Formatting & Markdown
Cozy runs on plain Markdown. Your formatting (bold, headings, lists, links) is written right into the file as ordinary Markdown symbols, so your entries stay readable in any app, forever.
You don’t have to know Markdown to use it, though. Cozy gives you a toolbar and shortcuts, and shows the symbols only when you’re editing the text they belong to.
The floating toolbar
Section titled “The floating toolbar”Select any text and a small toolbar floats just above it, with Bold, Italic, Strikethrough, Code, Highlight, Link, Quote, Heading, Lists, and buttons for a photo or a voice note one click away. No hunting through menus.
The slash menu
Section titled “The slash menu”Type / at the start of a line, or after a space, and a menu opens right at your
cursor with everything you can add: headings, lists, checklists, quotes, links,
photos, audio, a date or time, a horizontal rule. Keep typing to narrow it down
(/check finds the checklist), then press Enter. Each row shows its keyboard
shortcut, and Escape closes the menu without touching your writing.
Keyboard shortcuts
Section titled “Keyboard shortcuts”On macOS these use ⌘; on Windows and Linux they use Ctrl. Cozy shows the right keys for your keyboard throughout the app.
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Bold | ⌘B |
| Italic | ⌘I |
| Strikethrough | ⌘⇧X |
| Code | ⌘E |
| Highlight | ⌘⇧H |
| Headings (levels 1–6) | ⌘1 – ⌘6 |
| Bullet list | ⌘⇧8 |
| Numbered list | ⌘⇧7 |
| Insert a photo or video | ⌘⇧I |
| Insert a date | ⌘⇧D |
| Edit tags | ⌘⇧T |
| Log a tracker | ⌘⇧M |
| Writing mode | ⌘⇧F |
The full list lives in Settings → Shortcuts, grouped by what it does. You can also run any of these from the ⌘K command bar if you’d rather search for them by name.
Checkboxes work with -, *, or + bullets, so a line like - [ ] water the plants becomes a checkable to-do.
Formatting reveals itself as you write
Section titled “Formatting reveals itself as you write”Put your cursor anywhere inside a bold word, a link, or an image and its
Markdown appears so you can edit it, then tucks away again the moment you move
on. Click anywhere on a heading and its # shows; leave, and it’s hidden. You
get clean text to read and the raw Markdown right when you need it.
macOS text replacements
Section titled “macOS text replacements”Cozy respects the shortcuts you’ve set up in System Settings → Keyboard → Text Replacements. Type your abbreviation and it expands on a space or punctuation mark, the same way it does everywhere else on your Mac. Replacements skip code blocks, so your shorthand won’t fire where you’re writing code.
Insert a date or time
Section titled “Insert a date or time”Use Insert → Date/Time to drop a formatted date or time into your entry. Dates render in English throughout the app, whatever your system language is set to.
A serif option
Section titled “A serif option”If you like to write in a serif typeface, you can switch the editor’s font to serif. It’s a small thing, but a nice one for long entries.
It’s still just Markdown
Section titled “It’s still just Markdown”Because everything is plain Markdown, you can open an entry in any other editor and it reads exactly as you’d expect. Nothing about your writing is locked to Cozy.