Search and Navigate Notes
This #recipe covers the ways you can find and navigate notes in Foam.
Quick Open
Section titled “Quick Open”Press Cmd+P (Ctrl+P on Windows) and type a note name to open it directly. Partial matches work — proj meet will find projects/meeting-notes.md.
Full-text Search
Section titled “Full-text Search”Press Cmd+Shift+F (Ctrl+Shift+F on Windows) to search across all note content. Use the filter icon to restrict search to specific folders or file types.
Note Navigator Panel
Section titled “Note Navigator Panel”The Note Navigator panel in the sidebar lets you browse and filter all notes in your workspace. Use the filter input to narrow by name, and switch between flat and grouped-by-folder views from the panel toolbar.
Other Panels
Section titled “Other Panels”Foam adds several panels to the sidebar that help you discover notes:
- Backlinks — shows which notes link to the currently open note
- Placeholders — lists wikilinks that don’t yet have a corresponding file
- Orphans — lists notes with no incoming or outgoing links (see Orphaned Notes)
- Tags — browse all tags and jump to tagged notes (see Tags)
Graph View
Section titled “Graph View”The Graph Visualization gives a visual overview of your entire knowledge base. Click any node to open that note. You can also filter the graph to focus on a subset of notes by tag, type, path, or title.
Random Note
Section titled “Random Note”Run “Foam: Open Random Note” from the command palette to resurface forgotten notes.