fnote

Write in Markdown. Organize in a hierarchy. Find with tags.

fnote brings notes and work logs into VS Code. Keep project notes together and find tasks or records across notes without leaving your editor.

• Organize naturally with parent and child notes, headings, and drag and drop.
• Find what you need with @TODO, date tags, and keyword search.
• Track your work by writing dates and durations to see daily, monthly, and yearly totals.
• Keep your files as local Markdown with attachments. By default, the same notes are available across workspaces.

How to use

Create a note

1. Open Fnote in the activity bar.
2. Click ＋ in List and enter a note name.
3. Write in the Markdown editor and save with Cmd + S on Mac or Ctrl + S on Windows.

Editor tabs show the note's storage folder name instead of index.md. Changing the first line's # Note name and saving also renames the folder and updates the tab. Empty headings, invalid folder names, and names that conflict with an existing folder at the same level do not rename the folder. This uses custom editor labels in VS Code 1.88 or later, with a rule limited to fnote's storage location.

# Today's work

## Tasks
@TODO Update the README
@Work/Meetings Prepare the next agenda

## Work log
@2026/09/21 @30m Reorganized the documentation

Find notes

Click TODO in Tags to see matching notes and lines. Click a result to return to that position in the original note. The number beside a tag counts matching notes, including child tags and excluding archived notes.

Write @tag-name in your notes; no registration is needed. Use / for a hierarchy, such as @Work/Meetings. Selecting a parent tag includes its children. Tags are case-sensitive and are ignored inside code, in email addresses, or when escaped as \@. Drag tags within the same level to reorder them.

For keyword search, click the magnifying glass in List. It searches note names and content, ignoring case, and includes archived notes.

Favorite notes

Save shortcuts to frequently used notes or Markdown headings in favorite. Right-click a note or heading in the note list and select Add to favorite. Note shortcuts expand child notes and headings; heading shortcuts expand their descendant headings. Both use the same icons, colors, and collapsed tag priorities as the note list. Click a heading to jump to its position in the note. Attachments are hidden. A parent and child saved as separate favorites each have their own tree. Within favorite, drop a shortcut onto another shortcut to place it before that item, or into the empty space below the list to move it to the end. You can also use Move Up / Move Down in the context menu.

To remove a registered shortcut, right-click it and select Remove from favorite. The original note and headings remain intact. Note favorites are stored in the favorite array of .status at the note storage root. Heading favorites and their display positions are stored separately in .favorite-headings so older versions sharing the storage cannot remove them. Existing favorites are migrated automatically. Favorites persist across restarts and follow notes renamed or moved within the extension. Editing a heading updates its favorite's name and destination while preserving the shortcut and its display order. Heading favorites also follow position changes caused by added body text. Headings with the same level and title are distinguished by their occurrence order.

The note list and favorite save their expansion states separately in collapsedNotes and collapsedFavorite in .status at the storage root and restore them on the next launch. Headings and Collapse All / Expand All changes are included, and the two areas can be expanded and collapsed independently.

Organize and navigate

Right-click a note for Add Child Note, Rename, Move, and Delete. Drag a note to a row’s center to make it a child, to its top or bottom edge to reorder it, or below the list to move it to the top level. Moving a parent also moves its children.

Use #–###### headings to divide a note into sections; click a heading in the list to jump to it. The first # heading supplies the note row's title; later # headings also appear in the list. Rename changes both the first # heading and the folder name.

These shortcuts work while the note list has focus:

Arrow keys change the selection without opening another note. Enter opens the item while keeping focus in the list. The open note’s background and the keyboard selection outline are shown separately.

The tag list also keeps focus after opening tag results, so ↑ / ↓ can be used to move between tags without reaching for the mouse.

Use the list’s title-bar buttons to expand or collapse everything, or close all open fnote notes and search results.

Useful features

Work-time totals

Write exactly one date and a duration or time range on the same line:

@2026/09/21 @30m Updated the documentation
@2026/09/21 @10:00-11:00 Checked the workflow
@2026/09/22 @1h Planned the next feature

Select 2026 → 09 → 21 in the tag list to see 1h30m for that day. Select the month or year for a wider total.

Use @YYYY/MM/DD for dates, @30m or @1h for whole-number durations, and @10:00-11:00 for time ranges. Time tags themselves do not appear in the tag list.

Unfinished entries such as @10:00 or @10:00- appear under Incomplete time tags, so you can find and complete them. They do not contribute to totals.

Set fnote.dateTagSort to "time" to group tag results by date and sort individual entry lines by time across notes. This uses the same display as selecting a date year or month; regular tags use a date on the same line when present. Each entry is followed by its note and Markdown heading path, separated by /, with duration totals. Click an entry to jump to its source line. Lines containing multiple times use the earliest time; untimed lines appear last within their date, and lines without a date appear in a final No date group. The Sort button in tag results switches between Notes and Time dynamically; fnote.dateTagSort provides the initial mode. The default "note" keeps the note-list order.

Timeline entries display date and time first, followed by other tags such as @TODO and remaining text. Leading Markdown list markers are hidden.

Attachments and links

Use Add Attachment in a note’s context menu, or hold Shift while dropping external files onto a note in the list or into its Markdown editor. The list also accepts folders. For editor drops, keep editor.dropIntoEditor.enabled enabled and choose Copy attachments into fnote if prompted.

Attachments appear beneath their note and can be opened, renamed, deleted, or moved to another note by dragging within the list. Internal note and attachment drags do not require Shift.

Link to another note with [[../Travel]] or [Travel plans](https://github.com/mahoutsukaino-deshi/fnote/blob/main/../Travel). Use [](#title) to jump to a heading in the current note, or add the fragment to another note link. Ctrl+Click follows the link. Directory links open the index.md inside them. Supported relative Markdown and wiki links are updated when notes are moved or renamed.

Links display an icon and their label or destination. Place the cursor on a link to edit its original syntax; the saved Markdown stays unchanged.

Archive finished notes

Choose Archive from a note’s context menu to toggle its state. ✓ Archive means it is archived; the default icon is a gray archive icon.

If the note has children, a confirmation asks whether to apply the change to the note and all its descendants. Changing a child does not change its parent.

Archived notes stay in the note list but are excluded from tag results, tag counts, and work-time totals shown through tags. Their state is saved in a .status file in each note folder and follows the note when copied or moved.

Settings

Open VS Code Settings and search for @ext:maoren.fnote. For the JSON examples below, run Preferences: Open User Settings (JSON) and add the settings inside your existing { ... }.

Icons and colors

Use fnote.tagStyles for individual tags. Icons accept text, emoji, or VS Code icon names such as $(book).

The available VS Code icons are listed in the VS Code Codicons reference.

{
  "fnote.tagStyles": [
    { "tag": "TODO", "mark": "$(circle-filled-compact)", "markColor": "#FF5555", "color": "#FF5555" },
    { "tag": "Done", "mark": "✅", "color": "#66BB6A" },
    { "tag": "Reference", "mark": "$(book)", "excludeFromNoteMark": true },
    { "tag": "Incomplete time tags", "mark": "$(clock)", "color": "#fbbf24", "excludeFromNoteMark": true },
    { "tag": "date", "mark": "$(calendar)", "excludeFromNoteMark": true }
  ],
  "fnote.headingMark": "#",
  "fnote.headingMarkColor": "#808080",
  "fnote.archiveMark": "$(archive)",
  "fnote.archiveColor": "#808080"
}

markColor controls the icon color; color and backgroundColor control tag text and background. date applies to date tags. excludeFromNoteMark keeps a tag out of note-icon selection while leaving it in the tag list.

Earlier entries have priority when choosing a note icon; date and time tags are excluded. Child tags inherit their parent’s icon unless overridden. Setting fnote.tagStyles replaces the default array, so include entries you want to keep. Appearance changes take effect without restarting.

Entries with a missing or blank mark still participate in priority order. If the selected tag has no parent icon to inherit, it uses fnote.defaultTagMark.

Icon shape and color are inherited independently. Color uses the child tag's markColor, then its color; if neither is set, it checks ancestors from nearest to farthest in the same order. If no color is set, it uses an automatically generated color.

Group tags

Group existing tags without changing the note text:

{
  "fnote.tagHierarchy": {
    "Status": ["TODO", "Done"]
  }
}

Selecting Status shows notes matching either child tag.

Storage and backups

Notes are stored as <note folder>/index.md, with child notes and attachments in the same folder. The default root is ~/.fnote, shared across workspaces.

To use the current workspace, set:

{
  "fnote.storagePath": "${workspace}/.fnote"
}

You can also use ~/Documents/fnote or an absolute path such as C:/Users/your-name/Documents/fnote. ${workspace} and ${workspaceFolder} refer to the first workspace folder. After changing the setting, run Developer: Reload Window.

Existing notes are not moved automatically: save them and copy their folders to the new location before switching. To back up notes, attachments, archive states, and note ordering, copy the storage folder, including .status files. The root .status stores top-level note ordering, while each note's .status stores the ordering of its direct child notes.