Track changes

Track changes lets you suggest edits to a note instead of making them, as in Word or Google Docs. Your suggestions stay in the note, marked up, until you or a collaborator accepts or rejects them.

When you share a note, the people you give Can comment or Can suggest add comments and suggestions the same way, and you accept or reject theirs Since 0.16.0.

Suggesting and editing

The bottom bar’s track changes menu (a pencil while Editing, a tinted pencil with a plus while Suggesting) sets the mode for the open note:

• Editing: your changes apply directly, as usual.
• Suggesting: your changes become suggestions:
  • new text shows underlined in green
  • deleted text stays, struck through in red
  • replaced text shows the old text struck through and the new text underlined

  Each suggestion records who made it and when.

• Track changes for everyone turns Suggesting on for the note itself. It’s saved in the note (as track_changes: true in its attributes), so anyone who opens the note, including a collaborator after a pull, starts in Suggesting.

The Editing/Suggesting choice only affects you, on this device. It doesn’t change the note. Turning on Track changes for everyone doesn’t stop anyone from switching to Editing: it sets the default, it doesn’t lock the note.

Reviewing suggestions

• Hover a suggestion to see who made it and when, with Accept and Reject buttons.
• When a note has suggestions, the menu shows how many. Previous suggestion and Next suggestion step through them.
• Accept all and Reject all resolve every suggestion in the note at once, after asking. One undo (Cmd/CtrlZ) reverts either.
• From the keyboard Since 0.20.0: F8 and ShiftF8 go to the next and previous suggestion. With the cursor in one, Mod. opens its menu: who made it and when, Accept, Reject, Next suggestion and Previous suggestion. After you accept or reject one, the next is selected. The command palette also has Editing/Suggesting, Accept all and Reject all, which you can give keys in Settings → Shortcuts.

Accepting keeps the suggested text. Rejecting restores the original. Either way the change is saved and committed like any other edit. If a suggestion was the whole line, for example a deleted paragraph or an added list item, the line goes too.

Suggestions from the agent

When a note is in Suggesting, the agent suggests its edits like anyone else. When you ask it to change the note, its edits appear right away as suggestions marked Agent, with a light background tint. This happens in every agent mode, including Manual. Nothing changes until you accept the suggestions.

The agent’s message in the chat says how many changes it suggested and offers:

• Show in note: opens the note at the agent’s first suggestion and shades its line until you click, type or move the cursor in the note.
• Reject all agent suggestions: removes every suggestion the agent has made in that note, including earlier ones, after asking. Your own suggestions and other people’s stay.

Some edits can’t be shown as suggestions: changes inside code, a link’s URL or HTML, edits inside someone else’s pending suggestion, and some changes to line breaks. For those the agent falls back to its usual proposal card in the chat, with the reason, and you accept or reject it there. In notes in Editing, the agent always works that way.

External agents such as Claude Code suggest their edits the same way in a note that is in Suggesting.

Asking the agent to publish or unpublish a note always waits for you, whatever its mode: see Publishing with the agent.

Comments

Select some text and click Comment (the speech bubble with a plus) in the bottom bar, type your comment and press Enter or click Comment. The commented text gets a soft amber highlight. Nothing is saved until you send the first comment; Cancel drops it. A click on a link inside commented text follows the link; its card’s Open thread opens the comment. Since 0.20.0

The Comments section in the right sidebar lists the note’s open threads, with resolved ones collapsed at the bottom; it’s where you find resolved threads again. Click one to jump to it (and to its card in the comment margin); its line is shaded until you click, type or move the cursor in the note. Add comment has no keyboard shortcut by default; you can give it one under Settings → Shortcuts.

Comments work in both Editing and Suggesting, and they never become suggestions. A comment stays on one line of text: it can’t cover a heading or list marker, code, a link or another suggestion. If the commented text is later deleted, the thread stays as a small marker so the discussion isn’t lost.

The agent can comment too. Ask it to review a note and it leaves comments marked Agent, or replies to a thread. In Manual mode you see its comments in the chat first, and nothing is added until you accept. In the other modes they’re added right away. Undo on the chat card removes them. The agent never resolves a thread, and it won’t remove someone else’s reply.

The thread

When the cursor is inside commented text, its thread opens beside it, or in its card when the comment margin shows:

• The header says how many comments there are, or ✓ Resolved. Next to it are Resolve (or Reopen) and a ⋯ menu with Delete thread….
• Each comment shows its author’s avatar (their GitHub picture, or their initials; the agent has a sparkle), their name from the People directory or their GitHub login (point at the name to see the login), and when they wrote it: “today”, “yesterday”, “2d ago” and so on, with the full date when you point at it. A long comment is cut off after six lines behind Show more, and @handles in it are marked. A comment that was changed after it was sent shows (edited) after its date.
• Links, wikilinks, URLs, tags and people in a comment work as they do in the note: a click follows them, Cmd/Ctrl+click opens a note in the background, and a right-click opens their card, without the actions that edit (see Clicking in Preview). In the right sidebar’s Comments section, and on a margin card that isn’t open, they’re shown but don’t respond to clicks; open the thread to use them. Since 0.20.0
• Your own comments have a ⋯ (Comment actions) that shows when you point at the comment or move to it with the keyboard, and always on a phone. Its menu has Edit and Delete comment…. The agent’s comments have a ⋯ with Delete comment… only.
• Edit turns the comment into a field in place, with your text in it. Press Enter (or click Save) to save, or Esc (or Cancel) to leave it as it was; @ picks people as in a reply. Save is off while the text is empty or unchanged. If the edit can’t be saved, the thread says why and keeps your text.
• Delete comment… asks “Delete this comment?” first. The replies stay. Deleting the first comment keeps the highlight, and the next reply becomes the first. Deleting a thread’s only comment asks “Delete this thread?” and deletes the thread.
• Each edit or delete is one undo step (Cmd/CtrlZ), and in Suggesting it applies directly instead of becoming a suggestion.
• Resolve marks the thread done. The highlight goes away, but the thread stays in the note, folded to its first comment, Show N more replies and who resolved it. Reopen brings it back, and so does replying: the button then reads Reply and reopen.
• Delete thread… asks “Delete this thread?” first. It removes the comments and keeps the text, and one undo (Cmd/CtrlZ) brings them back.
• The reply field is one line until you click it. Type and press Enter (or click Reply) to send; Cancel clears it. ShiftEnter adds no new line, because a comment is stored on one line. Type @ to pick someone from the People directory; Enter or Tab picks them, and Esc closes the list. If a reply can’t be saved, the thread says why and keeps your text.
• In a read-only note, such as a revision, the thread has no reply field, buttons or ⋯.

Tab moves between the field and the buttons; Esc goes back to the note.

The comment margin

When a note has open threads and its pane is wide enough (about 880 pixels or more), each thread shows as a card in a margin to the right of the text, in Source and Preview alike. The text moves over to make room. A card sits level with its commented text and scrolls with it; when cards would overlap, they stack in order, and the one you’re reading stays level with its text.

• A card shows the first comment, cut off after three lines, and how many replies there are. Click it, or press Enter on it, to put the cursor in its text: the card opens in place as the full thread, with its reply field. A link in a closed card’s comment doesn’t follow; open the card first. Since 0.20.0
• Pointing at a card tints its text, and pointing at commented text outlines its card.
• A resolved thread has no card, except while you’re reading it, for example after clicking it in the sidebar.
• On a narrower pane, a thin strip of markers beside the text stands in for the cards. Markers too close together merge into one with a count; press it again to go through them. A marker opens its thread beside the text.
• On a phone, the markers open the thread as a sheet from the bottom of the screen, quoting the commented text. Tap outside it, or press Esc, to put it away.

What gets tracked

Suggesting tracks the text within lines: typing, deleting, pasting and inline formatting such as bold. Some edits change the shape of the note rather than its text, so they still apply directly:

• pressing Enter, joining two lines, and list continuation
• list, quote, heading and checklist markers at the start of a line
• indenting and outdenting

Some edits are turned off while suggesting:

• reordering sections by dragging
• editing tables in the table view
• inserting a table or an embed
• typing inside HTML, a link’s URL or an autolink

Edits inside code (inline code and code blocks) apply directly.

Pasting. When you paste text copied from a note that has suggestions, the text is pasted as it reads with those suggestions accepted, and it becomes your suggestion.

If you need to edit the suggestion markup itself, switch to Editing. Typing it while suggesting is blocked, with the message Switch to Editing to edit markup directly. Text inside someone else’s suggestion can’t be edited until that suggestion is accepted or rejected.

How it’s stored

Suggestions are plain text in the note’s Markdown file, written in CriticMarkup, so they travel with the note through git and stay readable in any editor:

Meet on {~~Monday~>Tuesday~~}{>>@octocat · 2026-10-08<<} at
{++10 am++}{>>@octocat · 2026-10-08<<}{--noon--}{>>@octocat · 2026-10-08<<}.

The {>>…<<} after a suggestion records its author (your GitHub login when you’re signed in) and date. Suggestions made while signed out carry no author.

A pending suggestion doesn’t count as part of the note yet:

• The note’s title, and its file and folder name, come from the text before suggestions. Suggesting a new heading renames nothing until the suggestion is accepted.
• Export to Word, PDF and other plugin formats uses the text before suggestions. Markdown export copies the file as it is, markup included.
• Links, tags and attachments in a suggestion count right away, so an image in a pending suggestion is never cleaned up as unused.

Limits

• Comments are stored in the note’s Markdown as {==text==} followed by {>>@who · date · comment<<}, so other editors show that markup. An edited comment keeps its author and date and is stored as {>>@who · YYYY-MM-DD · edited · comment<<}. A comment whose own text starts with edited · is stored as edited\ · , so it isn’t read as edited.
• Two people replying to comments in the same paragraph at the same time will hit a merge conflict on sync.
• Two people suggesting changes to the same line at the same time will hit a merge conflict on sync, as with any other edit to the same line.
• On the web, syncing only fast-forwards. If someone else pushed changes to the note since you last pulled, the sync stops with the usual divergence message.
• Presenting a note as slides shows the suggestion markup. Accept or reject the suggestions before presenting.