# Files & Folders Wander opens your notes three ways, from plainest to smartest. The rule is simple: Wander never writes anything into your files or folders unless you ask. ## A single file Open one markdown file (⇧⌘O, or drag it in, or File ▸ Open File…) and Wander edits just that file, saved right back where it lives. No sidebar, no extra files, a plain editor for one note. Create a fresh one with ⌘N and Save As… (⇧⌘S) it anywhere you like. ## A plain folder Open a folder (⌘O) and browse and edit all its notes from the sidebar. It stays a plain folder: Wander writes nothing extra to it, no hidden files, no index. Ideal for a folder of articles kept next to their images and research. In a plain folder you get the file tree, the editor, and ⌘P to jump to a file by name. What you don't get, history, full-text search, tags, backlinks, needs an index, so it's off until you turn it on. A folder over 5,000 files always opens plain first and asks once before any indexing starts. ## A vault A vault is a folder with the smarts switched on: full-text ⌘P search, version history, comments, tags, and backlinks. To keep these, Wander stores them in a hidden `.wander` folder inside your folder, and that folder is created only the moment you turn history & search on, never before. ## Turning a folder into a vault Three places, all the same switch: - the mode chip at the bottom of the sidebar, click "Plain folder" to enable - the History panel, its Settings tab - Settings ▸ This Folder A folder that already contains `.wander` (or an Obsidian `.obsidian` folder) opens as a vault automatically. Turn it back off from Settings ▸ This Folder and it's a plain folder again, your `.wander` folder is left in place; delete it yourself if you want it gone. ## Favorites Right-click any file in the sidebar and choose Add to Favorites, or use the note's ... menu. The star in the sidebar header, next to Files and Tags, shows your favorites as their own list, in the order you starred them. The file never moves, the list is a view, so the note stays in its folder and opens from either place. Remove one from the same menus, or right-click it in the list. In a vault, stars are stored in the hidden `.wander` folder and travel with it to your other Macs. In a plain folder they stay on this machine, and nothing is written into your folder, the same promise as everything else here. ## Opening .md files from Finder macOS lets one app own markdown files, and it will not hand that over silently: Wander can ask, but you confirm. Settings ▸ General ▸ Default Markdown app ▸ Make Default, then approve the system prompt. You can also do it in Finder: right-click any .md file, Get Info, choose Wander under "Open with:", then Change All. The same row exists for .typ, .mermaid and .csv files, so a typst paper, a diagram or a spreadsheet can open in Wander on a double-click too. Each type is its own choice: making Wander your Markdown app does not touch the others. This also decides the Quick Look preview. When you press space on a .md file, macOS uses the preview from whichever app owns markdown, so making Wander the default is what gives you Wander's rendered preview instead of another app's. The preview reads like the app: headings, bold, wikilinks, task checkboxes, callouts, footnotes and task fields all render, and the file's icon in Finder follows the same rules. Math stays as you typed it, since a preview cannot typeset. ## PDFs Drag a PDF into a note and Wander asks what you want, showing what it found: "64 pages · text", or "9 pages · 8 text, 1 scanned (read on this device)". - Convert to Note turns it into an editable markdown note, tables and headings kept, with the original PDF stored in your attachments folder and linked at the bottom of the note. Pages that are scans are read on your Mac, nothing is uploaded. - Attach Only keeps the file and inserts a link. Drop several at once and Wander asks once for the whole batch, then handles the rest of the files (images, markdown, spreadsheets) in the same drop. PDFs are listed in the sidebar, and open in Wander rather than another app. In an open PDF you get the page you are on, ⌘F to search it with every match highlighted (⌘G and ⇧⌘G to step through), and two buttons: Convert to Note, and Copy as Quote once you select some text. A copied quote pastes as a blockquote with a link back to the page it came from, so clicking it later reopens the PDF right there. You can also convert a PDF already in your vault: right-click it in the sidebar and choose Convert to Note. ## CSV files A .csv (or .tsv) in your vault opens as an editable grid: header row on top, numbers right-aligned, every cell editable in place. An edit rewrites only that row's line in the file, so the file stays plain text with clean diffs. The eye button shows the raw text, the split button shows both. The right panel lists the columns with a small distribution chart for each, and the terminal button above the grid lets you query the file with SQL (the open file is the table `this`). Very large files open instantly as a read-only streaming grid, sortable and queryable at any size. Pressing space on a csv in Finder shows the same kind of grid as its Quick Look preview. See [[Data & CSV]] for a hands-on example. ## Sync between devices A vault is just a folder, so any folder that syncs is a synced vault: create it in iCloud Drive (or Dropbox, or a git repo) and open it in Wander on every device. The step-by-step setup, history across devices, and the iPhone story live in [[Sync New]]. ## Nothing leaves your Mac Plain or vault, Wander runs locally, no account, no cloud, no telemetry. Your notes stay plain markdown in folders you control. To reach another device, put the folder wherever you already sync; see [[Sync New]]. Next: [[Sync New]] · [[History]] · [[Getting Started]] · [[Keyboard Shortcuts]]