Notebooks 3.4 for Mac

Notebooks 3.4 for Mac adds extended functionality for auto-completing links, introduces Markdown syntax for highlighting text, supports French throughout its user interface, and includes many more improvements and corrections.

The update is available from this website and from the Mac App Store. Users of the non-Mac App Store version can use Notebooks‘ automatic update option as well. As always, if you have any questions or feedback, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

 

Changes in Detail

Extended Autosuggestion for Links and Wiki Links

• When editing a Markdown link []() or Wiki link [[]], with the cursor positioned between the parentheses (Markdown) or double brackets (Wiki), tapping the TAB key presents a list of suggestions. These suggestions are no longer restricted to the scope of the specified book, but instead can include documents and books across Notebooks.
  • A leading slash as first character tells Notebooks to search all documents, as in [[/Projects]]
  • Skip the leading slash to search the current book and its descendants, as in [[Projects]]
  • Add a trailing slash to tell Notebooks that you want to look at the specified book only, as in [[Projects/]]. In this case, Notebooks lists the contents of the book Projects, but it won’t look into any nested book. This resembles Notebooks‘ previous behavior.
  • When you skip the trailing slash, Notebooks takes the last component as search key and suggests books and documents within the specified scope which contain the key in their title.
• You can provide a few path fragments to steer Notebooks into a specific direction, without being too precise. When resolving such fragments, Notebooks makes sure that the first path components appear in order, and the last component (3.4 in the example) appears in the title of the suggested book or document.
  So if you enter [[/proj/mac/3.4]], for example, Notebooks might suggest [[/Projects/Notebooks for Mac/Version History/v3/3.4 Development Details.md]].
• Suggestions can include headings and anchors in documents. To tell Notebooks that you are looking for headings, add a fragment starting with # as last component of a valid path, as in [[Definition.md#]]. 
  You can of course use a notation like [[#chap]] so search for headings starting with “chap” in the current document.

Markdown

• Use a notation like ==marked text== for highlighting text. You can use the keyboard shortcut shift-opt-cmd-H as well.
• Clicking the formatted text switches to the plain text version faster, and more precisely positions the cursor.

Formatted Documents

• More gracefully handle the case that the user inserts the table of content as first item in a formatted document.
• Avoid that text is incorrectly pasted as URL if a colon (:) follows the first word of the copied text (macOS 14).

Book / Document List

• Open tasks with due dates show a time interval like “10 days” or “21 days ago” in addition to the exact due date.
• Smart books no longer sort pinned items at top.

Document Themes

• The Default Theme introduces a new variable --accent-color, so if your custom theme is based on the default, you can use this variable. too.
• Refined margins, font sizes etc.

Contexts

• New contexts appear in the correct position according to selected sort order (fixes a glitch in the previous version).

Misc

• Notebooks parle français.
• The File menu summarizes all options to create new objects in a “New…” submenu.
• Users can assign a global keyboard shortcut for creating a new document in Notebooks (we added the option “Quick Note” to Notebooks‘ services).
• Adding the “Current Location” now inserts a timestamp in addition to address and map preview.
• Add support for .avif files.
• More refinements and tweaks.