Reading and getting around

The reading screen

When a note is open, mdvju shows the note and nothing else. Tap the screen to bring up the buttons; they fade away again after a few seconds. You can choose how long they stay in Settings › Menu Stays Visible For.

The buttons give you:

  • Back and forward, like a web browser.
  • The note list: recent notes, search by name, folders and favourites.

And beside the note, from top to bottom:

  • Favourite (the star) for the note you’re reading.
  • Find in the note, with a counter showing how many matches there are.
  • The outline of the note’s headings. It follows along as you read, highlighting where you are. Tap a heading to jump to it.
  • Share, to send a link to the note you’re reading. The link opens the note in mdvju.
  • End, to jump to the end of the note.

Tap the status bar at the very top of the screen to jump back to the start of the note, as in other iPhone apps. To jump to the end, use the end button.

Text size

Pinch the note to make the text bigger or smaller. You can also set it in Settings › Font Size, with a slider, − and + buttons, and Reset.

What mdvju shows

  • Headings, lists, tables, quotes, callouts and code blocks with syntax highlighting.
  • Frontmatter (the properties block at the top of a note) is hidden.
  • Sections fold away. Tap a heading to hide everything up to the next heading of the same or a higher level; it shows ▸. Tap it again to unfold (▾). Folds reset when you open the note again.
  • Images show in the note. Tap one for full screen, pinch to zoom, and swipe to go through all the images in the note.
  • Videos (such as .mp4 and .mov) play in the note. A video stored in iCloud needs to be downloaded first.
  • PDFs open in the iPhone’s own viewer.
  • SVG drawings show in place.
  • Mermaid diagrams are drawn on the phone, so they work offline.
  • YouTube links show as a thumbnail. Tapping opens the video outside mdvju.
  • Web links open in your browser.
  • Tap a wikilink to open that note. Links to an alias work too.
  • Back returns you to the note you came from. Forward goes the other way again.
  • If a link points to a note that isn’t in your folder, mdvju tells you so.

Finding a note

Open the note list from the buttons. Then:

  • Recent notes are the notes in your folder that changed most recently, grouped by day, newest first. It’s not a history of what you read.
  • Search finds notes by their name, across the whole folder. Type a few letters.
  • Folders let you browse the way the notes are stored.
  • Favourites are the notes you’ve starred.

Searching the full text of every note isn’t available yet.

Homepage and favourites

  • Favourites: tap the star while reading a note. Your favourites are on this phone only, and belong to the folder you’re reading.
  • Homepage: the note mdvju can open when it starts, or that you go back to when you’re lost. To set it, open the note, touch and hold the Home button in the bottom row, and tap Set Home. Or pick a note in Settings › Homepage. You can change your Homepage later, but not clear it.

Where mdvju opens

In Settings › On Launch, Open, choose Last Note (the default) or Homepage. With Last Note, mdvju also takes you back to where you were in it. If you’ve changed the text size since, you land near that place rather than on the exact line.

Appearance

In Settings you can change:

  • Appearance: light, dark, or matching your phone.
  • Accent Colour.
  • Code Theme, for code blocks, with a preview.
  • Menu Stays Visible For, how long the buttons stay up.
  • Font Size, from 13 to 26 points.