Notes Tab

With the “Hook to New Note” menu, you can simultaneously create, link, name and store a new file or object. Examples of objects are: tasks in OmniFocus or CulturedCode Things, and documents in Drafts or Bear.

The Preferences > Notes tab is where you configure the behavior of the Hook to New menus. We refer to items created by Hook to New as “notes”.

Notes-preferences-tab

The “Notes” folder (for Hook to New > files)

When you use the Hook to New command to create a file (as opposed to an object), Hookmark stores the new file in its notes folder. By default, this folder is called “Notes”, and is stored in ~/Documents/ (i.e., ~/Documents/Hook/Notes). However, you can use this tab to select any folder to which macOS grants you write permission.

You can even store your Notes folder in shared storage, such as iCloud or Dropbox.

Once a note is created, you can rename it and move it wherever you want, and links to and from it will normally still be valid. (An exception is that a small number of apps are ill-behaved when one of their open files is renamed. For those apps, just close the file before renaming it.)

“Note” templates

Default (⌘N) Preference

The Default (⌘N) drop-down menu enables you to choose the app in which notes are created when you use the Hook to New command (⌘N).

This menu contains:

The note created by ⌘N (“Link to New”) can either be a copy of a template file or an item of an app with a “Link to New” Script (per Scripts tab). Use ⌘⌃N to override the default.

You will notice that custom templates are followed by an asterisk (*).

The Templates folder

The Notes Preferences tab contains a Templates folder button. Clicking on this button opens Hookmark’s templates folder. Hookmark creates two template folders for you in ~/Documents/Hook/templates:

  • The “built-in templates” folder, whose content is created and managed by Hookmark.
  • The “custom templates” folder, which is empty by default. You can add entries here if your favorite app isn’t showing up in Hook to New menus, or if you want to override a built-in template.

If you want the templates to be stored elsewhere than in ~/Documents/Hook/templates, just replace that templates folder by an alias or symbolic link pointing to its new home. You can also move the entire Hookmark folder if you create an alias or link from ~/Documents/Hook to its new home. (Later, we might add a template manager in the app. We like OmniGroup’s OmniOutliner solution. But the current setup is quite straightforward.)

Templates in a nutshell

Here’s a brief summary of how templates work in Hookmark.

  • Hookmark has a template folder (per previous section) which affects what is presented in Hook to New menus.
  • Hookmark populates the built-in templates folder with mostly blank templates (some of the templates have sample content).
  • You can add and remove templates from the custom template folder.
  • If you want new notes (such as .txt notes) to have default text in them, just add a template in the custom folder.
  • If your favorite file-creating app is not listed in the Hook to New menu, try creating a blank file with the app and storing it in the custom template folder.

Hookmark currently does not provide a specific mechanism for users to configure templates in database-style apps (like OmniFocus and CulturedCode Things). However, this can be done by customizing the Hook to New script.

More details on templates

To view your templates, just click the “Open Templates Folder in Finder” button in this preference pane.

More details:

The Hook to New… command (with ellipses) lists one entry per file in the the ~/Documents/Hook/templates folder. It is your macOS account preferences, not Hookmark’s preferences, that determine the app that opens the file that you have chosen.

Built-in Templates and linking rules

See Built-in Templates. That explains how Hookmark also supports template folders, and provides other information on templates.

Removing apps from Hook to New menus

If you would like to prevent a particular file-based app from showing up in the Hook to New menu, just make sure there is no file in the templates folder that has its extension. For example, if you want to prevent OmniGraffle from showing up in the Hook to New menu, just delete template.graffle from the “built-in templates” and “custom templates” folders. However, from time to time CogSci Apps updates templates, which can cause built-in templates to re-appear.

If an app is not on your Mac, or some other app is the default app for its template files, then the app will not appear in Hook to New menus.

Restore Built-in Notes Templates button

You can experiment with templates to your heart’s content. You can easily revert to the original state of affairs by using the “Restore Built-in Notes Templates” button, and emptying the “custom templates” folder. This button sends the contents of the built-in templates folder to the trash, and copies all the built-in templates from the Hookmark application folder back into the “Built-in Notes Templates” folder.

If a new version of Hookmark is released that introduces new templates, Hookmark will ask you if you want to update your local Built-in Templates folder. If you say ‘no’, then each time you visit the Notes Preferences tab, you will see a reminder that your templates are out of date. You can dismiss this reminder by clicking on the “x” button on the panel.

If a new version of Hookmark is released and you still do not see the new built-in templates (perhaps because you dismissed the notices), you can still click this button (Restore Built-in Notes Templates) to get the latest templates.

Automatically adding a prefix and/or suffix to new notes

On the Notes tab, you can also configure Hookmark to automatically add a prefix and/or a suffix to note files that it creates. This can make them easier to find with Spotlight or a launcher (such as Alfred or LaunchBar).

For example, you might configure Hookmark to prefix new note files with an opening square bracket: [. Later, to quickly find this note without navigating links, just type [ in a launcher, followed by part of the filename. Or use Spotlight.

For example, you might type [Notes in Spotlight to quickly find a file that you linked to this page via Hook to New, because it would be called [Notes Tab – Hook (possibly with some suffix such as .txt).

This strategy is explained in detail in the “Surf Strategically” chapter of Beaudoin’s ebook, Cognitive Productivity with macOS.

A related tip: on the General preferences tab, you can also configure Hookmark to automatically apply the “Hook” Finder tag to files it creates or simply links. That way you can easily find all your Hookmark-linked files using Spotlight, and this search string: tag:Hook. You can also use Spotlight to access a particular file you know you’ve tagged and which matches some other parameter (such as its date modified, name, or content).

However, keep in mind that non alpha-numerical characters may interact with Hookmark’s search.