Notes, Markdown, and Links

The notes field is the free-form part of every task: context, links, snippets, or a running log. It does more than hold plain text. It styles Markdown as you type, stamps in dates and times, links to other tasks, and gathers every link it finds into one menu. For the rest of the editor, see The Task Editor.

Opening Notes

Tap the notes row in the task editor, or press ⌘E with a hardware keyboard. The note opens as its own card titled Notes, with a toolbar docked along the bottom.

The card's top bar carries:

• Done, which keeps the note and closes the card.
• Hide Keyboard, shown while you are typing.
• An options menu holding Share, Print, and Clear.

The Notes Toolbar

The toolbar starts with the formatting commands, in this order:

• Bold
• Italic
• Strikethrough
• Underline
• Highlight
• Insert Horizontal Line
• Bulleted List
• Numbered List

After them comes Markdown Preview, then a thin divider. At the far end are the two commands that reach outside the text: Open Links and Insert Date & Time.

When the toolbar is too narrow to show every command, swipe the formatting commands left or right to reach the rest. A short fade at either end of the row means more commands are hidden past that end. Markdown Preview, Open Links, and Insert Date & Time stay in place while the formatting commands scroll.

On a list you cannot change, the formatting commands and Insert Date & Time are unavailable.

Formatting Text

Select some text and tap Bold, Italic, Strikethrough, Underline, or Highlight to wrap it in Markdown markers. The text stays selected, so tapping the same command again straight away takes the markers back off. With nothing selected, the command inserts an empty pair of markers and puts the cursor between them, ready for typing.

Underline writes <u> and </u> tags, because Markdown has no underline marker of its own. When the selection covers several lines, each line gets its own pair of tags.

Bulleted List and Numbered List add a list marker to every line you have touched. Tapping the command again takes the markers back off.

Insert Horizontal Line

To divide a note into parts, tap Insert Horizontal Line. It adds *** on its own line below the current line, with a blank line above and below, and moves the cursor to a new line under the divider so you can keep writing. Nothing you have written is replaced, even if some of it is selected.

This command does not toggle: each tap adds another divider. In Markdown Preview, the *** shows as a thin line across the note.

Markdown in Notes

2Do styles Markdown live as you type. The source markers stay visible, so a **bold** word shows its asterisks and renders bold at the same time. Nothing is rewritten behind your back: what gets saved is always the Markdown you typed.

tip

Because the saved note is always the source Markdown, notes round-trip through sync and through 2Do on other platforms without losing their formatting markers.

Supported Markdown

• Emphasis: *italic* or _italic_
• Strong: **bold** or __bold__
• Code: `inline code` and fenced code blocks
• Strikethrough: ~~struck~~
• Highlight: ::highlighted::
• Underline: <u>underlined</u> or [u]underlined[/u], opened and closed on the same line
• Headings: # through ######
• Blockquote: lines beginning with >
• Lists: unordered and ordered; pressing Return at the end of a list line continues the marker
• Links: [label](https://…) and bare web addresses
• Horizontal line: *** on a line of its own, with a blank line above and below it

note

There is no GitHub-style task-checkbox rendering. A - [ ] line stays as literal Markdown text. Use 2Do's own sub-tasks or checklists for tickable items.

Markdown Preview

Tap the Markdown Preview button to swap the editable text for a rendered, read-only version with the Markdown markers hidden. The card's title changes to Markdown Preview so you know why typing no longer does anything, and the button fills with the accent colour. Tap it again to go back to editing.

While preview is showing, the commands that write into the note are unavailable, along with the links menu. Preview never changes what is stored: the saved note is always the source Markdown.

Insert Date & Time

Tap Insert Date & Time to drop a formatted stamp at the cursor. It is useful for journaling progress or logging when something happened. The menu holds ten formats in three groups:

Format	What it inserts
Short Date	localized short date
Short Date & Time	localized short date with time
Long Date	localized long date
Long Date & Time	localized long date with time
Universal Date	yyyy-MM-dd
Universal Date & Time	yyyy-MM-dd plus the time in your clock format
ISO 8601 Date & Time	UTC yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'
Time	current time
Weekday	full weekday name
Month	full month name

The stamp replaces the selection and leaves the cursor after it.

Linking to Another Task

Type @{ in a note and 2Do offers a list of tasks. Pick one and it drops in a live @{Task Title} link that jumps straight to that task. Because the link is just the task's title stored as ordinary text, you can also type one by hand, on any device.

For the full picture, including how links resolve and how they travel between devices, see Linking to Other Tasks.

tip

Use @{ links to stitch related tasks together. A project's notes can point at each of its dependencies, and one tap jumps you straight there.

Discovered Links

As you type or paste, 2Do watches the note for links:

• Task links: @{…} tokens.
• Web and mail addresses.

Detected links are underlined in the note, so you can tap one where it sits. When a long note buries them between paragraphs, tap Open Links in the toolbar instead: the menu lists every link it found under a heading that counts them, such as Found 4 Links, with task links first and web addresses after them. A note with no links shows a message to that effect rather than leaving the button dead.

Sharing, Printing, and Clearing

The options menu in the notes card's top bar holds three commands:

• Share hands the note's text, Markdown markers included, to the system share sheet.
• Print hands it to the system print screen, with the task's title as the job name.
• Clear empties the note. It asks first.

Share and Print are unavailable while the note is empty, and Clear is unavailable on a list you cannot change.