Notebooks 12.4 for iPhone and iPad

Notebooks 12.4 for iPhone and iPad adds extended functionality for auto-completing links, introduces new Markdown syntax for highlighting text, allows you to add the current location from your Apple Watch, improves iCloud sync, and includes many more enhancements and corrections. The update is available on the App Store. 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.

Plain Text and Markdown

• The keyboard shortcut shift-cmd-L cycles through the list options in reverse order (so it is the reverse of cmd-L).
• When dismissing the keyboard, the document no longer scrolls up or down.

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 plain text much faster, and more precisely positions the cursor.

Formatted Documents

• More gracefully handle 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 the first word of the copied text is followed by a colon (iOS 17).

Extra Keyboard Keys

• You can now use dedicated keys “abc”, “ABC” and “Abc” to transform text to lowercase, uppercase, and capitalize, in addition to the key “AbC”, which displays a menu with options.
• Another new key [KBD] to dismiss the keyboard.
• Correctly handle the custom shortcut “(…)”.

Book / Document List

• Open tasks with due date show a time interval like “10 days” or “21 days ago” in addition to the exact due date.
• A long tap gesture with two fingers scrolls to the bottom of the list (the same gesture works in documents, too).
• Compress from a book’s context menu works as expected.

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.
• Refine margins, font sizes etc.

Contexts

• In Settings > Contexts, you find a new option to “Scan and extract” contexts from editable documents. This is useful after importing documents or editing them in other apps.
• You can now select multiple contexts in the smart book to delete or exclude them from automatic management.

Watch App

• New option to append the current location to an existing document.

iCloud Sync

• Detect and resolve cases where documents cannot be downloaded due to “download error”.
• Speed up the sync process, especially when synchronizing larger numbers of documents.

Dropbox Sync

• Items reliably keep their custom sort order when renamed from another device.

Misc

• When opening a document from a smart book, its + menu offers a new option “Add to Inbox“, which creates a new document in the Inbox instead of adding it to the current document’s parent book.
• Adding the “Current Location”now inserts a timestamp in addition to address and map preview.
• Fix a crash when pasting a document copied elsewhere in Notebooks.
• Avoid nervous scrolling when typing in fullscreen mode on some devices.
• Fix display issue when using Notebooks on an iPad with Stage Manager or connected to an external display.
• Add support for .avif files.
• More refinements and tweaks.