Organize your notes

Canto gives you a few ways to keep notes in order, and you can use as many or as few as you like: folders for where a note lives, tags for what it's about, projects for a piece of work with its own chats, and pins for what you open every day. Search finds everything either way.

Folders#

Folders are in the sidebar under Notes. Make one with ⇧⌘N, New folder in the sidebar's + menu, or New subfolder in a folder's right-click menu. Folders go four levels deep, like Work/Projects/2026/Q4.

Right-click a folder for:

• New note and New canvas inside it.
• Chat with this folder: New scoped chat starts a chat that reads only this folder and its subfolders; Add to current chat's scope adds it to the chat you have open.
• Rename, Move to… and New subfolder.
• Delete…: the notes and canvases inside move to the Trash; the folders themselves can't be brought back. The sheet names everything that goes before you confirm.
• Select multiple: see Several notes at once.

Drag notes and folders in the sidebar to move them.

Move to…#

Move to… is in a note's right-click menu and in its header's ⋯ menu. It's a quick sheet: type to filter your folders, use the arrow keys and ↩ to move the note, or make a new folder right there.

Tags#

Add tags to a note in the row under its title, with Add tag…. Tags can be named in Korean, Japanese or any other language; a name made only of emoji isn't accepted, and Canto says why.

Click a tag (in a note, or in the inspector's Context) to open its tag page: every note with that tag, newest first, with its folder, and the other tags in use as chips to move between them. The tag page's ⋯ menu is where a tag is managed:

• Rename tag…: every note with the tag shows the new name.
• Change colour.
• Delete tag…: the tag comes off every note that has it. The notes stay.

To tag many notes at once, select them in the sidebar and choose Tag … selected notes…, then Add or Remove. ⇧⌘F, or ⌘K's Show tags, opens search, where any tag is a filter.

The Inbox can suggest tags for notes that have none; see The Inbox.

Pins#

Right-click a note, canvas or chat and choose Pin. Pinned items sit in the sidebar's Pinned group, at the top, until you choose Unpin. Pinning never counts as editing a note.

Projects#

A project is a piece of work with its own chats: a name and colour, a description, instructions every chat in it follows, and, if you like, a folder. Projects are in the sidebar under Projects; make one with New project.

A project's page lists its chats, with New chat and Add existing chat. You can also add notes and canvases to it.

What a project's chats look at is set under Advanced when you make or edit the project:

A project's ⋯ menu can archive it (its chats stay, but it takes no new ones) or delete it. Deleting a project turns its chats into regular chats; its notes and folders stay as they are.

Several notes at once#

Choose Select multiple in the sidebar's right-click menu, then tick notes, canvases and folders. Right-click the selection for:

• Move … selected items to…
• Tag … selected notes…
• Pin or unpin … notes
• Delete … selected items…
• Clear selection

Asking Canto to file, tag or link many notes in one go is Let Ask edit.

The Trash#

Deleted notes, canvases and chats go to the Trash, in the sidebar's Library. It opens in a pane like any other page, with the inspector as its preview.

• Search the Trash (⌘F) and filter by Notes, Canvases and Chats.
• Each row says where the item came from, how big it is and how many days it has left. If its folder is gone, it says where a restore will put it.
• Select an item to preview it in the inspector, with what restoring or deleting it would change.
• Restore puts each item back where it was. A deleted folder isn't listed, but its notes are, and they go back to the nearest folder that still exists.
• Delete forever… asks first and names what goes, including links in other notes that become plain text. Deleting a note forever also deletes its own chats.
• Empty Trash… deletes everything in it.

A note in the Trash opens with one quiet bar: Restore and Delete forever…. A chat in the Trash has no composer.

Items are deleted for good 30 days after they went to the Trash. Choose 7 days, 30 days, 90 days or Never in Settings › Sync & storage › Trash › Delete from the Trash after. Backups keep their own copies until they age out; see Backups, history and the Trash.

The Library#

The sidebar's Library group holds the places that aren't notes: Attachments, Meetings, Remembered, the vault graph and the Trash. All chats is under Chats. Each opens in a pane, so back and forward work as they do for notes.

• Attachments: Files, images and links
• Meetings: Voice and meetings
• Remembered: What Canto remembers
• The vault graph: Related notes and the graph