Windows, vaults and files

A directory is a vault, a file is a document. Open a folder and you get the three-column shell. Open a single .md file and you get an editor over that one file, with no sidebar and no list.

Keys	What opens
⌘⇧O	A folder, as a vault, in the window you're in
⌘O	A file, in a window of its own
⌘⇧N	A new empty window

That difference is on purpose. A vault is a place you work and you switch places, so it replaces what the window was showing. A document is something you glanced at, so it never displaces what you already had open.

Finder's Open With, the menu bar, the halcyon command and these shortcuts all follow the same rule, so they can't disagree about what you meant.

Reading markdown from anywhere

Opening a file needs no vault, no import, and no copy. Point Halcyon at a README in a repository you just cloned and read it rendered, then close the window. Nothing was added to anything.

This is what the Files section in the sidebar is for: an Open file… button and the single files you opened recently, listed separately from the vault's notes because they aren't in it.

Important

A README from a repository you didn't write is untrusted input, and the preview treats it that way: raw HTML is dropped and link schemes are checked. See Markdown Halcyon renders.

Documents are read-write. If the file is read-only on disk, Halcyon says so rather than pretending the edit landed.

Several windows at once

Open as many as you like, on different vaults. The arrangement comes back when you relaunch: each window where you left it, showing the note you were reading.

⌘⇧W closes a window. ⌘W closes the note, leaving the window on the vault, and in a document window there's no note to close so it closes the window.

Note

Closing the last window doesn't quit Halcyon. The menu bar stays, the way it does for any other macOS app, and New Window, Open Vault and Open File all still work from there. That's the way back in.

Two windows on the same vault

Allowed, and it works. Both windows see the same files and the same index, and an edit in one shows up in the other the way any external edit does.

If a vault is synced, only one of those windows shows the sync status line. The others are ordinary, fully working windows on the same folder.