Things
Swipes and the three bars
Three bars do different jobs, and they are easy to confuse because they occupy similar space.
Why you'd care
Almost every "how do I do X on my phone" question is answered by one of these three, and knowing which one you are looking at is most of the battle.
The three
| Bar | When it appears | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Capture bar | Always | Writes a new thing. See the capture bar |
| Edit bar | While editing a thing | Acts on the thing your cursor is in |
| Selection bar | When things are selected | Acts on the whole selection. See select many things |
Swipe actions
iPhone, iPad, and Android
Swiping a thing left or right runs an action. The defaults are select and complete, and both directions can be rebound to complete, delete, move, copy, info, indent, outdent, tag, star, reminder, note, quote, code, memory, focus or Ask AI. Plus
Web, Mac, Windows, and Linux
Swipes are a touch gesture. On desktop the same actions live on the row's hover controls, in the right-click menu, and on keyboard shortcuts.
Going further
The first few slots are what matter. Each bar shows a handful of actions before hiding the rest behind a More sheet. Ordering is the whole customization: put your real four first and you never open More.
Everything is rearrangeable. The edit bar, the selection bar and the swipe bindings are all configurable. See customize the edit bar and selection bar.
Gestures can be turned off entirely. Setting a swipe to none disables that direction, and setting both plus pull-down to none gives you a gesture-free app, which some people strongly prefer.
Settings that change this
- Settings Appearance & Accessibility Customize selection actions reorders the selection bar. Plus
- Settings Appearance & Accessibility Expand bar expands the bar to show more actions at once.
- Settings Appearance & Accessibility Left-handed mode moves the primary controls to the other side.
Tips
- Put Tag and Move in your first slots. They are the two most-used actions for most people.
- If you keep triggering swipes by accident, set one direction to none rather than fighting it.