Flow Documentation
Contents
Distraction-free writing experience^
Flow aims to provide a smooth, beautiful writing experience aimed at inspiring you and keeping you in the zone.
The Focus mode mutes all distraction and lets you focus on the next word, then the one after. The Edit mode provides a simple yet powerful Markdown editing experience for tuning your first draft. Changes are auto-saved as you type. By default, documents go in your Documents folder.
As you work with Flow, you will see your writing come to life. The editor provides some unique features to make your text more closely resemble a printed book:
Auto-indentation will automatically indent every text paragraph except a first paragraph following a title, quote, list, separator, or blank line. This is the common way a print book is indented.
The fancy line separator is a Flow-specific addition
to the standard Markdown syntax. The
line separator *** is rendered as ∵ rather than a horizontal line, again
to more closely match a print book.
Editor modes^
Focus Mode
Focus mode provides the ultimate distraction-free writing
experience. Flow goes into full screen mode. Colorful
elements fade away to avoid distraction and all text outside
the current sentence is muted. Spellchecking is
disabled. Press ESC or click outside the editor
to exit focus mode.
Edit Mode
Edit mode allows you to iterate on your text. Markdown annotations are revealed when under the cursor, but otherwise stay hidden. Auto-indentation and spellchecking are enabled. This mode also displays word count in the bottom right corner.
Read Mode
Read mode is optimized for reading. All markup is hidden and editing is disabled. Text is justified, to more closely resemble a print book. Spellchecking is disabled.
Source Mode
Source mode shows the full Markdown. Unlike the other modes, no markup is hidden regardless of where the cursor is. Auto-indentation is disabled. While some auto-formatting is preserved, this view is closest to the plain underlying Markdown document, as you would view it in a plain text editor.
Markdown^
Markdown is a lightweight markup language with plain text formatting syntax. Its design allows it to be converted to many output formats. Markdown is a modern way to create rich text documents using plain text. It is particularly well suited for distraction-free writing as inline annotations help keep you in the flow when writing.
Below is a quick reference of the supported features:
| Markup syntax | How it looks like |
|---|---|
| # Heading 1 | Heading 1 |
| ## Heading 2 | Heading 2 |
| ### Heading 3 | Heading 3 |
| #### Heading 4 | Heading 4 |
| ##### Heading 5 | Heading 2 |
| ###### Heading 6 | Heading 6 |
| **Bold** | Bold |
| *Italic* | Italic |
| ~Underline~ | Underline |
| ~~Strikethrough~~ | |
| ==Highlight== | Highlight |
| `Code` | Code |
| > Block quote | Block quote |
| 1. Ordered list |
|
| * Unordered list |
|
| --- (line separator) | |
| *** (fancy line separator) | ∵ |
You can also mix markup as needed. ***Bold italic*** becomes Bold italic.
Common Markdown has some special requirements, like separating paragraphs with two newlines. Flow works differently: the editor displays text like a print book, continuous and without requiring extra blank lines. At the same time, when saved to a file, Flow will convert this to the common Markdown syntax to maintain compatibility. This way, Flow can open Markdown documents created with other apps, while still providing a beautiful rendering of the text.
Additional Markdown features are coming soon, see the roadmap.
Clipboard^
An important note on how Flow leverages the clipboard:
even though export to other file formats is not yet
implemented (coming soon, see the
roadmap), copying text in Flow will put both text and
HTML on the clipboard. If you then paste in a plain text
editor, you will see the Markdown content, including markup
characters like *. On the other hand, if you
paste this in a rich text editor like Word, you will get
rich text, already formatted.
Similarly, while document import is not supported, if you paste formatted HTML from the clipboard, Flow will convert this to Markdown and try to match the formatting of the clipboard content.