One page

Workflowy is one document, not many. There are no separate pages to open or files to switch between. Everything lives in a single list, and navigating means moving around within that list rather than between documents.

This takes a little getting used to if you're coming from a traditional notes app, but it means you never have to think about where to file something or go hunting across different notebooks to find it.

Expand and collapse

Every node with children has an arrow next to it. Click the arrow to collapse that branch, hiding everything inside it. Click again to expand it. This is how you manage complexity: you don't delete or archive things to get them out of the way, you just fold them up.

Zooming in

Click any bullet (not the arrow, the bullet itself) and you zoom in. That node fills your view, and everything outside it disappears. This is useful when you want to focus on a project or section without the distraction of everything else in your document.

Breadcrumbs and home

When you're zoomed in, the breadcrumb trail at the top shows you where you are in the document. Click any crumb to zoom back out to that level. The Home button takes you all the way back to the top of your list.

The sidebar

The sidebar on the left shows your nodes and any searches you've starred. You can reorder them by dragging and drag nodes to the sidebar to move them. Collapse the sidebar when you want more writing space.

Keyboard shortcuts

Most navigation is faster from the keyboard once you know the shortcuts. Here are a few to get you started:

Enter — new node at the same level
Tab / Shift+Tab — indent / unindent
Ctrl/Cmd+Up/Down — move a node up or down
Ctrl/Cmd+F — open search

Shortcuts

Shortcuts are short text codes you assign to any node or saved search, like wm for “Weekly Meeting” or rd for “Reading List”.

Open the Jump To menu (Ctrl+K on Windows, Cmd+K on Mac), type your shortcut, and you’re there instantly.

You can create a shortcut from the Jump To menu, by typing /Shortcut while inside a node, or by clicking the lightning bolt icon in the search bar to shortcut a search. They’re worth setting up for anything you visit regularly.