and an Updates card: the version, Check for Updates, and Check automatically once a day (off unless you turn it on; see Privacy and limits). Back or Esc returns.

Updates

Notr › Check for Updates… (also in the command palette and on the File view's Updates card) asks elyracode.com for the newest version. A strip under the ribbon says what it found. When a newer Notr is available it offers Install Update, What's New (the release notes) and Later; once installed, Relaunch Notr saves your work and starts the new version.

Layouts

Themes

View › Theme (also in the View menu, and in the command palette: type the theme's name, such as "tokyo" or "nord") lists the themes with swatches of their paper, panes, title bar and accent:

A theme colors the title bar, ribbon, panes, dialogs and accent (active tab, selected page, caret, ticked to-dos), and the paper of pages with plain paper, with its lines. On dark paper, text that is black or dark grey is drawn in the theme's text color, and darker colors (a link's blue, Heading 1's purple, most of the picker's colors) are drawn lighter, in the same hue, so they read; the color kept in the note doesn't change. A page with a paper color of its own (View › Page Color) keeps it in every theme, with dark text on light paper and light text on dark paper, and is exported as a picture the same way.

The theme is a view setting: it is kept with the notebooks, isn't undone, and stays when you import a backup.

Narrow windows make room automatically: under 900 points the panes get narrower, and the notebook pane gives way to the search pane; under 680 points choosing a page hides the notebook pane.