ZenNotes 2.3.0 is headlined by wikilinks that follow a note when you rename it and a fully keyboard-driven database grid, plus consistent vim-style keyboard navigation across every picker and a batch of fixes from your reports.

Installers for macOS, Windows, and Linux are attached below. On Arch, yay -S zennotes-bin.

✨ Highlights

Links update when you rename a note (#111)

Rename a note and every [[wikilink]] pointing at it across the vault rewrites itself to the new name — no more dead links. It handles all the forms — [[Note]], [[Note|alias]] (your display text is kept), [[Note#heading]], [[Note^block]], embeds ![[Note]], and path-style [[folder/Note]] — skips anything inside fenced or inline code, and only touches links that actually resolved to that note, so notes sharing a title never get cross-wired. It runs in the vault layer (desktop and the self-hosted server), so it applies however you rename — the editor, the MCP tools, the CLI, or the HTTP API.

Keyboard-driven databases (#110)

The CSV database grid is now fully navigable without the mouse, vim-style. Move the cell cursor with h/j/k/l, jump up to the column-header row with k to rename a field (Enter / i) or open its menu (m), press m on a cell for the row menu, and open a row's record page with o — then Ctrl+O jumps right back to the grid (whether you opened the database as a .csv file or via New Database). Ctrl+W k / j / h / l moves between the grid, the tab strip, and split panes exactly like it does from the editor. This also fixes #110 : editing a column name no longer swallows h/j/k/l, so you can type url or public, and the arrow keys move the caret in edit mode. The grid reliably takes keyboard focus on open, after a Ctrl+O jump back, and after reopening the app, so motions work without clicking a row first — and a Show sidebar button now appears in the database header when the sidebar is hidden.

🐛 Fixes

• Consistent picker navigation (#98) — every picker now moves the selection with vim-style Ctrl+J / Ctrl+K (down / up), alongside the arrow keys and Ctrl+N / Ctrl+P. This also fixes a Linux/Windows bug where Ctrl+P — which resolves to the global Search notes shortcut (Mod+P) on those platforms — closed the search palette and hijacked the [[ reference picker instead of moving up the list. Pickers now consume the navigation keys, so it works the same across the search-notes palette, the [[ reference picker, the / slash menu, date shortcuts, template variables, and the command / buffer / outline / template palettes and quick-capture.
• Quick-capture hotkey wouldn't rebind (#120) — the Keymap settings tab listed an Open quick capture window row at ⇧⌘Space that was never wired up, so changing it there did nothing while the real system-wide hotkey kept firing — making the shortcut feel hardcoded. Removed the dead row; the quick-capture hotkey is managed by its own Record / Disable / Reset control under Settings → Editor → Quick capture.
• Esc in the Switch Vault dialog (#119) — opening the vault switcher with <leader>v and pressing Esc used to drop you into the full command palette instead of closing. Esc now closes a directly-opened picker and only steps back to the command list when you actually drilled in from there.
• Weekly notes on the self-hosted server (#117) — the Vault → Enable weekly notes toggle wouldn't stick on the web/Docker build: the Go server's settings model had no weeklyNotes field, so it was silently dropped on save and reverted on reload. The server now mirrors the full client settings contract (weekly notes, plus the daily-notes template that was dropped the same way).
• Folders sync live across clients — creating or deleting a folder in one client now appears in another open client sharing the same vault — including the self-hosted web app — without a manual refresh. Empty folders previously only showed up on reload, because neither file watcher emitted directory events.
• Tags pinned to the bottom of the sidebar — the Tags section now sits just above the Files / Help / Settings footer instead of floating directly under the note list, and still scrolls naturally when the list is long.
• Mobile web: sidebar footer no longer hidden behind the browser (#116) — the web client's app shell now uses dynamic viewport height (100dvh, with a 100vh fallback) and viewport-fit=cover, so the Files / Help / Settings footer stays inside the visible area on iPad and Android Chrome instead of being occluded by the browser's bottom toolbar. The footer also pads for the iOS safe area. Desktop is unaffected.
• Close the right panel (#114) — added a clear way to dismiss whichever right-hand panel (connections, outline, comments, calendar) is open: a "Close Right Panel" command in the command palette and a :closepanel (:closep) Vim ex-command. Previously you had to re-press the specific toggle that opened it.
• Vim tab navigation (#99) — gt / gT now move to the next / previous tab in the active pane, with :tabnext / :tabprevious ex-commands (shown in the : autocomplete). Both are rebindable under Settings → Keymap.
• f find-char motions work in the editor (#107) — f, df, cf, yf (and the t family after an operator) were being hijacked in normal mode because bare f triggered hint mode. Hint mode moved to <leader>h, so the whole f-family works normally now. Search notes stays on <leader>f, and vault text search now sits under a <leader>s search group — press <leader>s for a which-key list, then t (mirrors the <leader>l group). All rebindable under Settings → Keymap.
• Hint into a note lands in the editor (#100) — using hint mode (<leader>h) to open a note from the sidebar or a tab used to leave focus on the clicked row / tab, so you had to press Esc to start typing. Hinting a note now drops you straight into the editor — like hinting Tasks already did. Folders (which just toggle), the Tasks / Tags tabs, and plain buttons keep their own focus.
• Remove or restore the built-in templates (#112) — the shipped templates ship as code constants, so they could only be edited, not deleted. New Remove Built-in Templates / Restore Built-in Templates commands — plus a button under Settings → Templates — hide or bring back all the built-ins, with a confirmation before removing. Your custom templates (and any built-in you've edited) stay, and anything already pointing at a built-in by id (e.g. a daily-note template) keeps working.

Thanks to everyone filing issues and reporting bugs — closes #98, #99, #100, #107, #110, #111, #112, #114, #116, #117, #119, #120.

ZenNotes 2.2.0 turns any CSV into a full Notion-style database, ships a top-to-bottom UI consistency pass, adds a monochrome Black Metal theme, and brings keyboard shortcuts for comments and pane focus — plus Linux launcher and macOS search-path fixes.

Installers for macOS, Windows, and Linux are attached below once the build finishes.

✨ Highlights

Databases — any .csv becomes a database (#81)

A CSV file in your vault is now a full database, à la Notion / Obsidian Bases — with zero new dependencies.

• Two views over the same data: an editable Table (spreadsheet-style inline editing) and a Board grouped by a select field. Add and switch views freely.
• Typed fields — text, number, checkbox, date, select, multi-select — with add / rename / retype / delete, plus sort, filter, and a raw-CSV toggle. Every row gets a stable id, so external edits round-trip cleanly.
• Records as pages: open any row as a real markdown note in a per-database folder. Its properties mirror into the note's frontmatter, the body is a freeform page, and a page icon shows at a glance whether a record already has content.
• Keyboard-first grid (vim): h/j/k/l to move, gg/G, i/Enter to edit, Space/x to select, o to open the page, a to add a row, dd to delete. Right-click a row to Open or Delete; tick checkboxes for bulk actions.
• Create from the sidebar: right-click any folder → New database.

A cleaner, more consistent interface (#75)

A systematic design-system pass across the whole app — consistent spacing, type scale, colors, and shadows, with shared button and modal primitives — so panels, dialogs, and controls finally read as one app. Polish only; no behavior changes.

A monochrome "Black Metal" theme

A new theme family based on black-metal-theme: a true-black (OLED-friendly) canvas with soft grey text and a single muted teal accent — for an all-black, minimal look. Ships with a light "Day" companion. Choose it under Settings → Appearance → Black Metal.

Comments & pane focus from the keyboard (#82)

• ⌘⇧C / Ctrl+Shift+C — toggle the Comments panel (it had a command but no shortcut, unlike the other panels).
• ⌥⌘M / Ctrl+Alt+M — add a comment to the current selection (or line) without reaching for the mouse.
• ⌥h/j/k/l — focus the pane/panel in that direction, now always on: it works even with vim mode off, and skips the Ctrl+W prefix that some Linux setups intercept. (Ctrl+W h/j/k/l still works in vim mode.)

🐛 Fixes

• Diagrams in preview (#68) — JSXGraph diagrams now render in the preview and split panes (and in PDF export) instead of failing with "HTML container element not found."
• Footnotes (#69) — footnote references and the ↩ back-references now navigate both ways in the preview/split pane; heading and table-of-contents anchors work too.
• System clipboard (#79) — vim's "+y / "+p and the copy buttons now write to and read from the system clipboard instead of failing with a permission error on macOS and Wayland; a stray clipboard error no longer blanks the window.
• Daily / weekly note templates (#90) — {{date:...}} tokens now render the note's own date when you create a daily or weekly note for a past or future date, instead of always today's date.
• Code blocks in the editor (#83) — # lines inside a fenced code block (e.g. bash comments) are no longer styled as Markdown headings in Editor mode.
• Arch / AUR launcher (#70, #74, #92) — fixed the /opt/zennotes-bin directory permissions and forced the launcher's execute bit so /usr/bin/zennotes actually runs (published as zennotes-bin 2.1.0-3).
• Search tools on macOS (#73) — fzf and rg are now resolved through your login shell, so auto-detect works even when the app launches with a minimal GUI PATH.

Thanks to everyone who filed issues and reported bugs — closes #68, #69, #70, #73, #74, #79, #83, #90, #92.

ZenNotes 2.1.0 brings a calendar for daily/weekly notes, an always-on-top quick-capture window, vim quality-of-life additions, and a batch of editor and Linux fixes.

Installers for macOS, Windows, and Linux are attached below once the build finishes.

✨ Highlights

Calendar for daily & weekly notes (#63)

• A right-side calendar panel that opens automatically when you're in a daily (YYYY-MM-DD) or weekly (YYYY-Www) note, anchored to and highlighting that note.
• Click a day to open/create its daily note, or a week number for the weekly note; page months with the arrows or jump to Today.
• Word-count dots on each day (more writing → more dots), a marker for days with unfinished tasks, hover preview, and a right-click menu (open / create / move to trash).
• Configurable week start (Monday / Sunday / locale) and a show week numbers toggle.
• Toggle it anytime with the calendar icon, the command palette, or leader c.
• The sidebar now surfaces your Daily Notes and Weekly Notes folders as pinned, date-grouped sections (year → month → day), so they stay easy to reach and tidy even with hundreds of notes.

Pin the quick-capture window on top (#67)

• The quick-capture window now has a pin button. When pinned it stays on top of all windows and no longer auto-hides when it loses focus — Raycast-style sticky capture. The pin state is remembered.

Vim

• Map a key sequence to Escape in insert mode (e.g. jk or jj) — Settings → Vim → "Exit insert mode with". Works in the editor and the capture/floating/external windows.
• Pane-focus ex commands: :wincmd h/j/k/l (and :pane_focus_left/down/up/right) to move between split panes from the command line.
• Fixed Ctrl+W h/j/k/l pane navigation on Linux/Windows, where Ctrl+W was being swallowed by close-tab.

🐛 Fixes (#65 + community reports)

• Tables: column alignment (:--, :-:, --:) is honored again in rendered notes.
• Daily notes: template dates now render with locale-aware month and weekday names ({{date:dddd, D MMMM}}), while note filenames stay ISO-sortable.
• Fonts: code blocks in the editor, the vim command field, and the search panel now use your configured monospace font instead of a hardcoded fallback (fixes "ugly code font" on Linux).
• Linux/NVIDIA: silence the vaInitialize failed VAAPI error on Fedora and similar setups.

🐧 Linux packaging (#65)

• Releases now include a native pacman package for Arch-based distros.
• New AUR package (zennotes-bin) that installs cleanly on Arch/CachyOS without libfuse2 (it extracts the AppImage at install time).
• Tip for the raw AppImage on Arch/CachyOS: run with --appimage-extract-and-run, or install fuse2.

Thanks to everyone who filed issues and reported bugs — closes #63, #65, #67.

Fixes

• Unarchive returns notes to their original subfolder. Archiving inbox/demo/Note.md now lands at archive/demo/Note.md, so unarchiving puts it back exactly where it was — instead of dumping it at the inbox top level. Trash → restore round-trips preserve subfolders the same way. Fixed across the desktop app, the zen CLI/MCP server, and the self-hosted server. (Notes archived before this release sit flat in archive/ and will still unarchive to the top level.)
• Finder "Open in ZenNotes" no longer opens the quick-capture panel. The hidden quick-capture window could swallow file-opens and deep links after you'd used the capture hotkey; note opens are now routed only to real workspace windows, and the Dock icon reliably brings back a window.
• zen open understands vault paths. Paths printed by zen list (vault-relative, spaces and all) now open from any directory — quoted or not. Errors name every location that was searched.

New: multiple vaults in the zen CLI

• zen vault list shows every vault ZenNotes knows about, with the default marked.
• Every command takes --vault <name|path> to target a specific vault: zen list --vault work, zen capture "idea" --vault personal. Precedence: --vault → ZENNOTES_VAULT → last-opened vault. Typos fail with the list of known vaults rather than silently using the wrong one.
• ZENNOTES_CONFIG_DIR overrides the config directory for scripting.

Download the installer for your platform from the assets below.

Download the installer for your platform from the assets below.

Download the installer for your platform from the assets below.

Download the installer for your platform from the assets below.

Download the installer for your platform from the assets below.

Download the installer for your platform from the assets below.

Download the installer for your platform from the assets below.