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The Document Graph provides an interactive visualization of your markdown files and their connections. See how documents link to each other through wiki-links ([[link]]) and standard markdown links, making it easy to understand your documentation structure at a glance. Document Graph

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Opening the Document Graph

There are several ways to access the Document Graph:

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From File Preview

When viewing a markdown file in File Preview, click the graph button in the preview toolbar to open the Document Graph focused on that file. Press Esc to return to the File Preview. This is the primary way to open the Document Graph.

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From Quick Actions

Press Cmd+K / Ctrl+K and search for “View in Document Graph” to focus the graph on the markdown file you are previewing, or “Open Last Document Graph” to re-open the most recently viewed graph.
The “Open Last Document Graph” option only appears after you’ve opened a Document Graph at least once during your session.

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From the File Explorer

After you’ve opened a Document Graph at least once, a graph icon (branch icon) appears in the Files tab header. Click it to re-open the last viewed graph. Last Graph Button

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From File Context Menu

Right-click any markdown file in the File Explorer and select Document Graph to open the graph focused on that file.

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From a Folder or a Selection

Right-click a folder and choose Open in Document Graph to graph every markdown file beneath it. Or select several markdown files (Cmd/Ctrl+click, or Shift+click for a range), right-click, and choose Open N in Document Graph. These open a scoped graph, which answers a different question from the single-file graph. A single-file graph walks outward from one document and can only ever show what that document reaches. A scoped graph shows exactly the files you picked - including the ones that link to nothing, which is the only way an unlinked document is visible at all. Links pointing outside the scope stay broken rather than dragging their targets in. The center is picked automatically: whichever document in the scope has the most links. Right-click a specific file inside a selection to center on that one instead.

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From the Command Line

See open-graph for the full options.

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Using Go to File

Press Cmd+G / Ctrl+G to open the fuzzy file finder and navigate to any markdown file, then use the preview toolbar’s graph button (or Cmd+K and “View in Document Graph”) to jump to the Document Graph from there. The Document Graph is designed for keyboard-first navigation: L steps through Mind Map, Radial, Hierarchical, Force, Lobes, and Timeline, in the same order as the layout dropdown. D widens the depth one level per press (1 through 5, then All, then back to 1). P steps the preview length through Off, 50, 100, 200, 350, and 500 characters. F re-frames the whole graph, and S switches what the scroll wheel does. Esc steps back out one level at a time rather than closing outright. It closes the help panel first if that is open, then it takes you out of the search box with your query intact, which is the point: search, Esc, then arrow to a hit while the matches are still highlighted. Press it again to clear the search, and once more to close the graph. Closing asks for confirmation first, since Esc would otherwise discard the layout, depth, and node positions you set up. Turn that prompt off in Settings → Display → Document Graph. A graph opened from the Memories viewer never asks either way: Esc hands you straight back to that viewer, so there is nothing to lose.

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Mouse Controls

  • Click a node to select it
  • Double-click a node to recenter the view on it
  • Drag nodes to reposition them
  • Scroll to zoom in and out, or to pan - see Scroll Mode
  • Shift+Scroll to do whichever of those two the plain wheel is not doing
  • Pan by dragging the background
  • Mini-map in the bottom-left corner shows the whole graph; click or drag on it to jump the main view to that spot
  • Drag the left edge of the in-graph document preview to make it wider or narrower; the width is remembered. Double-click that edge to restore the default.

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Graph Controls

The toolbar at the top of the Document Graph provides several options:

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Depth Control

Adjust the Depth slider to control how many levels of connections are shown from the focused document:
  • Depth: 0 (All) - Show all connected documents regardless of distance
  • Depth: 1 - Show only direct connections
  • Depth: 2 - Show connections and their connections (default)
  • Depth: 3-5 - Show deeper relationship chains
Lower depth values keep the graph focused and improve performance; higher values reveal more of the document ecosystem. The depth can be adjusted from 0 (All) to 5. Press D to widen it one level per press without opening the slider.

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Layout

The layout dropdown switches how nodes are arranged. Press L to step through them in the order below. Switching layouts clears any nodes you dragged, since those positions belong to the layout they were set in.

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Lobes

Lobes groups documents by which other documents they link to, using community detection over the link structure rather than by folder or by name. Each group is drawn as a coloured blob with the number of documents in it, and every node takes its group’s colour on its border so membership is readable without tracing the outline. This answers a question the ring layouts throw away. In a collection built around one hub document, nearly everything sits one or two links from the center, so Radial draws two enormous rings and Hierarchical draws two rows - correct, but they say nothing about which documents belong together. Documents that link to nothing else on screen are gathered into a single dashed, muted Ungrouped blob rather than being scattered as one-node groups of their own. They are the leftovers, not a finding, so they are drawn to stay out of the way of the real groups. Lobes needs more room than Force for the same documents, because separating groups costs space. Press F to fit it on screen.

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Timeline

Timeline puts one column per day that has documents, oldest on the left, captioned with the date. Columns are evenly spaced by order rather than by real elapsed time: a collection written in bursts would otherwise be two dense clumps with a screen of empty canvas between them. Documents whose modification time could not be read - which can happen over an SSH remote - collect in a leading Undated column instead of being dated to 1970 and sorted first. Unlike every other layout, Timeline places unlinked documents in the columns alongside everything else rather than in a band below the graph. An unlinked document still has a date, and when it was written is exactly the question this layout answers.

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Scroll Mode

The Scroll pill switches what the mouse wheel does, as does pressing S or the toggle inside the Help panel:
  • Zoom (the default) - the wheel zooms toward the cursor, and Shift+wheel pans the canvas.
  • Pan - the wheel pans in both directions, and Shift+wheel zooms.
Pan is what you want once you have found the right zoom level and are reading across a wide graph. In Zoom mode every two-finger gesture changes the scale you just set, so the framing you worked out is lost each time you try to move sideways. Whichever mode is on, Shift always reaches the other action, so neither is ever more than a key away. The choice is remembered between visits.

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Preview Length

The Preview slider sets how much of each document’s opening text is drawn inside its node, from 0 up to 500 characters. Press P to step through Off, 50, 100, 200, 350, and 500 without opening the slider. At Off a document is drawn as a filename pill - no body box, no preview text, no folder path. That is the densest reading of a large graph: many more nodes fit on screen at once, and the shape of the link structure is what you see instead of the content. Raise the limit again when you want to read what a document is about without opening it. Toggle External to show or hide external URL links found in your documents:
  • Enabled - External links appear as separate domain nodes (e.g., “github.com”, “docs.example.com”)
  • Disabled - Only internal document relationships are shown
External link nodes help you see which external resources your documentation references.

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Unlinked Documents

In a scoped graph, an Unlinked N button appears whenever some of the scoped documents connect to nothing else in the scope. They are drawn in a band below the graph with a dashed amber border, and the button hides them. They are shown by default: the reason to graph a hand-picked set is usually to find out which of those documents stand alone, so hiding them would hide the answer. “Unlinked” covers two cases, both invisible from the center: a document with no links at all, and a small cluster that links only within itself. This button does not appear on a single-file graph, where an unreachable document never becomes a node in the first place. Use the search box to filter documents by name. Matching documents are highlighted in the graph.

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Snapshot

The Snapshot button in the center of the footer, or C, takes a picture of the graph exactly as it is on screen, preview pane included, and offers two things to do with it:
  • Copy to Clipboard - paste the image straight into another app.
  • Save to Disk - pick a location and write a PNG.
The shot covers the graph area only, so the toolbar and the footer stay out of it. Pan and zoom to what you want first: what you see is what gets captured.

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Understanding the Graph

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Node Types

  • Document nodes - Your markdown files, showing the filename and a preview of content
  • External link nodes - Domains of external URLs referenced in your documents
  • Focused node - The currently selected document (highlighted with a different border)
  • Grouped nodes - In the Lobes layout, a node’s border takes the colour of the group it belongs to. Selection, focus, and the unlinked warning all override it, since those describe the node itself rather than its group.

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Edge Types

Lines between nodes represent different types of connections:
  • Wiki-links - [[document-name]] style links
  • Markdown links - [text](path/to/file.md) style links
  • External links - Links to URLs outside your project

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Node Information

Each document node displays:
  • Filename - The document name
  • Folder indicator - Shows the parent directory (e.g., “docs”)
  • Content preview - A snippet of the document’s content
With the Preview slider at Off (or after pressing P around to Off), only the filename remains and each node is drawn as a compact pill.

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Tips for Effective Use

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Workflow Integration

  1. Use Cmd+G to quickly find a file
  2. Open it in File Preview to read or edit
  3. Click the graph button in the preview toolbar to see its connections in the Document Graph
  4. Press O to open a connected document
  5. Press Esc to return to File Preview

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Large Documentation Sets

For projects with many markdown files:
  • Start with Depth: 1 to see immediate connections
  • Increase depth gradually to explore relationships
  • Press P around to Off so every document is a compact filename pill - many more fit on screen, and the link structure is what you see
  • Press F at any time to fit the whole graph in the window. The graph also fits itself when it opens and whenever you change layout or preview length
  • Press S for Pan once the zoom is right, so scrolling moves the view instead of changing the scale
  • Use Search to find specific documents quickly
  • Drag nodes to organize the view - positions persist

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Understanding Documentation Structure

The Document Graph is especially useful for:
  • Auditing links - Find orphaned documents with no incoming links
  • Understanding navigation - See how documents connect for readers
  • Planning restructuring - Visualize the impact of moving or renaming files
  • Onboarding - Help new team members understand documentation architecture
  • Finding the natural groupings - Switch to Lobes to see which documents cluster with each other, which is often not how they are foldered
  • Seeing what is stale - Switch to Timeline to read the collection by when each document was last written

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Keyboard Shortcut Summary