Hello again dear users! We've so been busy building cool features for Amplenote, that we've let a quarter pass since posting an update. Whoops. We've got designs to improve our cadence of release notices by the end of the month, when Amplenote's footer will offer a new "Changelog" link that will use GitClear's soon-to-be-image-based Chart Glimpse to show a paginated (and RSS-friendly) view of what is underway at any point.

But until that goes live in a couple weeks, please enjoy this belated rundown of the latest & greatest features from Ampleland.

link🏆 Headliners and most requested features

We'll begin with the features that will impact the greatest number of users.

link🎨 Background colors and banner images

Notes are now 391% more pretty and customizable, thanks to the brand new note styling menu. You can now pick a background image and color for any note.

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You can access the new options using the triple-dot menu from any note:

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Page style lives in the note options

On mobile, the "Edit page style" currently lives behind the "More options" link.

How to multiply the power of background colors and styles? By sharing them with others, to share in the splendor.

Which is to say, background images and colors can now wrap the public version of your notes. If you share ideas with prospects, what better way to capture attention than to wrap your ideas in an appealing frame. The author even earned himself kudos from a random commenter for his use of a public note wrapper at the recent BASB conference

Make sure to play around with the width toggles for the banner image and note content until you create something that excites you

linkPro, Unlimited, and Founder Benefits

Personal users can choose a background color, and a couple pre-set backgrounds. Pro users can choose far more interesting backgrounds:

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Stock backgrounds available to Pro users. Unlimited can upload their own.

Unlimited users can choose from our stock backgrounds, or upload their own.

Another, related, new benefit for Unlimited and Founder subscribers is that publishing a note comes with much less "Amplenote" branding than in previous releases. If you're a Founder, there's a single line at the top of the bottom of the note, and the rest of the note is up to you.

Note backgrounds also now show up in Rich Footnote note previews. ✨

More about styling here.

link🗜️ Standard and Full-Width Note Content

This quarter, Amplenote joined the ranks of the Bear-follower apps by defaulting note width to the size that contemporary research suggests is easiest for a reader's eyes. Instead of stretching note content across the entire width of your window, when you have "Standard Width" selected (the default, for newly signed up users), we'll use the extra width available to create breathing room for your content.

To change your account-wide default, visit "Settings" => "Appearance" and choose "Standard Width" or "Full Width." To change the width of an individual note, open its "Edit page style" settings and you can toggle that individual note to a value different from your account default.

link📆 Events

Alongside tasks, you can now create events in Amplenote. We introduced this because our customers told us they want something that can be dragged on the calendar without needing to be checked off. We agreed that this would be useful, and so now you can set all the recurring task properties on any bullet list item from a note:

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Events in Amplenote are like tasks, but they are styled differently and don't have Task Score.

From the Notes, Jots or Tasks pane, the easiest way to create an event is to use the !due command inside a bullet point to set a date and time for your event. Your new event will be titled after the contents of the bullet. Also, you can easily switch between a task and an event by using Ctrl-Enter or Cmd-Enter.

From the Calendar pane, you can convert any scheduled task to an event by clicking on it and choosing "Switch to event."

Scheduled Improvement: in the next month or two, events on the calendar will be allowed to act as "time-blocks", allowing them to be rendered behind other tasks. This will enable a nicer aesthetic for those who visually block out time for domains of life. Combined with recurrence (and soon, AI), it helps you "keep the plot" when you're trying to run down a quarterly plan, like Cal Newport.

More on events at their new help page

link🗓️ Agenda view/group tasks by start date

Heavily requested and finally here! From the Tasks pane you can now group tasks by their start date, making for an effective agenda view (previously only doable through the mobile Agenda Widget).

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link⭐️ Major features and exciting goodies

Features requested by hundreds of users that launched in the last few months.

link🎵 Upload audio files to notes

Your notes can now be containers for audio files (aac file type)! The mobile share sheet menu will also recognize these files when you share them from external apps and Amplenote will be displayed as an option.

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link📂 Tags are now more like folders

New in the world of tags:

Team Amplenote hopes this finally makes tags feature-equivalent with Evernote-like folders, such that our customers can use them interchangeably!

Read more about creating empty tags (like directories) on our updated help page for Organizing notes into folders using tags.

link⭐️ Rename shortcuts

No more ugly shortcuts! Whenever you create complex searches that are too long or unpleasant to look at, you now have the option to save that filter and give it a custom name. The option is in the triple-dot menu for every shortcut:

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And when you edit the shortcut name itself, we still show you the original filter that you applied, just in case:

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And, speaking of saved searches...

link✅ Manage tasks note-wide

The new "Manage Tasks" page allows you to:

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Check out the full docs here.

link🔎 Saved searches in Notes Mode

Previously only possible in Tasks Mode, and now finally here for Notes Mode. When you are satisfied with your search query and decide you want to return to these results in the future, save you search to the list of shortcuts using the triple-dot button found in the search bar:

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Check out the docs.

And for even more search goodies...

link👀 Complex AND, OR, NOT search queries for full-content search + exact matches

By default, when searching for a word using full search, the results will also match close matches (eg. the word "Jim" might match the word "Jimmy" inside your notes).

Starting now, on desktop and mobile, you can enclose your keywords inside " quotes and use advanced keywords to further filter your search queries more granularly:

Note that for these keywords to fulfil their function, you need to CAPITALIZE them in the search bar.

Full docs here.

link📱Bigger font size on tablets

We're counting this one as a major feature because it has been requested so often recently and we hope to give this one more visibility. For anyone who previously was struggling with the font size on tablets, we went ahead and fixed that. Please check it out and let us know if you see an improvement!

link✨ Odds and ends

linkAdd tags to newly created notes when you forward emails to Amplenote

When you forward an email to your dedicated Amplenote address, you can now change the subject of your email to include a #tag to be added to the newly created note:

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Result will be:

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Check out the docs here.

linkCopy/move tasks and bullets to specific sections in the destination note

When using !move or !copy, type a # bang character to lookup the exact heading in a note you want the task to go to:

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More on task commands here.

linkCross out, copy or delete bullets

Extra ways to perform the most common operations on bullet points: you can now cross out, copy, or delete a bullet point using the ! exclamation mark command menu, or by clicking/tapping on the bullet symbol itself

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Also exposed in this menu: convert a bullet to a task (still accessible via Cmd-Enter or Ctrl-Enter).

linkToggle to exclude note content from full-note search

If you want to search for notes based solely on their titles, and not match your search query against note contents, you can now use this toggle in the full-note-search options:

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linkApply tags from a source note to linked note

Now, when you link to a new note, you'll notice a new hint that, if you prepend a & character to your link, the tags from your current note will be applied en masse to the note being linked (whether it was newly created or not).

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Linking with a query like @&kanban will apply tags from this note to Kanban note

This feature should be especially useful when you're taking notes about a specific project.

link🧩 Best from the plugin directory

open_in_new Draw content from within a note. linkExcalidraw	open_in_new Five minutes worth of daily questions to calibrate your willpower. Inspired by Tim Ferriss' "Five Minute Bullet Journal." linkBullet Journal
open_in_new A plugin to import and sync web clippings, articles, and highlights from the web app omnivore into amplenote. linkAmplenote Omnivore Sync	open_in_new Visualize your markdown notes in a mindmap linkAmplenote Mindmap
open_in_new Display all images in a tag, or turn a note intoa slideshow. linkGallery	open_in_new linkMetadata

link🔧 Fixes and improvements

Some of the most notable fixes we pushed recently, for your perusing:

link⚙️ Plugin API capabilities

Here is a summary of everything that's new in our plugin API:

link🔮 What's next?

Lol like anybody would still be reading this.

Ok, yes, we are still planning to work on things. 🤣 First among those are "task dependencies" and "time block events." Even when we get back to our target "quarterly update blog" cadence, those features ought to be done well in advance of the next update.

The Amplenote Changelog will debut by the end of October, so you'll be able to get a sense for the progress we're making on these features and other upcoming features, such as:

Thanks for your continued support of Amplenote, and sorry about the hitch in our updates. It's hard to keep track of everything new that we're releasing with each week, but that's part of how you ended up here, right? 🚀