Working with Notes

Master your daily workflow with Notes—from quick capture to knowledge organization, linking, and productivity shortcuts.

---

Daily Notes

Daily Notes are auto-dated entries that make journaling, planning, and thought capture effortless. Every day gets its own note automatically.

Daily Notes interface showing date headers

Accessing Daily Notes

Press ⌘D (Mac) or Ctrl D (Windows/Linux) from anywhere in Deva to instantly jump to today's daily note. You can also click "Daily Notes" in the sidebar or search by date using ;search or ⌘K.

---

Use Cases for Daily Notes

Use daily notes for morning planning (priorities and focus), thought capture (ideas, meeting notes, questions), end-of-day reflection (accomplishments and tomorrow's top 3), or habit building (⌘D every morning builds consistency).

Example:

## Today's Priorities
- [ ] Finish Q1 report
- [ ] Team meeting at 2pm

## What I Accomplished
- Completed draft of proposal
- Fixed critical bug

---

Organizing Your Notes

All Notes View

The complete list of every note you've created, showing subject, snippet, and last updated date. Sort by newest, oldest, recently updated, or alphabetically. Filter by all notes, private only, public only, or notes used for Deva responses.

All Notes list showing subjects, snippets, and dates

Search

Quick Search - Type ; followed by a word while editing to see matching note suggestions. Example: ;project shows all notes with "project."

Global Search - Press ⌘K (when no text is selected) to search across all note titles and content. Search is instant, case-insensitive, and matches partial words.

---

Organization Strategies

While Deva doesn't have formal tags, you can organize notes by:

Prefix Titles - Use "Project - Alpha Launch" or "Meeting - Weekly Sync" and search by prefix.

[[Links]] as Tags - Create notes like [[#productivity]] and link to them from relevant notes.

Root Note Directory - Use your Root Note as a table of contents linking to major topics.

---

Note Linking & Connections

Build a web of knowledge by linking notes together. Connections help you discover insights and build context for your AI.

[[Double Bracket]] Linking

Create links between notes using [[double brackets]]. Type [[ to trigger note suggestions, then select or create a note.

Quick link shortcut: Highlight text and press ⌘⇧K to wrap it in [[brackets]] automatically.

Backlinks: See incoming connections in the Backlinks panel (right sidebar). Discover related content and see how ideas connect across your knowledge base.

Building a knowledge web: Create hub notes for major topics, link liberally (more connections = better discovery), and use natural language when linking ("I learned this from [[James Clear]]").

---

Keyboard Shortcuts Reference

Shortcut	Action
⌘D / Ctrl D	Jump to today's daily note
⌘K / Ctrl K	Global search (no text) / Create hyperlink (text selected)
⌘⇧K / Ctrl Shift K	Create [[note link]] (wraps selection in brackets)
⌘Enter / Ctrl Enter	Send inline @deva prompt
⌘⇧F / Ctrl Shift F	Focus mode (hide sidebars)
[[	Trigger note suggester

---

Tips & Productivity Features

Focus Mode - Press ⌘⇧F to hide both sidebars for distraction-free writing. Perfect for deep work sessions.

Templates - Create reusable note structures. Save them as regular notes with "Template -" prefix, then copy when needed:

# Meeting - [Topic] - [Date]
**Attendees**:
**Agenda**:
**Action Items**:
- [ ]

Sync - Notes sync in real-time across desktop, mobile, and PWA. Changes appear instantly on all devices. Offline access available when PWA installed.