Reading & Presenting
DocGraph separates how a document is stored from how it’s shown. Nothing on this page changes your file — these are viewing preferences, applied live.
Reading preferences
Section titled “Reading preferences”The Aa button in the document toolbar opens Display & reading. Everything here changes how the document looks, never what it contains.
| Control | Options |
|---|---|
| Text size | Smaller / Larger / Reset — or ⌘−, ⌘+, ⌘0 |
| Line spacing | Normal, Relaxed |
| Font (dropdown) | Original (default — the page’s own type; a plain note uses the app’s sans face), Serif, System, Dyslexia (Atkinson Hyperlegible), Kalam (handwriting) |
There is no theme row: the page follows the app’s light or dark theme, set in Settings → General → Appearance — see Change the theme. A page that brings its own CSS keeps it; a plain note is recoloured to match.
The Dyslexia and Kalam fonts are worth knowing about — neither is obvious from the icon.
These apply to HTML and Markdown documents alike, and to the projected views of spreadsheets and Word files.
Stamp new lines with the time, also in this popover on HTML notes, is an exception to “nothing changes your file”, like Right-to-left text below: it switches the page into recording when each new line was written, and that switch is saved in the page. See Recording when a line was written.
Full width — also in this popover — drops the reading column’s maximum width so a page fills the window. Useful for wide tables and spreadsheets; unavailable for PDFs and images, which manage their own layout. It is on by default, and switching it off is remembered for that file only.
What is remembered, and where
Section titled “What is remembered, and where”| Preference | Scope |
|---|---|
| Text size | Per vault: one value for every page in the vault |
| Line spacing, font | Per vault, shared by all pages |
| Full width | Per file — each page keeps its own choice |
| Right-to-left text | Stored in the file itself, as described below |
| Stamp new lines with the time | Stored in the file itself (HTML notes only) |
All but the last two are stored on this computer by the app, not in your notes, so they never change a file and aren’t carried when you copy the vault folder elsewhere.
Focus and presentation
Section titled “Focus and presentation”Focus mode (⌘.) hides the app’s chrome and centres the reading column — the sidebar, panels and title bar go away. The page bar stays, so you can go back and forward, and its Exit focus mode button (or ⌘. again) brings everything back.
Presentation mode goes further: full-screen, distraction-free. Press Esc to leave, or exit full-screen any other way.
Both are in the command palette (⌘K) as Toggle focus mode and Toggle presentation mode.
To give a talk from several pages — slides in order, speaker notes, a presenter view and clocks — present a whole folder instead. See Presenting a Folder.
Collapsing a long page
Section titled “Collapsing a long page”Headings fold into sections when Collapsible headers is on (the default; Settings → General → Appearance → Vault behaviour). The toolbar button only collapses or expands every section at once. See Diagrams, Callouts & Code.
Reading time
Section titled “Reading time”The status bar at the bottom of the window shows N min read for the open note, estimated at 200 words a minute from the note’s text. It updates a moment after you stop typing, and stays hidden for notes under 50 words, where an estimate would mean nothing. The word count itself isn’t shown.
Export to PDF
Section titled “Export to PDF”Export to PDF — in the toolbar, the command palette, or a file’s right-click menu (HTML and Markdown) — saves the page as you’re viewing it. Your reading preferences come along — text size, line spacing, font and full width — but the PDF is always rendered in the light theme, even when the app is dark, so it stays readable on paper. Tables, charts, Mermaid diagrams, tasks and callouts render as they do on screen. One difference: collapsed sections are expanded, so the PDF always holds the whole page. The result is a single continuous page the height of the document, with no page breaks — so it suits reading on screen more than printing.
Right-to-left text
Section titled “Right-to-left text”Arabic, Hebrew and other right-to-left scripts render correctly with no configuration — each paragraph picks up its own direction from its text, so a note can mix RTL and LTR paragraphs and each one is laid out the right way.
For a document that is entirely right-to-left, Right-to-left text in the reading popover flips the whole page. Unlike everything else in that popover, this one writes to the file, so the page stays right-to-left everywhere: it sets the direction on the HTML itself, or, in a .md note, adds dir: rtl to the front matter (and removes it again, along with an otherwise-empty front-matter block, when you switch back). ⌘Z undoes it.
Lists follow the document’s direction rather than each item’s own text: in a right-to-left note every bullet and number sits on the right, beside its item, even for an English line; in a left-to-right note an Arabic or Hebrew item keeps its bullet on the left, in line with the rest of the list.