Gestures

  • Swipe left to right (or right to left) to move to the next or previous document.
  • An info bar briefly displays last modification date and sequence number in the current book.
  • Swipe up and down to scroll through the document. Notebooks remembers where you left a document and scrolls to that position the next time you open it.
  • Tap the document with two fingers to switch to full screen mode. Tap again to return to normal view. 
    On the iPad, when you tap a PDF document with two fingers, Notebooks switches to a more comfortable PDF view with thumbnails.
  • Tap and hold the document with two fingers to scroll to the bottom. To scroll to the top, just briefly tap the status bar (this is a standard iOS gesture).
  • Tap the title of a document (the center of the navigation bar) to open the jump dialog, which allows you to quickly move to a different book.

The Toolbar

Most icons in the toolbar should be familiar if you have used the Mail app.

  • Tap the Info button to reveal information about the current note: its title, which you can changed, creation and modification dates, word and character count, file size, pixel dimensions, URL of the source the document was imported form etc.
    For text notes you can change font and background pattern or set the note to read only.
    With protection enabled you can turn on protection for this note.
    With Contexts enabled, you can set context tags for the note.
    For tasks you can set due date and alert time.
  • Tap the loupe to search the current document.
  • Tap the Delete button to delete the current note.
    There is no trash, deleting documents is final!
  • Tap the Move button to bring up a list of all available books that you could move the current note to.
  • Tap the Action button to bring up a menu of actions.

Actions

The list of available actions depends on the current document. Some actions are grouped to keep the lists shorter and more logically organized:

  • Process… actions that change or convert the current document
  • Duplicate/Copy… actions that copy or duplicate, without modifying the contents of the document

Convert to PDF

This action is available for all document types that Notebooks can display (no movies or audio, of course). Notebooks uses your currently selected AirPrint printer’s format, but falls back to a default if no printer is available or selected.

  • Set the page orientation (landscape or portrait) in Notebooks’ settings.
  • Protect PDF documents with a password. When sharing a protected PDF, the recipient needs to enter a password before the document can be opened.

Actions for Plain Text

  • Convert to Task List creates a new task list with the title of the note and optionally divides the text into single tasks; the text can be split by paragraph, by line or at a defined character or phrase which can be set in settings.
    This is a convenient shortcut if you have collected a series of tasks in a single note and want to convert that to a task list.
  • Split to tasks divides the note to tasks without creating a new list.
  • Task from Selection creates a new task from the currently selected text. Available for notes that are stored in a task list, when text is selected.
  • Add Task to Inbox creates a task from the selected text and puts that into your Inbox (the list to be used as Inbox can be set in settings)
  • Format Document… converts the plain text to HTML using Markdown. Markdown tags in the plain text document will be correctly interpreted.

Actions for HTML documents

  • Apply Current Style determines the style sheet that is applicable for the document and embeds it into its HTML. While doing so, Notebooks tries to clean up the HTML code a bit.
    (In case you wonder why the CSS is embedded and not dynamically inserted: by embedding we make sure that the documents appear perfectly formatted after export or sync.)
  • Save as Plain Text creates a copy of the HTML (rich text) document and strips off any formatting.

Actions for Web Archives

  • Apply Current Style embeds the applicable style into the web archive; use this action if you want an imported archive to use your selected style, font and colors.
  • Duplicate as HTML creates an editable copy of the archive.

Miscellaneous Actions

  • Unzip is available for zip archives to extract their contents.
  • Copy Link puts the link or URL of the current document to the pasteboard. You can then paste the link into a different note in Notebooks or in another application on your iPhone or iPad to create a cross reference to the original document in Notebooks.
  • Send by Mail sends the documents without leaving Notebooks.

These are just the actions that might require some explanation; other actions in Notebooks are very much self explanatory.