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The Fern Interface

When you open a vault, the Fern window is divided into three immediately visible areas, shown here:

The Fern interface, showing the Sidebar on the left, the Viewer in the centre, and the Status/Command Bar along the bottom

The sidebar is a collapsible file tree on the left side of the screen. It shows every file in your vault, grouped into three sections:

  • Notes - everything inside notes/, including any subfolders
  • Journals - entries inside journals/, organised by date
  • Templates - files inside templates/
Key Action
ctrl+b Toggle the sidebar open/closed
Tab Move focus between the sidebar and the viewer
j / k Move down / up through the file list
1 Jump to the Notes section
2 Jump to the Journals section
3 Jump to the Templates section
Enter Open the selected file in the viewer
l / h Expand / collapse a folder

Viewer

The viewer is the main content area. It displays the currently open note and is where all reading and writing happens.

You can have multiple notes open at once using tabs and split panes.

Tabs

Each open file gets a tab shown at the top of the viewer. Switch between tabs with [ and ], or move a tab left/right with { and }. Close the active tab with ctrl+w.

Split panes

Split the viewer to see two notes side by side:

Key Action
ctrl+w v Split vertically (side by side)
ctrl+w s Split horizontally (top and bottom)
B
ctrl+h / ctrl+l Move focus to the left / right pane
ctrl+j / ctrl+k Move focus to the pane below / above

The viewer operates in one of five modes at any time. The current mode is always shown in the status bar at the bottom. See Your First Note for a full breakdown of the modes.

Command / Status Bar

The thin bar along the bottom of the screen serves two purposes.

As a status bar it shows:

  • The current editing mode (View, Normal, Insert, Replace, Visual)
  • The name and path of the open file
  • The cursor line and column position
  • Any informational messages or warnings from the last command

As a command bar press : from Normal or View mode to open it for input. Type a command and press Enter to run it, or Esc to cancel.

Example commands:

:noteAdd my-note         create a new note
:journalOpen today       open today's journal
:w                       save the current file
:q                       quit

For the full list of command bar commands, see the Command Bar reference.

Press ? to open the in-app keybinding reference at any time.

Command Palette

The command palette is "hidden" area of Fern. It is a togglable interface area that offers a searchable overlay that gives quick access to every action in Fern without needing to remember any command syntax. It makes getting started with Fern a breeze!

  1. Open it with ctrl+p from any mode.
  2. Start typing to filter the list by name. Use j/k or the arrow keys to move through the results.
  3. When you've found the command you're after, press Enter to run the selected action.

NOTE: Commands are roughly grouped by the object that they affect(Journals, Notes, Links, Templates, etc). Use that prefix as an quick way to filter down to the command you need.

The palette only shows commands that are valid in your current mode, so the list automatically changes based on what is actually available to you in the moment.

For a full list of every palette command, see the Command Palette reference.