Tabs, splits, and Quick Open
One window holds as many documents as you want — stacked as tabs, or side by side in split panes. Quick Open gets you to any file in the workspace without going near the sidebar.
Find a file fast
Section titled “Find a file fast”Press Cmd+P and start typing part of the file’s name. You don’t need the whole name, or the letters in the right order. Arrow keys move through the results, Return opens the highlighted one, Escape closes the panel. Clicking outside closes it too.
Leave the field empty and you get the files you opened most recently in this workspace, so Cmd+P Return is a quick way back to the last one. Each result shows the folder it lives in.
Quick Open searches the workspace you are currently in, and lists the same files the sidebar does — Markdown and text, images, audio, video, and PDFs.
Open a new tab
Section titled “Open a new tab”| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| New tab | Cmd+T |
| New draft (an empty document) | Cmd+N |
| Open a file or folder | Cmd+O |
| Quick Open | Cmd+P |
| New window | Shift+Cmd+N |
The + button at the right of the tab strip does four of these: New Tab, New Draft, Split Right, and Split Down.
With one tab in one pane there is no tab strip at all — it appears as soon as you have a second tab or a second pane.
The new tab page
Section titled “The new tab page”Cmd+T lands you on the new tab page, which is the Quick Open search field with your recent files under it, plus New Draft and Open File or Folder… rows at the bottom. A pane with no tabs left in it shows the same thing.
Type a name that matches nothing and a Create “name” row appears. It writes name.md at the top of the workspace and opens it.
Switch and close tabs
Section titled “Switch and close tabs”| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Close the tab | Cmd+W |
| Go to tab 1 through 8 | Cmd+1 … Cmd+8 |
| Go to the last tab | Cmd+9 |
| Next tab | Shift+Cmd+] |
| Previous tab | Shift+Cmd+[ |
Hover a tab and a close button appears on its left. Middle-clicking a tab closes it as well.
Right-click a tab for Close Tab, Close Other Tabs, Close Tabs to the Right, and Pin Tab.
Put two files side by side
Section titled “Put two files side by side”| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Split right (side by side) | Ctrl+Shift+Cmd+T |
| Split down (stacked) | Ctrl+Opt+Cmd+T |
| Focus the next split | Opt+Cmd+] |
| Focus the previous split | Opt+Cmd+[ |
Splitting makes a new pane on the new tab page and moves focus to it, so you can pick the second file straight away. Drag the divider between panes to resize them.
Close the last tab in a split and that pane closes with it. The final pane always stays, showing the new tab page.
Move a tab to another pane
Section titled “Move a tab to another pane”- Drag a tab along its strip to reorder it.
- Drag it onto another pane’s strip to move it there, at the spot you drop it.
- Drag it into the body of a pane: drop in the middle to move it into that pane, drop near an edge to split the pane and put the tab in the new half. A highlight shows what you will get.
Files dragged in from Finder or the sidebar follow the same zones. The exception is an image or a video dropped on a pane that is showing a document — that goes into the text at the cursor rather than opening as a tab.
A tab keeps its document, scroll position, and undo history wherever it lands.
Go back to where you were
Section titled “Go back to where you were”| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Back | Cmd+[ |
| Forward | Cmd+] |
Every tab remembers its own trail, and the chevron buttons beside the sidebar toggle do the same thing (they disappear along with the sidebar).
This matters because opening a file — from the sidebar, from Quick Open, from the Open panel — takes over the tab you are in rather than making a new one. Back returns you to what was there. To keep both files open instead, make a new tab or split the pane first.
Stop a tab from being taken over
Section titled “Stop a tab from being taken over”Right-click a tab and choose Pin Tab. Open a file while a pinned tab is focused and it goes into a new tab beside it, leaving the pinned one alone. Back and Forward still work inside a pinned tab.
A pinned tab shows a pin, and ignores both the hover close button and middle-click — close it from its right-click menu, or Unpin Tab first.
Start a document from scratch
Section titled “Start a document from scratch”Cmd+N opens a draft: a document called “Untitled” with no file behind it yet. Drafts are not saved automatically, because there is nowhere to write them — press Cmd+S to give the draft a home.
The save panel suggests a filename taken from the document’s first top-level heading, or Untitled.md if it hasn’t got one. After that first save the tab behaves like any other file, auto-save included. Closing a draft with text in it asks whether to save first.
Every workspace keeps its own layout
Section titled “Every workspace keeps its own layout”Switch workspaces in the sidebar and the whole arrangement swaps with it — splits, tab order, which tab was selected — and switching back restores it exactly as you left it, nothing reloaded. It all comes back the next time you launch, too. See [[sidebar-workspaces-and-file-types|Sidebar, workspaces, and file types]].