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Settings

Settings hold the handful of choices that shape how Nodes looks, reads, and helps. Open them with ⌘,.

There are seven tabs:

  • User - your user card: your tree, your node, connection, and tag counts, and up to three stickers, with re-catalog and Share beneath it.
  • Collectibles - pick a tree under Your Tree (see your garden) and put stickers from the Sticker Book on your card.
  • General - most of your day-to-day controls.
  • Shortcuts - the key behind each command.
  • Agent - the background agent's home, and where you choose the model behind the on-device AI.
  • Edition - what you own and what each edition adds, alongside restore purchases.
  • About - the version and a link to the website.

Importing and exporting also live in the File menu - File ▸ Export… (⇧⌘E) and File ▸ Import… (⇧⌘I) - see import and export.

Rest the pointer on any section heading and Settings says what that section is for.

Editing helpers

Three switches at the top of General set what the editor does while you type and how much Nodes explains itself, and each can be turned off:

  • Auto-close brackets - automatically inserts the matching closing character when you type (, [, or {. Typing [[ closes to [[]], ready for a link, whichever way this is set.
  • Markdown list helpers - Tab indents list items, Return continues a list or a quote (or clears an empty marker), - turns into a bullet, and numbered lists carry on. With them off, task boxes still show and tick.
  • Helper hints - section headers in the node inspector and on tag pages narrate what a click will do while you hover a control.

Spotlight

Show notes in Spotlight sits just below the editing helpers and is on by default. It lets Spotlight find your notes by title, tags, and text; switch it off and they leave Spotlight's results. See search.

Fresh Nodes

Two settings for a note that hasn't been written yet, each with a preview well showing what you'd get.

  • Title - the name a new note gets until you rename it. Date and time follows your Mac's region and your 12- or 24-hour choice. Sortable puts the year first and writes the same string on every Mac, so sorting by name sorts by when you made them. Notes you already have keep their names.
  • Quote - the line shown on a blank note, a small bit of text waiting where your writing will go. It's never written into the file, and it's the specimen the font cards are set in.

Appearance

Choose System, Light, or Dark. System follows whatever your Mac is set to.

Import

One button, Open Import…, brings the main window forward with the same Import dialog as File ▸ Import…, so bringing files or a library in doesn't mean hunting through the File menu. See import and export.

Library backup

Two safety nets, side by side.

Archive - one Save Archive… button writes your whole library into a single .nodes file - every note, tag, and link - and a caption counts the notes, tags, and stickers going in. The archive restores exactly on import. This is the copy you carry: put it on an external drive, in a cloud folder, or on another Mac.

Automatic snapshots - daily recovery points of your whole library, kept inside Nodes on this Mac. snapshot now takes one on the spot, snapshots opens the list, and every restore sets your current library aside first, so it can be undone. The switch turns the whole thing off and deletes what's been kept. See library snapshots for the full picture.

This is all separate from File ▸ Export…, which exports notes as files.

Text & fonts

Pick the font your editor writes in, and set the text size anywhere from 8 to 72 pt. A carousel previews each font, and you can filter the catalog by style or script.

Shortcuts

The Shortcuts tab lists 31 commands and the key behind each. Click a key and press the one you want - if it's taken, Nodes names the command that has it before anything changes. The Format commands and Flow start without a key; this is where to give them one. See keyboard shortcuts.

Agent

The Agent tab runs the background agent. A master card holds the on/off switch and a live status line - working now, paused, all caught up, or off. Until a model is chosen the status reads "needs a model", and a Choose a Model button stands in for the switch - it opens the model catalog. The Generates and Automatic cards appear once a model is selected. While the agent works, a Right Now card narrates the note it's on and the queue behind it. While a note you've just edited waits out its two-hour cool-down, Run now on that card skips the wait.

The Generates card holds one switch per pass - Descriptions, Tags, and Reminders - all on to start. Switching one off stops that kind of generation across your library, in the background and in the Node Inspector alike, and with all three off the status reads "nothing enabled". A pass the selected model can't do is greyed out and the card says so: the Apple Foundation Model writes descriptions and suggests tags, but raises no reminders.

The Automatic card holds the power rules:

  • Pause in Low Power Mode - holds the agent's queue while Low Power Mode is on; it resumes when the mode ends.
  • Double speed when plugged in - halves the gap between notes while your Mac is on AC power.
  • Agent speed - a slider from a gentle one note every 5 minutes up to a brisk 12 notes a minute.

The Library card draws one bar over your library showing how much the agent has reviewed, split into reviewed, partly, out of sync, never, and excluded - the notes you've kept from the agent. Excluded notes don't count toward the reviewed percentage, and image notes are left out unless a vision-capable model is selected.

The Model card names the selected model - change drills into the model catalog - and holds the Primary Language picker.

Primary language

Pick the language most of your notes are written in - there are 13 to choose from. Everything the agent writes - suggested tags, descriptions, and reminders - comes out in this language. It starts from your Mac's language, so if you write in something else, set it here.