New user questions: Spacing? Pinning notes? Organizing sidebar? App accessibility?

Elusis · 21 June 2026 17:22

Operating system

macOS

Joplin version

3.6.14

Desktop version info

Joplin 3.6.14

What issue do you have?

As a new user transitioning from Evernote, I'm running into use questions that I'm having a hard time finding answers to in the help files, so I apologize in advance but I'm going to ask a few at once here.

Spacing - is there any way to change this in either Rich Text or Markdown? Right now the default seems to be set to "double space between items" and this makes my notes very hard to view effectively. Can I change this as a default? Can I change it at all? (Can't find a spacing button in Rich Text.)
Can I pin a notebook to the top of the list in the sidebar? Can I pin notes to the top of a notebook? I've found this feature to be essential since Evernote included it but I don't see it here.
General question about organizing the sidebar - can I drag my notebooks into the order I prefer? Can I hide some so I can only see the ones I use most?
General accessibility questions - The default font size of the app is hard for me to read. Where can I change this so I don't need my reading glasses just to access my notes? And the checklist style seems to default to just lightly greying out completed items - is there a way to change this so completed items have a strikethrough?

Thanks for any help. I'm deep in the help files today trying to replicate my workflows and not finding references for these issues.

bwat47 · 21 June 2026 17:50

1. In the rich text editor, enter creates a new paragraph by default (you need to use shift + enter to create just a newline), which is a known limitation: Issue · GitHub

If you use the markdown editor, enter will create a single newline by default.

2/3. There isn't any function to pin or manually order notebooks, but a low-tech workaround can be putting some kind of prefix in the notebook title to make notebooks sort the way they want.

Some users use a full on decimal system for naming all notebooks. In my case, I just have one notebook that I want to show above the others (the notebook where I keep todo notes), so I just called it '@Todo' and the @ symbol makes it sort above the others.

4. The only built in font size setting is the font size for the markdown editor. Changing font size elsewhere (markdown viewer, rich text editor, etc...) would require custom userstyle/userchrome css. The easiest way to change font size across the entire app would be using the zoom (hitting ctrl and + will zoom the entire UI)

Regarding strikethrough, this could be done with userstyle.css and userchrome.css (Tools | Options | Appearance | Show advanced settings | custom stylesheet for rendered markdown/custom stylesheet for joplin wide app styles), examples below (note: I've only quickly spot checked them but they seem to work):

For the markdown editor (userchrome.css):

 /* strikethrough completed tasklist items */
 /* Target only the text span inside the completed item */
.cm-md-completed-item span:last-child {
    text-decoration: line-through;
}

/* Apply opacity to the whole line for a "dimmed" look */
.cm-md-completed-item {
    opacity: 0.7;
}

For the markdown viewer (userstyle.css):

 /* strikethrough completed tasklist items (markdown viewer) */
.checkbox-label-checked {
    text-decoration: line-through;
}

/* Apply opacity to the whole line for a "dimmed" look */
.checkbox-label-checked {
    opacity: 0.7;
}

For the rich text editor (userstyle.css):

 /* strikethrough completed tasklist items (TinyMCE editor) */
ul.joplin-checklist li.checked {
    text-decoration: line-through;
}

/* Apply opacity to the whole line for a "dimmed" look */
ul.joplin-checklist li.checked {
    opacity: 0.7;
}

Elusis · 21 June 2026 21:13

Thanks for the spacing help and link - I guess I'm used to shift-return in messaging apps so I can probably get the hang of that for this one (but I wish it would get fixed.)

No pinning of notes - that sucks, because normally I want to sort by "most recent" not by name, and so renaming notes doesn't work for that at all. I welcome any suggestions. (Also how do I get the list of notes to show me created/edited dates? I can't find controls for that on an initial search.)

No manual reorganizing of sidebar - I can use the @ hack I guess to get my Main notebook to the top, and I did have a decimal-based ordering system for (Pandora playlists??) about a decade ago so I could use that to force things into a better order if need be.

But is there no way to hide notebooks from the sidebar? What about putting shortcuts to individual notes there? In Evernote I had my most-used notebooks, plus a shortcut to my main to-do list, a shortcut to a few of my lists shared with my partner, and a list of my four most recent notes. Is any of that available? They were pretty essential for my workflow.

Re: the strikethrough, thanks for those tips. A question for you or anyone else: when I go to Appearance -> Advanced Settings -> Custom Stylesheet buttons, if I click one of them, it opens the Tor browser. I'm not sure what I expected (probably a file choosing interface?) but that's not it. Can you point me to a more detailed guide to what's supposed to happen in order for me to make use of stylesheets? I am comfortable working in Terminal and making tweaks to my Chrome settings, just not sure how I would take a clip of code like you shared and do something with it via a browser (and does it have to be Tor? I have it but it's quite slow.)

bwat47 · 21 June 2026 23:09