Ctrl+N starts a new note; the first line you type becomes its title until you rename it (F2).

There is no Save button to forget. A save commits 2 seconds after you stop typing, plus immediately on note switch, on alt-tab away, and on close. Ctrl+S just means "commit now".

Every note also remembers its cursor and scroll position, so it reopens exactly where you left off.

F3 or Ctrl+F jumps to the search box. Every word you type is matched as a prefix against titles, note text, and tags: pass wor finds "password working notes".

The sidebar filters live with every keystroke; Esc clears the search and puts the list back.

Notes sort by creation time or title, in either direction, or by a drag-and-drop custom order. F10 cycles the modes; the toolbar buttons pick them directly.

Ctrl+D cycles three sidebar densities - full, compact, and minimal - to fit more notes on screen. The compact modes trim the group headers too.

Right-click a note for Title color (or press Ctrl+Shift+C) to color its title in the list, with a live preview while you pick. Colored titles stay colored even while the note is selected.

Delete removes the selected note after a confirm - and Ctrl+Z brings it back.

Sidebar undo covers more than deletes: group moves, group colors, tag toggles, and note reorders all revert with Ctrl+Z. Inside the editor, Ctrl+Z stays normal text undo; the app picks the right one based on what you did last.

Ctrl+G makes a new group - if notes are selected, they are filed into it on the spot. Groups pin above the loose notes and travel inside shared .kndb files.

Ctrl+Shift+G creates a subgroup inside the selected note's group; right-clicking a header offers the same. Nesting has no depth limit.

Subgroups sit above the parent group's own notes by default. Right-click a header and toggle Subgroups on top to switch back to notes-first ordering - the check mark shows which way it is set.

Each group takes a color that runs as a connector line from its header down through its notes and children, so you can see at a glance what belongs where. The picker previews live; Reset color returns to the theme accent.

In custom sort, notes drag to reorder and group headers drag to reorder or re-nest whole groups. Drags need a deliberate pull before they start, so a twitchy mouse will not scramble the tree - and Ctrl+Z reverts a bad drop.

Click a header to collapse or expand its group; the colored line shrinks to a pill beside the header while it is closed.

F7 opens the tag manager: add, rename, and recolor the tags of the current database.

Right-click a note to toggle its tags, or press Ctrl+1 through Ctrl+9 to flip the first nine on the open note.

Tag pills under each note row filter the list on click, and tag names are part of the full-text index, so typing a tag in search works too.

Ctrl+B / I / U bold, italic, underline; Ctrl+Shift+S strikethrough, Ctrl+Shift+M monospace, Ctrl+Shift+H highlight, Ctrl+Shift+R horizontal rule, Ctrl+Shift+L / N bulleted and numbered lists, Ctrl+Shift+> / < grow and shrink the selection. The format bar (F6) has all of it, plus full text and highlight color pickers with a desktop-wide eyedropper.

Insert a real table from the format bar or Ctrl+Shift+T. Rows and columns are added and removed from the right-click menu, and tables pasted from Excel, Word, or a web page come in as tables, not text.

Select text and press Ctrl+K to link it; Ctrl+Click opens a link in your browser. Ctrl+K on an existing link edits it, and clearing the address removes the link. Typing a URL followed by a space links it automatically.

Links survive pasting - from browsers, Word, and other note apps - and the HTML export writes real anchors. Only web and mail addresses ever open, so a shared note can't launch anything else.

Paste a screenshot and it lands inline at the cursor; image files drop in the same way. Click an image for resize handles.

With word wrap on, an image cannot be stretched wider than the pane; turn wrap off (Ctrl+Shift+W) and wide images get a horizontal scrollbar instead.

Ctrl+Shift+P toggles spell check per note - keep it on for prose, off for config dumps.

Convert to list (Ctrl+Shift+J) turns selected lines - or the words of one sentence - into a comma-separated list, made for pasting into scripts and one-liners.

Ctrl+Shift+W toggles word wrap; with wrap off, wide content is reachable by horizontal scroll. F11 adds a line-number column, handy when a note is really a config file.

With word wrap off, the tilt wheel pans wide tables and images left and right, and Shift+Wheel does the same on mice without a tilt wheel. Ctrl+Wheel stays text zoom.

Notes that look like markdown or HTML get a split-pane preview on F4. Markdown renders through Markdig; HTML is sanitized first - scripts and event handlers never run.

F9 slides a themed calculator up under the notes list (and pops the sidebar open if it was collapsed). Type equations straight on the number keys; Enter or = computes.

Print to note (Ctrl+Enter) drops the result into the open note at the cursor - no more copying out of Windows Calculator.

Click the note to keep editing while the pad stays open; click the pad to give it the keys back. Esc closes it.

The title-bar lock encrypts the whole database with SQLCipher (AES-256) - notes, images, search index, everything. Set, change, or remove the password at any time; there is no recovery back door, so a lost password means a locked file.

Keep separate notepads per client or per context: create, rename, switch, and relocate databases from Manage databases, including pointing the data folder next to the exe for a portable USB setup.

Share one note as a .knote file or a whole notepad as .kndb, optionally with their own passwords; both open with a double-click on the other end. Dragging a note out of the sidebar drops it as a real file.

F8 exports the open note as .txt, .rtf, or a self-contained themed .html; Ctrl+O (or dropping files on the window) imports text, markdown, RTF, HTML, and images as new notes.

Ctrl+Wheel zooms the text of the current editor; Ctrl+0 snaps it back to 100%. Ctrl+Shift + / - scales the entire app - window, sidebar, everything - for accessibility, and Ctrl+Shift+0 resets that.

If your notes suddenly look tiny or huge and you do not know why, you probably hit one of these: try Ctrl+0 first, then Ctrl+Shift+0.

F5 collapses the sidebar to a thin rail of icons - density, format bar, line numbers, shortcuts, language, theme, and the Killculator stay one click away. F9 reopens the sidebar automatically when the Killculator needs the room.

Ctrl+T opens the theme flyout: six themes with accent colors, switched live. The interface speaks nine languages and falls back to English for anything untranslated.

Open the theme flyout (Ctrl+T) and hit Fonts... - three slots swap independently: Headers (group titles), Sidebar (note rows), and Note text (the editor). Pick any installed font, or drop a .ttf or .otf file straight onto the card to add your own.

Everything applies live, and rolling the mouse wheel over a dropdown steps through fonts one at a time so you can shop by eye. A readability guard keeps symbol fonts like Wingdings from wrecking the app.

The shipped defaults: typewriter headers, Segoe UI in the sidebar, and Bahnschrift for note text. One click resets all three.

The exe runs from anywhere with no install. A PORTABLE badge in the status bar offers a per-user install (Start Menu, Add/Remove entry) if you want one; KillerNotes.exe /silent does a machine-wide install for RMM deployment.