Pile View

Pile View is a full-viewport overlay that shows notes as a horizontal row or vertical stack of cards. It is also the app's search surface — there is no separate Search page. Open it to quickly review, filter, select, and archive notes without leaving your current document.

Opening Pile View

• Keyboard shortcut — bind a key in Settings → Shortcuts → "Pile View" (no default binding; assign one you prefer, e.g. Mod+Shift+P).

• Command Palette — search "Pile View" (Mod+K).

Card Layout and Scrolling

On desktop (window width 641px or wider), the direction button switches between a horizontally scrolling row and a vertically scrolling stack. The Size slider controls card width in the horizontal layout and card height in the vertical layout. These choices are remembered in settings.

When the cards overflow, a thin position rail appears along the bottom edge for the horizontal layout or the right edge for the vertical layout. Click or press elsewhere on the rail to jump, or drag its accent-colored thumb with a mouse, touch contact, or pen to scrub. A drag remains active when the pointer leaves the thin rail and ends on release or cancellation. The rail does not replace normal wheel, trackpad, or overflow scrolling.

At 640px and narrower, Pile View uses its mobile vertical stack and omits the position rail and desktop direction/size controls. On desktop the rail is also omitted whenever all cards fit, in either orientation.

Each card shows:

• Note number — click the note title button to switch to that note and close Pile View.

• Preview — the heading (first Markdown #–###) and a text excerpt of the note body.

• Directory badge — in All scope (see Scope: This tray vs. All below), a small badge names the Note Tray directory the card belongs to (e.g. inbox, archives). No badge appears in This tray scope, since every card already belongs to the same directory.

• Archive button — archives the single note immediately, without confirmation. Only present on inbox notes — notes already in archives/ (or any non-inbox tray) have nothing further to archive to, so their cards omit this button.

Scope: This tray vs. All

A segmented toggle in the header switches between two scopes:

• This tray (default) — shows only the notes in the directory Pile View was opened from. Reset to this scope every time Pile View is opened.

• All — aggregates every Note Tray directory (Inbox, Archives, and any configured move-button target directories) into one set, with the directory badge on each card disambiguating where a result lives.

Switching scope reloads the card set; it is not persisted across Pile View sessions.

Filtering and Search

A text input in the header filters the visible cards live as you type (debounced ~150 ms). Two matching modes are available via the gear icon on the filter input, which opens an options flyout:

• Fuzzy (default) — token match over each card's heading and preview text.

• Exact phrase — toggle the checkbox in the gear flyout to switch to a case-insensitive contiguous-phrase match over the full note body (title + content), not just the heading/preview — a visibly narrower match than fuzzy mode. This setting is persisted (AppSettings.pileView.exactMatch) and shared with the command palette's "Toggle Exact Phrase Search" command.

• Sort — the same gear flyout lets you sort the visible cards by Created or Updated date, ascending or descending (click the active field again to flip direction). Sort applies whether or not a filter query is active; the persisted default reproduces the natural slot order for inbox notes.

Card Size Slider

The desktop Size slider in the dialog header controls every card simultaneously. In the horizontal layout it sets width (400–800 px, default 400 px); in the vertical layout it sets height (200–600 px, default 300 px). Each value is debounced and persisted to settings, so it survives restarts.

Sweep and Archive buttons

Two action buttons appear in the header row (left of the Close button) when at least one note card is loaded:

In All scope, both buttons only ever act on inbox notes — notes from other directories are not archivable further and are excluded from the sweep/archive-all set.

Focus Navigation

When Pile View is open, keyboard navigation moves a focus cursor between cards without switching the active note:

Focus is clamped at the boundaries (no wrap-around).

Border indicators

• Active note (the note currently open in the editor) — solid border-accent border.

• Keyboard-focused card (the cursor position) — dashed border-accent border.

• When the focused card is also the active note, the solid border wins.

The default navigation bindings (J, L, ArrowRight, ArrowDown, K, H, ArrowLeft, ArrowUp, Enter, A) are built-in defaults for the pile-view shortcut scope and can be remapped in Settings → Shortcuts.

Appearance

Pile View renders as a transparent floating overlay — the cards have their own bg-surface background and border, but the dialog panel itself has no background or shadow. A translucent scrim dims the app content behind the cards.

Multi-shortcut Assignment

Each shortcut action (including the four pile-view navigation bindings) accepts multiple key chords — add as many as you like. A chip-based UI in Settings → Shortcuts lets you append keys individually and remove any chip independently.

Closing Pile View

• Press Escape, or

• Click the × button in the header, or

• Click the translucent backdrop behind the cards.

Discoverable entry and empty results

The Note Tray frame header exposes Pile View for that tray's directory, alongside Find similar and History. These actions move into the header overflow at narrow frame widths; General settings control their visibility.

An empty pile explains that writing a note will populate it and offers Close. The local Inbox scope also offers Sweep Notes through the existing confirmation. A filter with no matches offers Clear filter and suggests all-tray search. Desktop and mobile share this guidance and a Manual link.