Pages and Linking

Linking is the soul of a wiki, and MojoPad makes it automatic. There are five kinds of links, and four of them make themselves.

Page names and URLs light up as you type — click to follow.

1. Page-name links (automatic)

Whenever the name of an existing page appears in your text, it becomes a link. Type GroceryList anywhere and it links to the GroceryList page. Matching ignores case.

Rename a page the way you rename a file. In the Pages list, click the page you have open once more — not twice quickly, which does nothing — and after a moment its name becomes a field with the old name selected. Type the new one and press Return; Esc puts the old one back, and clicking away keeps what you typed. It never starts on the click that opens a page, nor on a ⌘-click or ⇧-click (those choose pages). A name another page already has is refused in words, and the field stays open so you can change it. Rename… in the page’s right-click menu is there as ever, and it refuses a name another page already has in the same words, staying open with what you typed so you can change it. So do the page’s title at the top and the Name box in Page Info, which leave the page’s name as it was.

Rename a page and what you already wrote keeps working. The old name is kept as one of that page's other names, so every sentence that mentions it, and every page embedded by it, goes on finding it — including on pages you are not looking at. What is already written is not rewritten: your words stay as you typed them, and the old name simply still leads to the right place. If you would rather it did not, remove it from Other names in the page's Info panel.

One-word names are treated more carefully, and it is worth knowing why. A name of two words or more — Grocery List, Robert Smith — is a deliberate thing to write, so it links wherever it appears. A name that is a single common word is not: if you have a page called Ideas, you do not want every sentence containing the word "ideas" turned into a link to it. So a one-word name links only where the two pages are genuinely about the same thing, which MojoPad works out from what they say.

That is the right instinct for a wiki of ordinary notes and the wrong one for a wiki brought over from somewhere that linked every occurrence of every name — especially if your page titles are mostly single words. Turn on Link one-word page names everywhere in the Info palette and the judgment is switched off for that document: every mention of every name in your writing becomes a link, and nothing has to be done by hand. (Words inside a page's own styling — the part of an imported page you never see — are never linked, so a page named for a typeface or a common word cannot break an imported page's look.) It is a per-document setting, so a wiki that wants it can have it without changing the others.

A run of linked names joined by slashes wraps at its slashes. An index line like 12. Glossary/Methods/Timeline/Bibliography is, to the way text is laid out on screen, a single long word with nowhere to break — so when it did not fit in what was left of a line it jumped down whole and left the 12. alone on the line above, as if you had pressed Return, and no spacing setting could bring the two back together. A link that follows a slash — one MojoPad made or one you made yourself — may now begin a new line, so the run wraps like any sentence and the number stays with it. Nothing is added to your words to do this: it is how the links are drawn, and an export, a PDF, a book and a published site wrap the same way. A name that did not become a link is ordinary text and still joins the words on either side of its slash; Link one-word page names everywhere, above, is how to make every name a link.

2. Aliases (automatic)

A page can answer to more than one name. Open the Info palette and add aliases — give "Robert Smith" the alias "Bob", and every Bob in the document links to him. Daily Notes use this trick out of the box: the page named 2026-06-11 also answers to "Thursday, June 11, 2026".

3. WikiWords (automatic, optional)

A WikiWord is a single word with a capital in the middle, LikeThis. With "Highlight WikiWords as potential links" enabled (Info palette ▸ Document, or Settings for new documents), WikiWords are underlined as potential pages — click one and the page is created. Turn it off if your writing is full of CamelCase that shouldn't link.

4. Web links (automatic)

Anything starting with http://, https://, or mojopad:// becomes a clickable link. Web links open in your browser — or your own copy, when the wiki holds the paper a link names by its DOI or PubMed number, or a page you saved from that address (see Page Links Everywhere); mojopad:// links jump to a page — even a page in a different MojoPad document. See Page Links Everywhere.

Links to reference and notes apps work the same way. An item link copied from DEVONthink (x-devonthink-item://…), a Bookends reference, a Zotero item, a Hook link, a BibDesk entry, and links to Papers, Highlights and MarginNote become links by themselves, just as a web address does: type one and press Space or Return, paste one on its own, or paste a passage that has one in it. Paste one over words you have selected and those words become the link. On a Markdown page, one you type or paste on its own is saved in the file as a link, just as a web address is. The first time you click one, MojoPad asks before it opens the other app, and offers to always allow that kind of link. A link to any other app stays as you wrote it until you make it a link yourself, with Add Link… or [words](address).

5. Links you make by hand

Make Link (⌘L) — link the selection to a page with that exact name, creating it if needed.
Link Selection to Page… — link the selection to any existing page, whatever the words say. Also on the right-click menu.
Make Custom URL Link… (⌥⌘U) — register a phrase that links to a URL everywhere it appears in the document (it says so, and asks first if the phrase is on many pages). Great for ticket numbers, company names, documentation sites. To stop it, right-click one of its links and choose Stop Linking Everywhere; to link only the words you selected, choose Just Link These Words in the same dialog.
Add Link… (Format menu) — a one-off web link on the selection, without registering a phrase.
Write it the Markdown way. Type [some words](an address) and the closing bracket turns it into a link where you typed it. Or paste the whole thing — which is the one that matters if you keep item links to another app, since a x-devonthink-item:// or bookends:// address is copied, never typed. Or type [some words](, paste the address, and type the closing bracket. Any address MojoPad would open works, not just web ones. Words in brackets that name no address — [see note](above) — are left exactly as you wrote them.

Knowing where a link goes

Rest the pointer on a page link for a moment and a small preview card appears — the page's first lines and when you last edited it, without leaving where you are. A link to a paper shows what the paper is: its title, then the file it came from, its journal, year and authors, the start of its abstract, and how many passages you marked in it with the first of them. A locked page shows its name and a lock, and nothing of what is inside. Hovering a web link shows its address in a tooltip. When the wiki holds your own copy of what it points to — a paper it names by its DOI or PubMed number, or a page you saved from that address — a click opens your copy instead, and after a link to a PDF of yours or a page you saved, (PDF) or (saved) says so. Inside your copy itself, a link to its own address goes to the web, since it is your way back to the original.

A link to a page that is a downloaded PDF says so on the link itself — the name is followed by (PDF). Somebody reading a wiki built on a library of papers cannot otherwise tell a link to a note from a link to a full text without going to look. The badge is drawn on the link rather than written into it: your page keeps the words you typed, and it does not appear in exports or on a published site. A web link to a page you saved in the wiki is followed by (saved) the same way, because a click on it opens your copy rather than the site (see A link to a page you saved opens your copy, in Page Links Everywhere).

Prefer a quieter pointer? Turn the bubbles off with Settings ▸ Links & Pages ▸ Show a preview bubble when hovering links and page lists — the same switch covers every one of them: links in your pages, the Pages panel, Backlinks and the other side panels, and everything Ask shows you (see “Seeing a page before you open it” under Ask your wiki).

Removing links

Edit ▸ Unlink (also in the command palette, and as Remove Link in a link's right-click menu) removes the link under the cursor, and it sticks: on a Markdown page the phrase is remembered as unlinked for that page, so it stays plain text after you leave and come back — automatic links and WikiWords alike. On a formatted text page the unlink holds for that exact spot. To unlink a phrase across the whole document, rename or delete the page (or remove the alias or custom URL that creates it).

Completing names

Halfway through typing a page name? Press ⌘K (Complete Page Name) and MojoPad finishes it for you, with a picker when several pages match.

Writing a link as [[Page Name]]

If you are used to writing links as [[Page Name]], MojoPad understands them — on the page as you read it, and in everything that leaves: a compiled paper, a PDF, a Word file, a published site. The brackets come off and the name becomes a real link you can click.

Only names that are actually pages. [[Something You Never Wrote]] is left exactly as you typed it, brackets and all — so a link that has not landed is easy to spot, and anybody writing about the syntax keeps their example.
[[Page Name|call it this]] shows your own words instead of the page's name.
Your source is not rewritten. On a Markdown page you keep the brackets exactly as you typed them; the link is how the page is drawn, not what it stores. Read the page as source (click the Markdown · Formatted pill) and there they are, unchanged.
![[Page Name]] is an embed, not a link, and is left alone.
Markdown pages only, and deliberately. A Markdown page hands the brackets back when it saves, so the link is safe to draw. A plain-text page's whole promise is that the text is the text, and a formatted page stores the link itself rather than the brackets — on both, drawing the link would quietly replace what you typed. So on those two, brackets stay brackets. Use the Link button or ⌘L there, which is what they store anyway.

Naming a page mid-sentence, without stopping

Typing [[ normally opens the page picker, which is the right door when you are not sure of the name: it lists what you have, and lets you name something you have not written yet.

It is the wrong door when you are in the middle of a sentence. Writing a thought out is exactly when the things you mean to write about next occur to you, and a dialog — followed by being taken to a blank page — ends the thought you were having. So in Settings ▸ Links & Pages ▸ Typing [[ you can change it to Lets me type the name:

Nothing opens. Type [[Some Idea]] and keep writing.
The link is made when you close the brackets — to that page if it exists, or to a new one if it does not.
You are not taken there. A note appears saying what was made, with a way to open it when you have finished the paragraph. The new page is empty and waiting.
⌘L follows the same setting, so highlighting a phrase makes its page and leaves you where you are.

Nothing is created until you close the brackets, so a name you were halfway through typing never becomes a page.

Links that suggest themselves

MojoPad goes a step beyond matching names. As you write, it reads the paragraph under your cursor and, when you pause, quietly offers existing pages it relates to by meaning — including ones you'd never have thought to name. A small Relates to strip appears in the corner with a page or three; click one and the link drops in right where you're typing. Ignore it and it fades. It's the fastest way to weave a new note into everything you've already written — the wiki grows its own connections as you think.

If you would rather write undisturbed, turn it off: Settings ▸ Editing ▸ Offer pages this paragraph relates to. The ✕ on the strip itself only quiets it for the page you are on and only until you quit, which is right for "not on this one" and wrong for "not ever" — the setting is the one that means never. Nothing else changes: the same pages still turn up in Rediscover, in the map, and in the writing view's own panel when you go looking for them.

In Focus Mode nothing is offered. Focus Mode keeps the corner for its word count, so the strip waits until you leave it, and then offers pages again the next time you pause.

Your PDFs and books are part of this. The papers, manuals and books you keep in the wiki are read for meaning like everything else — so a paragraph you're writing can surface the paper it belongs beside, and Rediscover can hand back a paper you skimmed months ago and forgot. A long document is sampled across its whole length, not just its opening pages, so its findings count as much as its abstract. Nothing leaves your Mac; this is the same local index everything else here uses.

Embedding pages

The deepest way to connect pages is to embed one inside another. Write ![[Page Name]] on its own line — finish the closing brackets and it renders right there as you type, read-only, in a titled box (click the title to open the source page). This works the same on any page that takes text — formatted text, Markdown and plain text. On a Markdown Page you can also type / and choose Embed page to pick from a list. Edit the source page and the embed shows the new content the next time this page renders — great for dashboards and maps of content. Embeds round-trip to ![[Page Name]] in the source; a page that is only a snapshot or attachment embeds as a card — and a PDF embeds with its first page showing, a little thumbnail of the paper right there in your literature note; click it to open the reader. An embed also counts as a connection: the embedded page shows up in its Backlinks and on the Graph, so embedding wires two pages together exactly the way a link does.

Calling an embed something else

An embed wears the page's own name at the top, which is right when you are pointing at a source and wrong when you are quoting yourself. Put a bar and your own words after the name:

![[Q3 Planning Notes|What we decided]] — the box is headed What we decided, and still opens Q3 Planning Notes when you click it.
![[Q3 Planning Notes|]] — a bar and nothing after it. No heading, no box: the borrowed writing reads as part of your page, and exports that way too. This is the one to use when a passage is genuinely part of what you are writing and the frame around it is just furniture.

The name is still tried whole first, so a page actually called Pros | Cons goes on meaning that page. A bar only means "label" when the name it would make does not exist.

Embeds can go finer than a whole page — a single section or even a single paragraph. See Transclusion and Panes.

Putting one page inside another

Both are in the command palette too, as Embed a Page and Copy a Page in Here, and both answer to the word transclusion — in the palette and in the “/” menu alike.

There are two ways, and which you want depends on one question: should the words change when the other page changes?

Embed page — type / and choose it — puts a live window onto the other page. Edit the source and every page embedding it shows the new words. You cannot type into the window, because the words are not this page’s. Use it for a definition, a standing list, a paragraph you want to state once and show in six places.

Copy page in here puts the other page’s words into this one, and they are yours from that moment. Edit them, cut them up, delete half. The source page is untouched and will not change what you now have. A line above the copy says where it came from, and clicking it goes there. Use it to start from something you already wrote — a structure you keep reusing, last month’s report as the shape of this month’s.

Both offer a single section when the page has headings, so you can take one part rather than all of it.

What a copy brings with it

Copying a page in takes its words and tidies them on the way: the markup is cleaned, and the paragraph addresses the source page uses are not carried over. That second one matters if you have linked to a paragraph — the link still lands on the original, where you made it, rather than following the copy around. Anything the source page was embedding arrives as an embed and fills itself in from whatever that page says now.

Some pages have nothing to copy in. A file page keeps its words inside the file, and a canvas or a board has no prose at all. Choosing one of those says so rather than inserting an empty space.

A link to a page, and a link to a passage

Right-click any page in the sidebar and choose Copy Link to Page. You get a link that opens that page in that wiki — paste it into a mail message, a task, a note in another app, anywhere on this Mac. Clicking it brings MojoPad forward, opens the wiki if it is closed, and goes to the page. The link is built from the page’s own identity rather than its name, so renaming the page later does not break it.

Or just drag it. Drag a page from the sidebar, or the Pages list, into a chat with an assistant, a Word document, a note or onto the desktop, and it lands as that same link — its name as a link in a document, the name and the link as words in a chat box. Highlight a page in the Pages list with the arrow keys and press ⌘C to copy the same thing. Tick several pages first (the select button above the list) and a drag or ⌘C carries one link each; in plain text they are Markdown links, one per line, [Name](link). A page with a password of its own goes by its link alone, without its name. Dropping a page inside MojoPad (onto a folder, a board, a pane) still files or places it, as before.

Hand a page to Claude. Say you are in a chat with Claude, connected to MojoPad (see AI Agents), and want it to work from one page. Drag the page into the chat, or paste its link, and ask for what you want — “summarize this page”. Claude reads the page from the link alone, with no wiki path and no page name to give. It finds the wiki among those you have opened in MojoPad, so a link to a wiki you have not opened here, or one that cannot be matched, is declined with a short sentence, and the page is read under the same rules as always: a wiki your assistants may not read stays unread, and a page with a password of its own comes back empty. Open MojoPad once after updating so it can tell the connection which wikis your links belong to. Links copied before this release name the wiki by its folder; for those, tell Claude which wiki and which page, as before.

Or a link to one paragraph. Hover the left edge of any block, click the handle, and choose Copy link to this passage. That link opens the page and scrolls to that paragraph, flashing it so you can see where you landed.

Or to the exact words. Select a phrase, right-click it, and choose Copy Link to Selected Words — it is also on the block handle and in the command palette. The words are marked where they stand, with a tint and a dashed underline that stays in the page, and the link points at that mark. Follow it a year later and you are shown the sentence you meant, not the paragraph it sat in. The mark is named from the words themselves; if you have already marked that passage, the link points at the mark you made rather than laying a second one over it.

Taking the mark off. You linked to words in an abstract to try it, and want the abstract back as it was. You marked the wrong words, or a whole sentence when three words would have done. A page you are about to hand on still carries marks only you need. Right-click anywhere in the marked words and choose Remove Page Anchor. It is also in the Format menu and the command palette, for the mark the cursor is in, and as Remove on the mark’s row in the Context pane’s Notes. The mark comes off and the words stay exactly as they were, bold, links and all. Edit ▸ Undo (⌘Z), or Undo on the line that says Anchor removed, puts it back.

It tells you first what stops working. A link to marked words finds them by their mark. So before anything changes, MojoPad counts the links in your wiki that lead to these words (a pasted link, a [[Page#=…]] link, a note you made into a page) and, if there are any, asks once: 3 links in “The Field Guide” and “Reading notes” lead to these words, with Remove Anchor and Cancel. Once the mark is gone, those links open the page at its top and the status line says the marked words are gone. A link to them you pasted outside MojoPad, which the wiki cannot count, does the same. Pages that are locked are not counted, and the question says so. If nothing links to the words, the mark simply comes off.

A mark belongs to its own page: marked words shown inside another page are taken off on the page they come from, and the status line names it. On a Markdown page read as source, switch to Formatted first (⌃⌘P). In a PDF the mark is a highlight: right-click it and choose Remove highlight.

Paste it into another page and the words you selected are the link. Writing up a summary, you quote the sentence it rests on: select it in the source page, copy the link, paste it into the summary, and the summary shows those words, underlined as a link, working the moment they land. The clipboard holds the words as a link the way a link copied from a web page does, for an app that takes formatted text; for an app that takes only plain text — the address field of a reference app, a terminal — it holds the address alone; and it holds the address with your words as its name, the form an app that keeps links by name takes. Which of these another app uses, and whether it keeps a MojoPad address clickable, is up to that app.

Click it to check what a sentence rests on. You are reading your summary and want to see the words a claim came from, without losing your place. Click the linked words and the page they are in opens at those words — beside you, the way words in a PDF open, when it is a page you saved from the web; where a link to it would open, when it is a page of your own (both below). They are brought to the middle of their pane and lit, and a line runs from the link you clicked to them for a few seconds, as it does for words in a PDF. It follows them if you scroll, and goes when you follow another link. Nothing is written into either page.

A page you saved from the web — a PubMed record, an article you clipped — is a paper, so its words open the way words in a PDF do: in a pane of their own beside the page you are reading, or in place of the paper beside you when Settings ▸ Links & Pages ▸ When a link opens a paper is set to In the same pane as the last paper. ⌘-click does the other for that one click.
A page of your own opens where Open links and results in… sends any link to it, ⌘ and ⌥ working as they always do. When it opens in place of the page you clicked in, there is no line to draw: the link has gone with its page.
Already open in a pane? The words are found there, and nothing else moves.
In an Ask answer, the page opens beside, never in place of the page in front, and you can go on typing your question.
Right-click the link for Open Beside, which always gives the page a pane of its own, and Copy URL.

If the marked words have been rewritten or removed since, the page opens at its top and the status line says the words are gone. A page that is locked opens on its lock screen, and nothing in it is looked at. The same link followed from another app, or from the History menu, opens the page in the window in front of you, as it always has, at the words — in the pane where the page is already open, if it is. A [[Page#=…]] link, a link to a heading or a paragraph, and a note you made into a page linking back to its words all go the same way.

On a page with a password of its own, the link is copied with none of the words you selected, and the status line says so: a link carries its words wherever it is pasted, where the password does not reach them. Only the mark's name goes with it, so a new mark there is named Passage, not after the words. A mark made before the page had its password keeps the name it was given, usually its first few words, and that name is in the link; the status line shows it.

No link MojoPad copies says where you keep your work. This one, Copy Link to Page, Copy link to this passage, a folder's link and a card's link all name your wiki by a fingerprint that only this Mac can match, never by the folder it is in — so a link you paste into a mail message does not carry your home folder's name or your wiki's. Links copied before this update still work exactly as they did.

The same passage can be addressed the other way, for use inside your wiki: Copy block link on the same menu gives you ![[Page#^id]], which pastes the passage into another page as a live copy. One is for going TO the passage, the other for bringing it here; both name the same paragraph, so neither goes stale when the other is used.

Splitting a paragraph does not split its address. Cut an addressed paragraph in two and the first half keeps the address, because that is where the link was made; the second half is new text with none. A page that already carries two paragraphs sharing one address repairs itself the next time you edit it.

Writing one by hand. A link composed outside MojoPad can name a passage as well as a page, using the same two forms the app writes: a heading, or a marked passage. That is what makes these usable from a task manager, a mail message, or anything else that holds a link.

For this Mac, or for the web

While a wiki is shared, every one of those commands asks which kind of link you want. For this Mac opens the page in MojoPad, as before. For the web is an ordinary address anyone on your network can open in a browser — and it carries the passage too, so a colleague lands on the paragraph or the words you meant rather than the top of the page.

You are only asked when there is something to choose: with the wiki not shared, a web address would be a broken link that looks like a working one, so you get the local link and no question. A web link works for as long as you leave the wiki shared, and stops when you stop.

Writing a link by hand. [[Page#Heading]] and [[Page#^id]] both work in your own writing and land on the passage rather than the top of the page. This is also how most other wiki-shaped apps address a passage, so a folder of notes brought in from one keeps its internal links working.