A wiki gets its power from reuse: write something once, see it everywhere it matters. MojoPad takes the page embed further — embed just a section, or just a single block, and open a second page beside the one you're writing. All of it live.
Add a heading's name after the page name and the embed shows just that section — the heading and everything under it, up to the next heading of the same level:
![[Project Plan#Milestones]]Three ways to make one:
![[Page#Heading]] on its own line, on any page that takes text: formatted, Markdown, or plain text./ and choose Embed page; after you pick a page with headings,
MojoPad offers the whole page or any single section.⌃⌘O), hover a heading, and click
the ⧉ that appears. Paste on any page and it becomes the live embed.Plain-text pages embed too — put ![[Page Name]] on a line of its own and it
renders there like anywhere else, whole page or single section. A reader asked for exactly this: a
plain-text page should be able to pull in another plain-text page, and there was no good reason it
couldn't.
What is worth knowing is what the file holds. A plain-text page's whole promise is that the
text is the text, so what is stored is the marker you typed — ![[Page Name]] — and never
the borrowed words. Edit around it, close the page, open it in any other editor: the line is still
five characters and a page name. The embed is a way of seeing the other page, not a copy of
it, so the other page changing changes what you see here and nothing needs re-doing.
The marker has to be alone on its line. ![[Notes]] and more stays as written, on the
same principle: a block that swallowed the words beside it would be taking liberties with a page whose
point is that it doesn't.
And it travels. Export the page — HTML, PDF, Markdown, Word, ePub, a published site — and the
embedded page comes with it as a quoted passage under its own name, the same as on any other page
type. So a plain-text outline of a talk assembled out of ![[Section One]] markers goes
out as the whole talk, not as a page of markers. The same is true of the split view and of a card:
what you see is the other page, wherever you are looking from.
Any paragraph, heading, or list item can carry a small permanent name — a block id — and be embedded anywhere:
⇧⌘P).![[Page#^ab12cd]] becomes a live embed of just that block.On Markdown pages the id is plain text — a trailing marker like Some paragraph. ^ab12cd —
so it travels with your notes and round-trips cleanly (the marker is hidden when the page renders).
You can write your own memorable ids: end a line with ^budget and reference it as
![[Plans#^budget]].
When you export a page — HTML, PDF, Markdown, Word, ePub, a published site — an embedded
page comes with it, as a quoted passage under the name of the page it came from. So a manuscript
assembled out of ![[Chapter One]] embeds exports as the whole manuscript, not as a
page full of holes. Embeds nest three deep and never loop; a live database view names itself
rather than pretending to be a table in a file that can't refresh.
Section and block embeds are live views: edit the source and every embed shows the new content the next time it renders. Click an embed's title to jump to the source, right at that section. Embeds count as connections — they appear in Backlinks and on the Graph.
Quickest way in: the ◫ button at the top-right of the page you are reading — it
opens something beside this page and closes it again. There is a ◫ Split button in the
toolbar too; that one is about the window, this one is about the page, and it is the one your hand
reaches for without leaving what you are writing. (Prefer the keyboard? ⌥-click any page
link, or use View ▸ Open Beside This Page….)
The pane opens to read in. To write in it too, press ✏ Write here too in its header and the two become real editable columns, each with its own small title and an ✕ to close it. That is the arrangement to reach for when both sides are yours to change; the reading pane is the one for a source you only want in view.
Put a second page side by side with the one you're writing — read a source while you write, keep a reference in view, or take notes beside a book. Four ways to open one:
⌥⌘O (also View ▸ Open Beside This Page…, or the command palette) and
pick the page to open on the right. This is the keyboard way in — no mouse needed.⌥-click any page link to open its target in the split pane.Move between the two sides from the keyboard: ⌥⌘O (View ▸ Focus Other Pane)
hops your focus from the editor to the split pane and back — the side that holds the keyboard wears
a quiet ring, and while the pane is focused the arrow, space, and page keys scroll it. (Press
⌥⌘O with no split open and it just asks which page to open first.)
The right side is a live, read-only reading pane — it shows a page or a book so you can read and pull from it while you write on the left. Drag the divider to resize — the width sticks — and ✕ closes it.
Want to write in it as well? Click the pane's ✏ and it becomes a real second editor: two fully editable columns, the caret picking which one you are writing in, each column saving to its own page. A hairline under the column's name shows which one holds the caret. Drag the divider to resize either way, and the width is remembered.
There is only one command for all of this — Open Beside This Page… — and what you get depends on the page, not on which command you picked. A page that can be written in opens ready to write in if you have asked for that; a PDF, a book or a locked page can only be read, so it opens as a reading pane. (Earlier versions offered this as two separate commands, "Split View" and "Side by Side", which was one distinction too many: a setting could silently turn the first into the second, so the same choice did different things on different days.)
If two documents at once is simply how you work, you can turn that round: Settings ▸ Links & Pages ▸ Two pages at once ▸ Open the second pane ready to write in. From then on opening a split gives you two real editors instead of one editor and a reading pane, without the extra click. A PDF, a book or a locked page can only ever be read, so those still open as a reading pane — which is what the setting says rather than something to discover.
Sometimes the reference you keep glancing at deserves its own little window — checklist, style guide, the page of numbers you're writing against. Right-click any page in the sidebar and choose Open in Small Window: the page opens as a compact card that floats above your other windows, so it stays in view while you write anywhere else — even in another app.
If you would rather it behaved like any other window and went behind whatever you switch to, turn off Keep small windows in front of other windows in Settings ▶ Links & Pages. Cards already open change the moment you do.
The card opens as a live reading view: edit the page in the main window and the
card updates the moment it saves. Links inside it work. Close it like any window
(⌘W), or click Open in Main Window to continue in the full app.
And you can write in it. Click the ✎ pen in the card's header and the page becomes editable right there, with the same formatting controls and the same Find and Replace as the main window — jot the thought, tick the box, rewrite the paragraph. The pen becomes 👓 eyeglasses; click again to go back to reading (your edit saves as you go, and the main window mirrors it the moment it lands). If the same page ever has unsaved changes in two windows at once, MojoPad never guesses: a small bar appears — Use theirs / Keep mine — and nothing is overwritten until you choose.
Open as many cards as you like: each is its own window, so you can draft in one, keep a source open in another, and work on a translation in a third, sized and placed however suits you.
Every PDF and ePub's toolbar has a 📓 Book Notes button. Click it and MojoPad assembles your reading room: it opens (creating it the first time) a page named <Book> — Notes, docks the book beside it in the split pane, and files the pair under Books ▸ that book — each book on its own shelf. Nothing you've already filed is moved. From there the excerpt loop below does the rest: drag a passage across and it arrives quoted, linked back to the exact spot — notes that argue with the book, page by page.
Writing with the keyboard and want to scroll the book without reaching for the mouse?
View ▸ Focus Split Pane / Editor (⌥⌘O) hops focus between the two. While the pane
holds the keyboard it wears a quiet ring, and the arrow, space, and page keys scroll the reading —
press ⌥⌘O again and you're back in your sentence.
Your layout comes back. The two-pane setup is remembered per document — reading on one side, notes on the other. Quit MojoPad, reopen the document later, and the same page returns to the split pane at the width you left it, so you pick up exactly where you were. Close the pane and it stays closed next time.
And the book remembers your place. A PDF or EPUB you're reading resumes where you left off next time you open it — a PDF at the same page, an EPUB at the same spot in the same chapter (anchored to the chapter, so it holds even if you resize the pane or change the reading font). This works in the main editor too, not just the split pane. EPUBs are reflowable and have no fixed page numbers, so the place is remembered as a position within the book rather than a page count.
Zoom a PDF with the small − 100% + pill at the reader's lower right — or ⌘+ /
⌘− while your pointer is over the pages, ⌘0 to snap back to fit width, or a trackpad
pinch. Pages re-render sharp at any size (never a blurry stretch), your highlights stay exactly on
their words, and each document remembers its zoom along with your reading place.
PDFs and books read fully in the pane — real pages, selectable text, and the excerpt loop below.
The pane is a live, read-only view — edit that page in the editor (even side by side with
itself) and the pane updates as you save. Links inside the pane navigate the pane;
⌘-click sends a link to the editor instead. Click ⇄ to swap the pane with the
editor, ✕ to close, and drag the divider to resize — the width sticks. The pane title opens
that page in the editor.
Reading a PDF or book in the pane, pull the good bits straight into the page you're writing:
drag a selection onto the note (or ⌘C it, then ⌘V on the page) and it lands as a
quote — dropped as its own block, never split into the line you were on — with a ↩ backlink
to the source and its own highlight left in the document. Click the ↩ and the source reopens in
the pane at that exact spot, a thread drawing from your quote to the highlight. The same gesture
works on a rich-text page, a Markdown page, or a canvas card, so an idea always leads back to where you
found it.
Each excerpt owns a separate highlight, so quoting the same passage in two places never tangles them. Highlights are permanent marks: right-click one in the reader to remove it, or clear them all at once with Clear highlights on the reader's toolbar (or the ⌫ in the split header).