Your dashboard
When no note is open, Notate shows a dashboard instead of a blank screen, so you always have a place to start.
The dashboard is built from sections. You choose which ones appear and what order they sit in, so it can be a quick launcher, a review screen, or close to empty.
Choosing your sections
Open Settings → Dashboard. Every section has a checkbox, and the list can be dragged into the order you want the sections rendered in.
Not every section is on to begin with. A dashboard showing all of them at once is a wall rather than a glance, so the ones that duplicate the sidebar or only matter occasionally start switched off and are one checkbox away.
Turning a section on gives it permission to render, not a guarantee that it will. Sections with nothing to show hide themselves, so an empty one never takes up space.
The sections
| Section | What it shows | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Quick actions | New note, open a file or folder, and start a recording without hunting through menus. | On |
| Favorites | The notes you have pinned, so the ones you return to are always one click away. | On |
| Resume editing | Where you actually left off, with a little of each note’s text so you can tell them apart before opening one. | On |
| Recently edited | A wider net than Resume editing: everything touched lately, newest first. | On |
| Expiring from trash | Deleted notes about to pass the retention window and be removed for good. | On |
| Open tasks | Unticked - [ ] checkboxes gathered from your recent notes, so a task written mid-paragraph is not lost. Covers recent notes rather than everything. | Off |
| Folders | Jump points into the folders you use most. | Off |
| Tags | Jump points into the tags you use most. | Off |
| Workspace stats | Counts for the workspace you are in. | Off |
| Themes | The subjects your notes group into, from the same analysis behind the Note Map. Clicking one filters the note list to it. | Off |
| Audio notes | Your recordings, for anyone who captures meetings or lectures. | Off |
A few notes on the ones that start off: Folders and Tags overlap what the sidebar already gives you. Workspace stats is worth a look rather than a permanent slot. Open tasks only reaches recent notes. Audio notes is empty for anyone who does not record.
Expiring from trash is the exception among the ones that start on: it is usually empty and hides itself, but the one time it appears, it is preventing data loss.
Themes needs the AI plan and is unavailable on an end-to-end encrypted account. Every other section works on any plan.
Set per device
Your section choices and their order are kept per device, not on your account. That is deliberate: a dashboard laid out for a large desktop screen is rarely the one you want on a phone, so each device keeps its own.