Describing Thoughts

Besides its name, a thought can carry details that help you recognize it, group it with others, and find it again. These topics cover the properties panel, thought types and tags and how they differ, alternate names, icons, private thoughts, and how TheBrain shortens a name that repeats the name of a linked thought.

• Thought Properties — The properties header at the top of the content area shows a thought's name, label, aliases, and icon, and is where you rename a thought and set its type, tags, text and fill colors, privacy, and details.
• Thought Types — A type is a thought that classifies other thoughts, passing its icon, label, and colors down to everything of that type; the Types button on the brain toolbar lists the types in a brain so you can jump to one.
• Tags — Tags are labels you can apply to many thoughts at once to mark cross-cutting characteristics like Important, To Do, or Favorite; open a tag to see every thought that has it, and choose whether the Plex shows tag icons, tag names, or neither.
• Types vs. Tags vs. Normal Thoughts — Every thought is Normal, a Type, or a Tag — the Change Thought Kind dialog converts a thought from one to another.
• Thought Aliases — Give a thought alternate names that search and unlinked-mention detection treat like its real name; the label counts as an alias too.
• Thought Icons — Give a thought a custom icon — a stock icon, an uploaded or pasted image, or an attachment's image or site favicon — so it stands out in the Plex, search, and everywhere it appears; a thought with no icon of its own gets one from its attachments, and a large icon shows as a banner (hero image) at the top of the thought.
• Private Thoughts — Mark a thought private to keep it out of shared, public, and AI access, and hide private thoughts from the Plex and search when you want.
• Context-Sensitive Thought Names — With the Context sensitive thought names option on, the Plex leaves out a comma-separated part of a thought's name that repeats the name of a linked thought, and renaming a thought can offer to rename related thoughts too.