Overview

LightNote opens a folder as a Workspace and shows the file tree on the left, the editing tabs on the right and the status bar at the bottom. The small strip at the top of the sidebar switches between the Explorer (tree), Search, Versioning (Git), file History and Pending items (TODO/FIXME and note tasks) sections.

Beyond code and notes, it opens and edits many formats in the right place: tables (Parquet/CSV/JSON via DuckDB and Excel .xlsx), PDF, images (including animated GIF), .zip as a folder, Blocks notebooks (.lnb), Tasks boards (.lnt), custom tables (.lnd), database connections (.lnc) and SSH connections (.lns). There is an integrated terminal, global search (ripgrep), simplified Git versioning, integration with AI CLIs, an MCP server and a command line (lnote) for automation.

New here? The introductory material (the welcome workspace) stays available at any time under Help → Reopen welcome tour.

Using this window. The search box at the top leaves in the outline only the sections that contain all the words you typed, ignoring accents, with the number of matches next to each; clicking one takes you to the first match inside it, Enter and F3 go to the next ones and Esc clears the search. F1 opens Help at the section for the screen you are on — also in the Calendar, AI sessions, AI Chat and with the focus in the terminal —, and the dialogs (Settings, Passphrase, import, clone) have a Help button that opens their section. Ctrl++, Ctrl+− and Ctrl+mouse wheel change the text size (Ctrl+0 goes back to 100%), and the window remembers its size and zoom. To reach a topic without opening this window, use Help → Search Help... or type ? in the command palette; the same Help is on the website, under Help → Online Help.