Notes
Links, backlinks and search
Link notes with Markdown links, see backlinks and tags, and search your vault by name, text or meaning.
This page shows how notes link to each other, how backlinks and tags work, and how to search by name, by text or by meaning.
Link notes
Link one note to another with a standard Markdown link, such as [Plan](Projects/Plan.md). The path is relative to the note that holds the link. Loam uses these links for backlinks, the graph and renames.
[[Plan]] are styled in the editor, but they do not count for backlinks, the graph or renames. Use a standard Markdown link when a link must be tracked.Backlinks
Backlinks are the notes that link to the open note. In the app, the Links tab of the right sidebar lists them with the lines where they link, and it also lists unlinked mentions of the note name.
From the command line, list the backlinks of a note. It prints the paths of the notes that link to it:
loam --vault ~/Notes notes.backlinks path=Projects/Plan.mdTags
Write a tag as #project or #work/q4 anywhere in the text. You can also list tags in the frontmatter, as tags: [project]. Both forms count. The Tags section of the left sidebar lists every tag with its count.
Find the notes with a tag from the command line:
loam --vault ~/Notes query.run tag=projectSearch
Search comes in three modes. Name and text search work out of the box. Search by meaning needs Truffle, a separate tool.
| Command | Finds | Needs |
|---|---|---|
search.names q=plan | Notes whose file name matches, with fuzzy matching. | Nothing |
search.content q=plan | Lines of text in the notes, with the line number. | Nothing |
search.meaning q="the plan" | Notes by what they say, in any language. | Truffle running |
search.status | Whether Truffle is running, and what it has indexed. | Nothing |
To search by meaning, install Truffle with brew install azilone/tap/truffle, then run truffle setup or start truffle serve.
In the app, Cmd+O opens the quick switcher, and Shift+Cmd+F opens a search popup.
loam guide commands lists the search and link commands. Use search.content for text and search.names for titles.