Get going with Kloni.

01 — First map
Your first map.

When you open Kloni for the first time, you'll see the Library Browser — the home view that lists every map in your library. The library lives on your machine at ~/Documents/KloniMaps by default. You can change that location in Settings → General → Library Folder if you prefer a different folder — pointing it at an iCloud Drive or Dropbox folder is the usual way to sync the same library across machines.

Press the New map button to start. You'll get two choices: a blank map or one of the twelve templates. Blank gives you a single root node with the cursor ready to type. Templates start you off with a pre-built structure for common patterns — SWOT analysis, project plan, weekly review, meeting notes, and others.

Whichever you pick, the next step is the same: start typing. Whatever you type becomes the label of the root node. Press Enter to commit it. Your map now exists.

02 — Nodes
Creating and navigating.

A node is just a piece of text on the canvas. Nodes connect to each other in a tree, branching out from a root. To grow your map, you'll spend most of your time creating new nodes and moving between them.

Creating nodes

• Tab on a selected node creates a child — a new node attached underneath the current one.
• Enter creates a sibling — a new node at the same level as the current one, attached to the same parent.
• Space folds or unfolds a node's children — useful for keeping the canvas readable when a branch grows large.
• In the Outline view, Shift + Tab outdents a node — promoting it to the level of its parent. Useful when a branch turns out to be its own thing.

Navigating

Arrow keys move between nodes. In the Canvas, they navigate spatially — whatever direction you press, the focus moves in that direction. In the Outline view, ↑ and ↓ step between visible rows, while ← collapses (or jumps to the parent) and → expands (or jumps to the first child).

For larger maps, panning and zooming the canvas helps. Scroll to pan the canvas; Cmd + scroll to zoom. Cmd + 0 resets the zoom to 100%, and Cmd + Shift + 0 zooms to fit the whole map in view. Esc is a two-step cascade: the first press selects the root node, the second snaps the canvas back to 100% and recentres around it — a quick way to find your bearings when you've drifted deep into a large map.

Editing

Double-click a node to edit its label. From the keyboard, Cmd + Enter starts editing the selected node in either view; in the Outline view (and on a selected node in the Canvas) you can also just start typing — any printable key replaces the label and enters edit mode. Press Esc to leave edit mode and return to navigation; what you typed is kept, in both views. If you didn't want the edit, Cmd + Z is the way back.

Long labels aren't truncated away from you. A label the card can't show in full expands in place when you hover it, so you can read the tail and reach its actions without opening anything. If a label has outgrown the node for good, right-click it and choose Move Overflow to Note — the label keeps its opening, and the rest becomes the node's note.

Changes save automatically as you go. There's no save button anywhere in Kloni — the auto-save is reliable and continuous.

03 — Depth
Going deeper.

A node label is just an entry point. Underneath, every node can hold a rich note, attachments, tags, and links to other nodes. The label stays compact on the canvas while the depth lives inside, only visible when you ask for it.

The rich note editor

Press Cmd + Shift + Enter on any selected node to open the note editor. You'll see a focused writing surface for the node — the canvas dims behind it. The editor supports paragraphs, headings, bullet and numbered lists, inline code, code blocks, tables, links, and checkbox lists.

Notes are formatted as you type. Common Markdown shortcuts work: type **bold** for bold, *italic* for italic, and start a line with - for a bullet list. Press / for the command menu — headings, lists, code blocks, tables and the rest without leaving the keyboard. Close the editor by pressing Esc or clicking outside it.

Checkbox lines in a note don't have to stay there. Hover one and click the chevron on its right edge to promote that line into a child task node; when a note holds several, the Promote N tasks pill above the list (or Promote N checkboxes to tasks on the node's right-click menu) lifts all of them at once, in a single step you can undo. A meeting note becomes a set of real tasks without retyping any of it.

Attachments

Drag any file onto a node to bring it into the map — images, PDFs, audio, video, code, anything. A single image dropped on a node becomes the node's inline image, visible on the canvas itself. Other files (and additional images) land as file chips inside the node's rich note, each with a type-specific icon for the common formats. The file is copied into the map's .kloni bundle, not just referenced from wherever it lived, so copying or moving the map keeps everything together. Files up to 50 MB are accepted; anything over 10 MB asks for confirmation first.

Tags

Tags are a separate axis of organization from the tree structure. To tag the selected node, press Cmd + Shift + T and type a name — the popover autocompletes against tags already in use. You can also drag a tag from the Tags panel onto any node on the canvas. Tags work across the entire library — you can filter the Tasks views by tag, scope Search by tag, or browse all tags from the Tags panel.

Quick Capture is the one place where inline #tag syntax is recognised: any #tag tokens in the capture field are stripped out and applied as tags to the captured node, so you don't have to reach for the popover mid-thought.

04 — Views
Canvas and Outline.

Every map has two views of the same content. The Canvas is the spatial view — nodes laid out visually, branches reaching outward, the shape of your thinking made visible. The Outline view is the indented, document-style rendering — the same nodes as a nested, foldable outline, with notes rendered inline underneath their headings.

Switch with Cmd + 1 (Canvas) and Cmd + 2 (Outline), or use the Canvas / Outline switcher in the toolbar. The underlying data is identical between the two; edit a node in one and the change appears in the other.

Use the Canvas for brainstorming, organizing visually, branching freely. Use the Outline view to write and structure directly — Tab and Shift + Tab to indent, Enter for the next line — or to read the map as a document, share it, scan a heavily branched section, or focus on the writing without the canvas geometry getting in the way.

05 — Layouts
Nine ways to see.

On the canvas, Kloni offers nine layouts — nine different ways of arranging the same nodes. Switching layouts doesn't change your data, only how it's drawn. Each layout has a moment where it shines.

• Right Tree — the default. Nodes branch left to right. Best for free-form exploration and most general use.
• Top Tree — nodes cascade from a root at the top. Compact for moderate-width maps.
• Top Down — root at top, children fanning down. Ideal for org charts and hierarchies that read top-to-bottom.
• Balanced — children split left and right around the root. Symmetric, good for whole-map views.
• Tree List — indented file-explorer style. Good for deep, dense maps where you need to scan many items.
• Timeline — dated nodes flow along a horizontal spine ordered by date. Project plans and schedules belong here.
• Ishikawa — the fishbone diagram. Used for root cause analysis and structured cause-and-effect breakdowns.
• Tree Table — a tabular view of the tree with columns for each node's properties. Useful when properties matter as much as labels.
• Columns — top-level children become columns. Drop into this layout to use any map as a Kanban board.

Switch layouts from the Layout tab in Settings (Cmd + ,), or via the command palette. The same map can be a radial canvas in the morning and a Kanban board in the afternoon — same nodes, different lens. The Layout tab is only available while you're on the Canvas; switch to Canvas first if it looks dimmed.

06 — Tasks
Turning thoughts into tasks.

In Kloni, any node can be a task. There's no separate task entity, no separate list, no conversion. A node becomes a task by gaining task properties — a status, a date, a priority, or any combination. The node doesn't move or change position; it just gains a layer of meaning.

Statuses

Five states are available: todo, doing, done, blocked, and cancelled. Each renders distinctly on the Canvas, in the Outline view, and in the Tasks views — the eye picks out what's active and what's stuck without needing to read every label.

Press Cmd + J to cycle through statuses (todo → doing → done → blocked → cancelled → none); Cmd + Shift + J cycles the other way. Cmd + T toggles whether a node is a task at all; Cmd + D toggles between done and not-done specifically. Status changes are reversible and atomic — marking a node done doesn't hide it or move it.

Dates

Press Cmd + Shift + D to set or edit a node's date. The Today view will then surface what's due today and what's overdue. Tasks without dates land in the Inbox view — your triage queue.

Kloni's date model is intentionally simple: no recurring tasks (yet), no time-of-day. A date is a soft commitment for that day, not an exact appointment. For appointments, your calendar app is the right tool.

Priorities

Three levels: high, medium, low. Priority renders as a colored indicator on the node and orders results in the Tasks views — high-priority items appear at the top of each group.

Cmd + Shift + . cycles forward through priorities (low → medium → high → none); Cmd + Shift + , cycles backward.

07 — Aggregation
Today, inbox, blocked.

The Tasks views aggregate task nodes from across your maps into three focused queues, accessible from the sidebar, with a fourth tab holding everything you've finished.

• Today. Tasks whose date falls on or before today and that aren't yet done or cancelled. Overdue items surface at the top — your morning starting point and your evening review.
• Inbox. Untriaged tasks — those with no status set yet — from a rolling recency window (default seven days; configurable to 14, 30, 90, or unlimited in Settings → General). Checkbox lines inside notes show up here as well, so loose - [ ] items don't get lost. Triage by setting a status, a date, or just clearing the task type.
• Blocked. Tasks you've marked as blocked. Look here when you have unexpected time and want to see if anything has unblocked.
• Completed. The archive rather than a fourth queue — a day-by-day log of everything you've finished across the library, grouped under "Today", "Yesterday" and the weekdays before them, newest first. It sits at the end of the row as an icon, without a count, because a forever-growing number is noise. Useful for a weekly review, or for the evening question of where the day actually went.

Each of the three queues carries a sort chip above the list: order by Due date, Priority, or Recently added, whichever suits that queue. Today and Blocked start on due date, the Inbox on recently added; the chip lights up once you've moved a queue off its default, and each queue remembers its own choice across sessions. Completed has no chip — it is ordered by when you finished things.

The views update live as you change statuses, set dates, or mark things done. Each item in a Tasks view links back to the node in its source map — click a task to jump to it in context.

08 — Capture
Capturing from anywhere.

Ideas don't arrive only when Kloni is open. The Quick Capture window lets you record a thought from anywhere in macOS without leaving what you're doing.

Press the global Quick Capture shortcut (set it in Settings → General → Quick Capture) and a small floating window appears over whatever you were working on. Type the idea or the task, press Cmd + Enter, and the window closes. The note is appended under today's date branch in the target map you picked — a Quick Capture map is created for you on first use if you haven't chosen one. Next time you open Kloni, today's captures are already grouped together waiting to be triaged.

The capture field understands a few inline tricks: #tag tokens are applied as tags to the captured node; slash commands like /date tomorrow, /status doing, or /priority high set those properties on the node before it lands.

For thoughts that need more than a label, press Tab to expand the capture window into a full note editor — useful for a longer observation, a meeting note, or a reading reaction without breaking your context. There's also an option to convert checkbox lines in the note body into child task nodes on submit.

The shortcut works whether Kloni is in the foreground or the background, on the current macOS Space or another, even when Kloni is minimised — it's registered as a global accelerator and writes directly to the target map on disk, so it works with the main window closed. There's a separate Toggle Kloni Window hotkey in the same Settings section, for bringing the main window to the front (and hiding it again) from anywhere.

09 — Exchange
Bringing things in and out.

Not every map starts on a blank canvas, and not every map stays in Kloni. Both directions go through a single dialog, so you can see and change what will happen before you commit to it.

Importing

Cmd + Shift + U imports into a brand-new map; Cmd + Shift + M imports into the map you're looking at, under the selected node (or the root if nothing is selected). Both open the same dialog and the destination is a toggle inside it, so picking the wrong one costs you nothing.

There's one field. Paste a link into it, paste Markdown into it, or use Choose file… — you can also drop a .md file straight onto the dialog. Kloni recognises what you've given it as you type and says what it will build before you press anything:

• A web page — headings become branches, each one linking back to its place on the page.
• A YouTube link — the video becomes the node, carrying its title and thumbnail, and its chapters become branches.
• A Google Maps link — the place lands as a node named after it.
• A document — Word headings, presentation slides, spreadsheet sheets, and PDF bookmarks each become branches.
• Markdown, pasted or from a file — lines and headings become nodes.

There's no preview step and no wizard: submit, and the structure is inserted as a single undoable step. If a source can't be reached, the dialog stays open with the reason inline and Enter retries.

Pasting a link onto the canvas skips the dialog entirely — you get a link node with the page's own title. When that link has more inside it, the node grows an Expand into outline chip; click it and the source's structure nests underneath, leaving the link node itself as the header.

Exporting

Cmd + E opens the Export dialog. Pick a format — Markdown, Image, or PDF — and the options for that format appear beneath it. Nothing is decided for you behind the scenes:

• Markdown carries the whole map out as text, with images and file attachments alongside it. Choose Full to keep Kloni's metadata (statuses, dates, priorities, tags) or Clean for plain Markdown to hand to something else.
• Image exports at 1×, 2× or 3×, either the whole map or just the current view, on a light, dark, white, or transparent background.
• PDF comes in two layouts. Canvas puts the visual map on one page sized to its content; Outline paginates the outline onto A4 or Letter. Either can be light, dark, or white.

The Outline PDF is the whole document, not what happens to be on screen: folded notes, collapsed branches and folded code blocks all print in full, and your folds are exactly as you left them afterwards. It's a tagged PDF, so every row keeps its real heading level — the file opens with a bookmark outline shaped like your map and reads as structure in a screen reader rather than one flat blob. Links stay live: a link row opens its address in your browser, and a row pointing at another map opens that map back in Kloni.

10 — Find
Three ways to find.

As your library grows, finding the right node matters more than creating new ones. Kloni has three complementary tools for this.

The command palette

Press Cmd + Shift + P from anywhere to open the command palette. It does three jobs in one:

• Run any command in the app — "switch to Outline view", "mark done", "open quick capture", "change theme". Fuzzy matching means you don't have to remember exact wording.
• Navigate to any node — type a node name and jump directly to it across any map in the library.
• Take quick actions on the selected node — create child, add tag, set status, attach file.

The palette is the answer when you can't remember a keyboard shortcut. Whatever it is, type a guess; the palette will find it.

Search

Two scopes. Cmd + F opens find-within-the-current-map — use Cmd + G to step to the next match, Cmd + Shift + G for the previous one.

Ctrl + Shift + 4 opens the library-wide Search panel, which runs against everything — node labels, rich notes, tags, task properties — across all maps instantly. Results show the breadcrumb path to each match, with the search term highlighted.

Narrow with predicates typed inline next to your query: status:doing, priority:high, due:tomorrow, before:friday, after:2026-05-01, or the bare words overdue, dated, undated. Add a tag chip to scope to a single tag. Predicates and free text combine, so something like design status:doing priority:high #ui finds in-progress high-priority UI design work without leaving the search box.

Tags

Open the Tags panel with Ctrl + Shift + 3. It lists every tag across your library, with the count of nodes carrying each one. Click a tag to see every node that uses it. Tags work as a separate axis from the tree — a node can have multiple tags, a tag can appear in many maps, and the tag list scales as your library grows.

11 — Library
Library and spaces.

The Library Browser is your home view — the list of all maps in your library, grouped by space. Open it any time with Ctrl + Shift + 2 or from the toolbar.

What spaces are

A space is a group of maps that belong together — a project, a research area, a domain of your life. You might have a "Work" space, a "Personal" space, a "Writing" space. Maps move between spaces freely by drag and drop in the Maps sidebar; spaces themselves can be renamed, reordered, or deleted without disturbing the underlying .kloni bundles, because the space assignment lives in library preferences rather than inside the bundle.

Spaces aren't just folders. They're a scope. When you switch into a space, the Tasks views, the Tags panel, and search results all narrow to that space's maps. One scope, every view — your attention focuses entirely on the current context.

The "All Spaces" view

When you need to see across the boundaries — finding something in a map you haven't touched in months, or scanning every task in your library — switch to the All Spaces view. Tasks, tags, and search results expand to cover everything.

The folder underneath

Nothing about the library is locked away from you. The library folder's path sits in Settings → General → Library Folder, with a button next to it that opens that folder in Finder — useful when you want to copy a map out, hand one to someone, or check what a sync client has been doing.

Because the folder is ordinary, things can happen to it while Kloni is running. If a map you have open is deleted from disk by Finder or a sync client, the tab shows a banner rather than losing your work: the version in memory is still intact, and you can Save to Library to write it back where it was, or Close & Discard if the deletion was deliberate. Maps copied into the folder from outside appear in the library without a restart.

12 — Links
Links beyond the tree.

The tree structure of a mind map captures hierarchy — what's a child of what. But thinking also produces non-hierarchical relationships: a research insight that informs a decision, a bug caused by another bug, a character in chapter 3 who reappears in chapter 9. Kloni gives you two tools for these.

Cross-links

A cross-link is an edge between any two nodes in the same map, independent of the tree. Select a source node and press Cmd + K, then click the target node. The link renders on the canvas as a connecting curve; you can drop a label on it right after creating it, and the endpoints, control point, and arrow direction are all draggable later if the default routing crosses something. Cross-links are directional by default (source → target); right-click one to make it bidirectional, recolour it, or delete it. The arc dims when you're focused on an unrelated branch and highlights when one of its endpoints is selected.

Inter-map links

Sometimes a node refers to content in a different map — a research map that informs a project map, a reading map that's the source for a planning map. Turn a node into a link node with Cmd + L, or use Link to Map… from the node's right-click menu, the command palette, or / inside a note. The picker lets you aim at a whole map or at one node inside it, and writes a kloni:// link for you. Ctrl + Enter on a node carrying a link opens it; if that map is already open in a tab, Kloni switches to it rather than opening a second copy. Copy Link to Node puts the same kind of link on your clipboard, and pasting it back into Kloni — on a label, on empty canvas, or into the picker — recreates a real link node.

Links made this way are rename-stable: they carry the target map's identity rather than its filename, so renaming a map, or moving it to a different folder or space inside the library, leaves every link to it working.

When a link breaks

A link can still end up pointing at nothing — usually because its target was deleted. Kloni doesn't wait for you to find out by clicking: a link whose target can't be resolved is shown as broken. Click it and a small popover offers the two fixes it can perform — Relink to another map…, which re-points the node through the same picker, and Remove link, which turns it back into a plain node. It also reminds you of the fix it can't perform for you: a map you deleted is usually still in the macOS Trash, and putting it back reconnects every link to it at once.

Deleting is guarded from the other side too. Moving a map to the Trash from the library checks the rest of your library for links pointing at it first, and if any exist the confirmation names them — with Cancel as the highlighted button, so an absent-minded Enter can't quietly orphan a set of links.

Splitting a map in two

Maps outgrow themselves. When a branch has become its own subject, right-click it and choose Extract to Linked Map: the branch moves into a new map of its own, and a link node stays behind in its place. The structure you'd have rebuilt by hand — cut, new map, paste, then link the two — happens in one step, and the parent map keeps its thread of thought intact.

13 — Reference
Keyboard shortcuts.

Grouped by category, drawn from Kloni's authoritative shortcut reference. For anything not listed, open the command palette — every action in the app is reachable from there, and the palette shows the shortcut next to each command if one exists.

Press Cmd + / at any time to bring up Kloni's shortcuts panel inside the app — a searchable, live reference grouped by scope. The in-app shortcuts are fixed; the two system-level hotkeys (Quick Capture and Toggle Kloni Window) are configurable in Settings → General, so if either default clashes with something else on your machine you can rebind it there.