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Welcome to nvUltra

nvUltra is a note-taking tool with advanced MultiMarkdown/Markdown editing capabilities. It works with any folder in any location, keeping all of your notes in plain text format.

If you already have notes in apps like nvALT, Bear, or Notes.app, get started by importing your existing notes.

What’s Special About nvUltra?

nvUltra is a modal note-taking app: you create notes the same way you search for them, all from one place. When you have an idea you need to save or learn a piece of information you want to store, just type what it’s about in the search bar, hit return, and add the content. If it’s information about something you already have a note for, that note will show up while you’re typing and you can use the down arrow to select it and append new information to it. It’s fast, and it doesn’t get in the way of the rest of your work.

When it comes time to search for a note, nvUltra’s search is lightning fast and so accurate that you can find most notes with just a couple of words. You can use tagging and folders for additional organization.

But our favorite thing about nvUltra is that it’s entirely based on plain text files.

Plain Text?

Plain text is the simplest format for your information, and simple means secure and portable. No corrupted packages, no locked-in formats, and no database holding all of your notes hostage. You’ll never need a specific app to read your files; you can open your nvUltra notes in any other text editing application on any platform, including iOS and, yes, Windows.

Plain text is also fast. By stripping away all of the rich text features of a word processor, you’re able to just write. Notes, ideas, even blog posts and longer pieces. Instead of formatting options, you can use Markdown, a very simple syntax that doesn’t get in your way, yet can provide beautiful output results. nvUltra uses MultiMarkdown, which has all of the features of Markdown, plus things like footnotes, tables, definition lists, and more. nvUltra even has a built-in preview to show your rendered notes while you edit.

Your Notebook Is Any Folder

Rather than a single database for your notes, nvUltra works with any folder you open. The folder becomes your notebook, and all new notes you create become part of that notebook. Any text files already in a folder you open — whether they were created by nvUltra or not — are automatically indexed and searchable as part of your notebook. And any other types of files you have in a folder won’t hurt nvUltra; you can store images right in your notes folder and include them inside notes.

nvUltra also allows subfolders. The [contents] of subfolders are included in the “flat” file listing, with the subfolder name before the note title, e.g. “subfolder/my cool note.md”. This way you get the organization of separate folders, but the convenience of searching all your notes in one place.

For more of nvUltra’s features, check out:

Markdown? MultiMarkdown?

Markdown looks like this:

# This is a headline

This is my text. I don't need any extra syntax to just write.

If I want to, I can use simple syntax **to make text bold**. Or
maybe _italic_.

See, it’s easy!

nvUltra is built especially for MultiMarkdown, a flavor of Markdown that adds extra capabilities such as tables, footnotes, citations, and more. For details on the syntax for MultiMarkdown (and Markdown), see the included Syntax Guide (Help Syntax Guide (/)).

nvUltra makes MultiMarkdown easy to use, with automatic formatting tools built in, and a bunch of Markdown editing features.

Next up: Conventions


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