Search and Navigate Notes

This #recipe covers the ways you can find and navigate notes in Foam.

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

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

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

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 [orphans])
• Tags — browse all tags and jump to tagged notes (see [tags])

Graph View

The [graph-view] gives a visual overview of your entire knowledge base. Click any node to open that note. You can also [[resource-filters|filter the graph]] to focus on a subset of notes by tag, type, path, or title.

Random Note

Run "Foam: Open Random Note" from the command palette to resurface forgotten notes.