The Note Map
A note list tells you what you wrote last. It cannot tell you what you keep returning to, or what you started and never picked up again. The Note Map draws the whole workspace at once so those things are visible instead of remembered.
Open it from the map icon in the left ribbon. It fills the editor area, and closing it returns you to whatever you were doing.
The Note Map is a desktop and web surface. The mobile apps do not have it yet.
There are two modes, and they answer different questions.
Links: the connections you made
Links mode draws your [[wiki-links]] as a graph. Every note is a circle, every link a line, and a circle takes the color of the folder it lives in. Drag to pan, scroll to zoom, and drag a circle to pull that part of the graph around.
- Focus a note to see only what it links to and what links back, so a single note’s neighborhood is readable even in a large workspace.
- Hide unlinked takes out the notes that nothing links to. You can also do the opposite and go looking for them. A note with no links is often one you filed and forgot.
- Filter by folder or tag to narrow the graph to one part of your work.
- Search from inside the map. Matches highlight where they sit, so you keep the shape while you look.
Links mode reads the structure you built by hand, so it needs no AI and no subscription. It works on every plan, offline, and on an end-to-end encrypted account exactly as it does on any other.
Meaning: the subjects you write about
Meaning mode ignores your links entirely and reads the writing instead. Notes covering the same ground sit close together, and the map contours them like elevation: a subject you have written about twenty times stands as a tall peak, while one you touched once barely registers.
Each peak is named from the notes underneath it, so the map arrives labeled, not as a set of anonymous blobs. The panel lists the same subjects with a note count each.
Flat and Raised. Flat is the 2D contour map. Raised shows the same terrain in 3D: drag to turn it, scroll to zoom. Flat is the one to read; Raised is the one to look at.
Gaps are the useful part. Notate finds the low pass between two peaks and names the pair: two subjects you write about often with almost nothing joining them. Click one and the map keeps it selected, so you can turn or zoom the terrain while the finding stays on screen. The note list filters to both subjects at once, because a gap is a statement about the pair.
Clicking a theme does the same thing. The map lights that subject and the note list narrows to it. Click it again to clear the filter.
What Meaning needs
Meaning mode compares what your notes are about, which means the server has to be able to read them.
- It needs the AI plan.
- It is not available on an end-to-end encrypted account, at any price. Encryption means the server holds ciphertext it cannot read, so there is nothing to compare. The two features want opposite things, and the app explains that where the control is rather than hiding it.
Links mode has neither constraint.
Keeping the map current
The terrain is built from an index of your notes that fills in the background after they sync. Opening Meaning mode on a workspace that has never been mapped builds it for you, so there is nothing to press on a first visit.
After that the map holds still, which is deliberate: it is a place you learn your way around, and it would be no use as one if every peak moved each time you saved a note. Notes written since the last build are not on it. Use Rebuild the map, in the controls at the bottom left, when you want it to take them in.
Rebuilding keeps peaks roughly where you left them until your workspace has grown a good deal, at which point the layout settles into a new arrangement that better fits what you have written.
If Meaning looks empty
Very small workspaces may not form distinct peaks at all, because there needs to be enough writing for subjects to separate. If a build finishes with nothing to show, the map says so plainly and leaves the rebuild button there for once you have written more. On a new account, or right after adding a lot of notes at once, give the index a few minutes to catch up and then rebuild.