Getting Started

Culma is built around three simple ideas: vaults, notes and folders.

Vaults

A vault is a place for a collection of notes, such as one for work and one for your personal life. Each vault has its own color, its own window, and its own set of people it's shared with.

Create or open vaults from the vault menu at the bottom left of the sidebar. You can keep several open at once; Open in new window puts one beside another.

Notes

Ctrl+N creates a new note. You can also use the + button next to All notes, or next to any folder. The same menu makes a whiteboard or a folder, and brings in a PDF or a web page (see Documents and Websites).
The first line is the title. Type it and press Enter; there's no separate name to manage. Change the title later and the note is renamed everywhere, links included.
There's no Save button. Everything you type is kept as you go, along with its history.
A note is an ordinary Markdown file, so your writing is never locked into Culma.

Folders

Folders keep things tidy. This page lives in the Guide folder, for example.

Create one from the + menu.
Drag notes and folders in the sidebar to move them, or use Move this note… in the right-hand pane.
Right-click a note or folder in the sidebar to rename, share, move or trash it. Right-click All notes to share the whole vault.
Search finds folders by name, too, and shows the way to them.

The folder page

Click a folder in the sidebar and it opens as a page listing its notes and subfolders; click All notes for the whole vault. The toolbar above the list shares, renames, pins, moves or trashes the folder, and shows its history.

Select several at once. Hold a row (a long click, or a long tap on a phone) and the list becomes a picker: click more rows to tick them, Shift+click for a range, or use Select all in the toolbar. The toolbar then moves or trashes everything you picked in one go.
The count beside the + shows what's selected. Click its ×, or press Escape, to stop selecting.

Getting around

Pin the notes you use most: drag them onto Pinned in the sidebar, or use Pin this note in the right-hand pane. Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+9 open the first nine. Double-click a pin to give it a shorter name.
Alt+← and Alt+→ go back and forward, just like in a browser. So do the side buttons on your mouse.
The right-hand pane shows what you can do with whatever is in front of you: a note, a folder, a day.

Where Culma runs

On your desktop, on your Android phone, and in a web browser. When you close the last window on the desktop, Culma keeps running quietly in the tray so your notes stay in sync and quick capture is always a keystroke away (see Dictation and Quick Capture).

Next: Writing and Formatting