Burst Notes opens its own editor window whenever a captured line needs more than one line, when you pick a line in Navigation mode, when you choose a header in Edit mode, or when you run Open Current File. Version 1.08 replaced the two web-based editors of earlier versions with a single native Markdown editor. It is deliberately small: a quick place to finish a thought, not a replacement for your favourite writing application.

Visual and Source tabs

The editor has two tabs that show the same text:

• Visual (Command-1) hides the Markdown markers. Headings are big, bullets are bullets, **bold** is bold. Lists continue when you press Return and the typing shortcuts below are active.
• Source (Command-2) shows the raw text in a monospaced font, exactly as it is stored on disk. Nothing is hidden and nothing is expanded or continued for you. Use it when you want to see precisely what is in the file or paste in text that must not be touched.

Command-P jumps to the other tab. The cursor and selection are kept when you switch.

Toolbar and shortcuts

The toolbar at the top of the window has buttons for Heading, Blockquote, Code, Bullet List, Numbered List, Checkbox, Bold and Italic. The status line at the bottom reminds you of the main shortcuts.

Shortcut	Action
Command-B	bold the selection
Command-I	italicise the selection
Command-T, Option-Space	turn the current line into a to-do, or tick and untick it; with a selection, every selected line
Option-up arrow, Option-down arrow	move the current line up or down; a list item takes its nested children along
Command-1, Command-2, Command-P	Visual tab, Source tab, the other tab
Command-Plus, Command-Minus, Command-0	larger, smaller, reset text size
Command-Z, Command-Shift-Z	undo, redo
Escape, Command-W	save and close

The Heading button cycles the current line through the heading levels and back to plain text. Bullet, Numbered and Blockquote add or remove their marker on the current line or on every selected line, and never stack markers on top of each other. Code wraps the current line or selection in a fenced code block, or removes the fences when you are already inside one.

Typing shortcuts

In the Visual tab a few things happen as you type:

• [] or [ ] at the start of a line becomes a to-do item - [ ] , and [x] becomes a ticked one
• Return at the end of a list item starts the next item; Backspace on an empty item leaves the list
• ~~text~~ is shown struck through and ==text== highlighted
• [[wiki links]] as used by Obsidian and similar tools are left exactly as written, including [[page|alias]] forms

None of these fire inside a fenced code block.

Text size

The -, percentage and + controls at the right of the status line change the text size between 70% and 200%. Click the percentage to go back to 100%. The size is remembered.

Saving and closing

The editor saves automatically. Press Escape, Command-W or the close button and the file is written and the window closes. By default the window also closes when you click into another application, so that a note you finished typing does not linger on screen. If a text expander, launcher or other input utility keeps closing the editor before you are done, switch off Auto-Dismiss Editor When Clicked Away under Settings.

Using another editor

Burst Notes does not mind which editor touches its files. Open Current File in Default Application hands the file to whatever macOS uses for .md files, and Open Current File in Nova, … in BBEdit, … in Sublime Text and … in TextEdit appear in the command window for each of those applications that you have installed. Reveal Current File in Finder selects the file in a Finder window.

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