Cards & Links

A card is a live reference to a note, task, calendar event, project, or a file filed in your vault (PDF, image, audio or video) placed on a canvas. The canvas stores the reference, never a copy of your content.

Adding cards

• Drag the item onto the canvas. Notes from the sidebar, rows from a folder or tag page, tasks from any task list, and events from the Calendar all drop straight onto the board and become a card where you let go. A dashed outline shows the canvas is ready to take the drop.
• Click "Add card" at the bottom of the canvas to search your notes, files, tasks, events and projects, or to create a new note without leaving the board. "Create note …" is always the first option, and typing a title carries it into the new note. The picker opens over a dimmed canvas; press Esc or click outside it to go back to the board.
• Add everything from a tag or folder in one step, from the same picker. See Adding a whole tag or folder.

Searching is never required. If you can see the item — in the sidebar, in the other half of a split view, on the Calendar — you can drag it over.

Dragging items in

Tasks drag from anywhere they are listed: the Tasks page, a board column, a project, and Today. Select several tasks first and the whole selection drops together, tiled side by side rather than stacked on one point.

Calendar events drag from the day, week and month views. Dragging an event onto a canvas never changes its date — it only places a card.

Rows drag from a folder or tag page in any layout: table, grouped table, list and gallery. In the table, select several rows and drag one of them to drop the whole selection; dragging a row outside the selection drops only that row. Notes, filed files and tasks all become cards; inbox rows are left out.

Inbox items cannot be dragged onto a canvas. File one first: the note or task it becomes can then be dragged over like any other item.

Dropping a single item that already has a card gives you a second card for it. Both stay live and both update together — useful when the same note belongs to two clusters on the board. Dropping several items at once skips the ones that are already on the board and tells you how many it skipped. The Add card picker behaves differently: pick something that is already on the board and it scrolls to the card you have instead, marked with an On canvas badge.

Files you have filed into your vault — PDFs, images, audio and video — have their own Files group. Notes and files are searched separately, so a matching note is always shown even when many filed files share its name. A file dragged from the sidebar also becomes a file card, never a note card.

Results are grouped into Notes, Files, Tasks, Events and Projects, and each row is labelled the way the rest of the app labels it, so you can tell at a glance what you are about to place:

• Notes show the note's own icon, its folder path and when it was created.
• Files show their type icon, as the sidebar does, and the folder they are in.
• Tasks show a checkmark when they are done, plus their project, status, priority and due date.
• Events show a clock and the event's date and time.
• Projects show their colour and how many of their tasks are done. Archived projects are not offered.

A card added from the picker lands in the middle of your view, or in the nearest free spot beside it when something is already there. Add three tasks and an event in a row and they tile out from the centre instead of piling up on one point.

Adding a whole tag or folder

With the search box empty, the Add card picker lists Add all from → A tag… and A folder…. Pick one, then type to filter the list of tags or folders and choose one:

• A tag adds every note, filed file and task carrying it, including its nested tags (#work also brings in #work/meetings). Inbox items are left out.
• A folder adds every note and filed file in it, subfolders included — the same rows its folder page shows.
• When the tag or folder has saved views with filters, you choose between All items and one of those views. Picking a view adds only what that view shows. Each option shows how many items it holds.

Items that already have a card on this canvas are skipped, never duplicated, and the confirmation tells you how many were skipped. The rest are laid out as one tidy grid in alphabetical order, in the free space nearest your view. The view moves to show the new cards, and they stay selected so you can drag the whole batch somewhere else at once. Bulk-added notes open at the compact card size; resize any of them as you would a single card.

Adding more than 50 new cards asks first, because large boards get slower and can pass the sync size limit. Press Backspace in the empty search box, or the back arrow beside it, to step back. One Undo removes the whole batch.

Removing cards

Select a card and press Backspace to take it off the board. Only the card goes — the item itself is untouched and stays wherever it lives.

Cards render their item exactly as the editor does — a note shows its real formatting (headings, lists, checkboxes, linked task blocks, images, callouts and embeds), a task its fields, an event its details. Nothing is flattened to a plain-text preview, so an inline task or a heading looks the same on the board as it does in the note. Rename or complete the item anywhere in the app and the card updates.

A note card is sized to its own content: a short note stays compact, while a longer one grows to a readable height and scrolls inside its frame.

A project card shows the project's colour, name and description, how many of its tasks are done, and how many are overdue. The counts move as you complete, add or move tasks anywhere in the app.

A file card shows an image's or video's first frame, or the type icon for a PDF or audio file, with the file's name, type, size and folder. Rename or move the file and the card follows it.

If the underlying item is deleted, the card stays but is marked as deleted, so you never lose the spatial context. An archived project or task reads the same way.

Editing on the canvas

Double-click a card to edit it in place — the full note editor, the task fields, or the event form, right on the board. The card does not change shape or size when you do: it is already the real editor, and the double-click only makes it writable. Click anywhere else, or press Escape, to make it read-only again.

Only one card is editable at a time. That is deliberate: it keeps large boards responsive.

When a note card stays read-only

If a note card shows Open in tab to edit, in-place editing is unavailable for it right now. Two things cause that:

• The note is already being edited on another canvas card. A note is owned by one card at a time.
• The note is open in another visible pane and Memry cannot confirm that both surfaces are backed by the same live document — because that document is still opening, or failed to open on this device.

Editing one note in two places at once is only safe when both are backed by the same live document, and normally they are: every note has a live document on your device whether or not you are signed in, so a note tab and a canvas card share it and both stay editable. Signing in is not what unlocks this. The read-only fallback appears only in the narrow case where that document is not live here, and rather than risk two editors overwriting each other's text the card stays a read-only preview and points you at the surface that owns the edit. Click Open in tab to edit to jump there.

This applies to note cards only — task and event cards always edit in place.

Project and file cards have nothing to edit on the board. Double-click one and it opens: a project on its project page, a file in its viewer.

Opening an item in a tab

Every card has an ↗ Open in tab button. It opens a note in a note tab, a task in the Tasks page with its detail drawer, an event focused in the Calendar, a project on its project page, and a file in the viewer for its type.

On a note, task or event card, double-click edits in place and ↗ opens a tab. The two never trigger each other.

Links on a shape

A shape you draw is not a card, but it can still carry a link. Select it, choose Create link from the shape's toolbar, and paste an address.

Clicking the link icon that appears on the shape now does what the address asks:

• A web address opens in your default browser. Memry does not open web pages in its own window.
• Link to object — Excalidraw's own "link to a shape on this canvas" — moves the canvas to that shape and selects it. It no longer reloads the canvas.
• A link to a vault item opens that item in a tab, the same way the ↗ button on a card does.

If a link points at something that has since been deleted, Memry says so instead of opening an empty tab. A link it cannot make sense of is left alone.

Linking a shape to something in your vault

A shape can point at something you already have, not just at the web. Select a single shape and click the link button under Actions in the properties panel — or press Cmd/Ctrl+K, or Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+K.

A search box opens. Type, and matches appear grouped by what they are — notes, files, tasks, events, inbox items, journal days, projects and folders — each with its own icon, including the custom icon you gave a note or folder. Pick one and the shape carries a link to it; its link icon then opens that item in a tab.

Two things it will not do:

• Link when several shapes are selected, or none. A link belongs to one shape, and Memry will not choose for you.
• Link a card. A card already opens its own item, so a second link on it would contradict the card itself.

Typing a web address works here too: an address gets its own row at the top of the list, so the same box handles both. A bare host like example.com is read as https://example.com.

An event with no date is not offered: there would be no day for the Calendar to open to.

Select a linked shape and a small bubble appears above it. For a link to something in your vault it shows the item's name, the way a wiki link in a note shows a title rather than a path. For a web link it shows the address, which is the useful thing there.

A Link to object — a shape pointing at another shape on the same canvas — used to show the app's own internal address. It now names its target:

• A card is named by the item it shows.
• A shape with text on it is named by that text.
• A shape with nothing on it says only that it is a shape on this canvas. Excalidraw shapes have no name, and inventing one would be worse than saying so.
• A target that has been deleted says it is no longer on this canvas.

That name is remembered when the link is made. Rename the item afterwards and the bubble keeps the old name until the link is set again — the link still opens the right item either way, because it points at the item, not at its name.

To remove a link, use the remove button in that same bubble.

Connecting cards

Draw an arrow from one card to another and it binds to both. Move a card and the arrow follows. Links are saved with the canvas.

An arrow between two cards is also a real connection, so you do not have to make it a second time as a wiki link:

• Arrow from note A to note B. A's Outgoing links list B, and B's Backlinks list A. Both entries say Connected on and the canvas name.
• In the graph, the two items are joined by a canvas edge in its own colour. This works between notes, tasks and projects. Calendar events and files are not graph nodes, so their arrows only stay on the board.
• Direction follows the arrowhead. An arrow with its only head at the start points from the far end back to the near one. An arrow with heads at both ends, or at neither, counts from where you started drawing it.

An arrow only counts when both of its ends are attached to a card. An arrow that ends on a plain shape, on text, or in empty space stays a drawing. So does an arrow that loops back to the same item.

Delete the arrow or either card and the connection goes away the next time the canvas saves. Several arrows between the same two cards on one board are one connection. The same pair connected on two boards shows once per board in backlinks.

Nothing is written into your notes. The connection is read from the canvas file, so it syncs with the canvas and appears on your other devices once they update to this version. Other apps that open your vault do not see it, because it is not a [[wiki link]].

Grouping cards by similarity

With local embeddings turned on, Suggest groups proposes groups of similar note cards. You review, rename, or discard each group, and only the groups you accept become frames. Grouping runs on this device.