TheBrain, Tips in Numeric Order (1-128)

as found in TheBrain’s v.12 Knowledgebase; numbers added to match the tips in TheBrain’s Help menu.

1: Undo and Redo

Almost everything you do in TheBrain can be undone using Undo from the Edit menu.

2: Unlimited Freedom

Your brain can have a virtually unlimited number of thoughts. Need to organize a few hundred thousand things? No problem, even in the Free Edition.

3: Access Everywhere

Click the sync icon to make your brain accessible from the cloud and keep it synced across all your devices. Once your brain is in the cloud, just login from another device and it will appear in your list of brains.

4: Pins

Use pins to reach frequently used thoughts. Select Create Pin from the Thought menu.

5: Outline and Mind Map Layouts

The outline and mind map layouts let you see multiple generations of thoughts using layouts that mimic traditional ways of organizing information hierarchically.

6: Automatic Capitalization

If you use all lowercase to name your thoughts, TheBrain will automatically capitalize the first letters of most words. This feature can be turned off via Preferences > Behavior > Thoughts.

7: Multiple Thought Creation

You can create multiple thoughts at once by using semicolons to separate thought names in the Create Thought dialog box.

8: Window Layout

To adjust the relative size of the plex window and tools window, drag the splitter between them. Click the controls on the splitter to rotate the panes, swap them and maximize them.

9: Keyboard Navigation

Navigate using the arrow keys to select a thought and then press the Enter key to activate the selected thought.

10: Fast Linking and Creation

It’s easy to create and link thoughts from within notes. Just press

Windows: Ctrl+K

macOS: Cmd+K

or type [[ and enter the name of the thought you want to create or link. By default, newly created thoughts will be linked as children but you can change the relationship type using the Shift and Ctrl keys.

11: Context Menus

Context menus are available for many aspects of the user interface. They offer relevant commands that can be applied to thoughts, links, notes, attachments and more.

12: Creating Checklists in Notes

To insert a checkbox quickly on a new line, just type - followed by a space. To insert an already checked checkbox, type + followed by a space. You can toggle the checkbox on the current line by pressing

Windows: Ctrl+L.

macOS: Cmd+L.

13: Collapsing and Expanding Notes

By using titles, subtitles, headings and subheadings you can make your notes easier to read as well as easier to navigate. For example, click the arrow in the margin to the left of a heading to collapse everything under it into a single line. The ability to collapse and expand text also extends to indented bullet lists, numbered lists and checkboxes.

14: Navigate Using the Popup TOC

Titles, subtitles, headings and subheadings are also used to generate an automatic table of contents. Press

Windows: Ctrl+T

macOS: Cmd+T

to open it in any note that contains titles, subtitles, headings and or subheadings. You can also insert a table of contents directly into a note using the Insert Table of Contentscommand in the notes toolbar.

15: Quick Access to Properties

Press the Enter key to open the properties for the active thought. You can also hold Altand click any thought or link to open its properties.

16: Show Details on Thought Properties

Expand the properties popup by clicking the small arrow below the lower-right corner to display details such as the creation and modification times. Click the arrow again to hide details.

17: Customizable Keyboard Shortcuts

The Preferences dialog box contains a section that allows you to assign keyboard equivalents for most commands.

18: The Past Thought List

The list at the bottom of the plex shows the most recently activated thoughts. Use it to quickly navigate back and also to link to recently accessed thoughts.

19: Organizing Child Thoughts

With too many children under one thought, your brain may become difficult to understand. Create an intervening child thought and activate it, then drag and drop thoughts from the siblings zone to the child zone to quickly reorganize them.

20: Link and Move

Hold down Shift while linking a thought to a new parent to unlink all of its other parents automatically. This enables moving a thought from one parent to another in a single step.

21: Instant Search

Just start typing to initiate a search, which will find matching thoughts prioritized by your history and how closely they match your query. Search results include thoughts and links that match based on their names, labels, events, notes, and attachments. Hover over search results using the mouse cursor or press the up and down arrow keys and the content will be previewed automatically.

22: Repeat the Last Search

Click on the search text box to redisplay the last query you entered without the need to re-type it. To search without redisplaying the last query, just click anywhere on the plex and start typing.

23: Viewing Multiple Search Results

Hold down Shift while selecting a search result to activate it without dismissing the search results.

24: Search Using Initials

To find a multi-word thought quickly, just type the first letter of each word. For example, find "New York Stock Exchange" by typing "nyse".

25: Mouse Wheel Scrolling

The mouse wheel or touchpad can be used to scroll through large groups of thoughts quickly.

26: Notes Images, Links, and Videos

Notes can include images, hyperlinks, and even videos. Use copy and paste or drag and drop to add rich content to your notes. To make a link to another thought, copy it via the context menu, then paste it into notes.

27: Themes

Use Brain Themes to quickly change the look of your brain. Right-click on the background to open the context menu and select Brain Theme...

28: Tags

Tags let you flag a groups of thoughts with common characteristics quickly and easily. You can add multiple tags to a thought via the thought properties popup.

29: Tag Icons … Inheritance … See also Tip 114

When a tag has an icon associated with it, that icon is shown on all the thoughts with that tag. You can adjust how tags are displayed in the plex via Preferences.

30: Forgetting Thoughts

A thought that is no longer important can be "forgotten". The thought and its content will not be deleted and can be "remembered" by selecting Show Forgotten Thoughts from the Options menu.

31: Deleting Thoughts

Deleting a thought deletes its content including notes and attachments. External attachments are not deleted when a thought is deleted. To delete a thought, first forget it, then delete it. To skip forgetting, hold down

Windows: Shift

macOS: Option

while right-clicking to open the context menu.

32: Duplicating a Thought

Quickly duplicate a thought by right-clicking it and selecting Duplicate Thought.

33: Searching the Web

Use Web Search... in the Options menu to search the Internet for web pages related to the active thought. Select a built-in search engine using the dropdown. You can also add custom search engines via the Edit button.

34: Thought Icons and Colors

Thought icons and colors can be used to visually distinguish important thoughts. Thought types let you set up icon, color, and label combinations that you can quickly assign to a number of thoughts.

35: Reordering Pins

You can reorder your pins using drag and drop.

36: Linking Thoughts by Dragging

You can link to a thought that isn't in the plex by activating the thought then dragging from one of its gates to the previous active thought in the past thought list.

37: Linking Thoughts by Typing

You can link two thoughts by starting to create a thought, typing part of the name of an existing thought and then select it from the search results that appear.

38: Wander

Choose Wander in the Options menu to see the plex automatically reconfigure. Cancel wander by clicking the plex window.

39: Drag and Drop

You can drag files from your desktop or pages from your browser to the plex. Drop on top of an existing thought to attach to it or drop in an empty area of the plex to create a new child thought.

40: Brain Tabs

You can open your brain in multiple tabs at once. This can be very useful if you have two areas of your brain that you want to see at once.

41: Sharing Your Brain

To share your brain, using Online > Brain Access and Sharing, set it to public, then use Online > Copy Web Thought URL to get a link you can share. Recipients need not install anything - they can view your brain right from inside the browser. Thoughts you designate as private will not be visible except to you.

42: Backup Your Brain

To create a complete backup of your brain including its notes and attachments, use Backup to Brain Archive under the File menu and place the resulting .brz file on backup media such as a removable hard drive or network storage. External file attachments are the only content not included in these backups.

43: Timeline

Use the timeline to schedule events that are related to thoughts in your brain. You can even set a reminder for when your event is due. Click on the events in the calendar to activate the related thoughts.

44: Timeline Event Creation

Create timeline events from a thought or link via the Attach button in the toolbar of the content area. You can also drag on the bottom strip of the timeline itself to create an event and specify its duration at once.

45: Timeline Navigation

Use the timeline toolbar to quickly zoom in and out of the timeline. You can also drag up and down on the background of the timeline to zoom in and out. Drag left and right on the background to move forward and backward in time.

46: Moving Events

Events can be moved using drag and drop on the timeline. You can also open the event properties and click to change the start date or time, which will move the end time to keep the duration constant.

47: Drag and Drop Options

When dragging and dropping files you can set whether you want the default action to be copy, move, or link in Preferences. Alternately, use the following keys to change the resulting action:

macOS: Alt = Copy; Cmd = Move; Ctrl = Link.

Windows: Ctrl = Copy; Shift = Move; Alt = Link.

48: File Templates

If you want to easily create a copy of a file in the future, add it as a template. Copy the file into the templates folder, accessed via the Attach button in the toolbar of the content area.

49: Save As

When you open a file that is saved internally in your brain, you can use the Save As of the external application to create a new version that will be automatically attached to the thought. Just save the file in the thought's folder.

50: Thought Folders

To open a thought's folder, select Add Attachment... then Open Thought Folderfrom the Thought menu. You can also copy the path to the thought’s folder by selecting Add Attachment... then Copy Path to Thought’s Folder.

51: Drag and Drop Extras

If you have trouble dragging and dropping content into TheBrain, try opening the thought's folder and dropping content there. Any files created there will be automatically attached to the thought.

52: Drag and Drop Out of TheBrain

You can also drag file attachments and URLs from TheBrain to external programs. Just drag the attachment and drop it on the desired location. This is a handy way to add attachments to an email, for example.

53: Reorder Attachments with Drag and Drop

Attachments are displayed by default in the order they were added. To change their order, simply drag and drop them into the desired position.

54: Moving External Attachments

To move an external attachment into your brain, right-click on it and choose Move File into Brain or Copy File into Brain.

55: Copy and Paste Attachments

You can copy and paste file attachments between thoughts and between the other folders on your computer.

56: Viewing Attachments as a List

Attachments can be displayed one-per-line instead of next to each other at the top of the content area. When shown this way, file sizes are displayed next to the names. Right-click on an attachment to open the context menu and choose Attachments as a List to change the display mode.

57: Default Content Display

Thoughts and links show their notes when they are activated unless they are empty. If the notes are empty, the first attachment is displayed automatically. You can change this to always show notes even if they are empty via Preferences > Behavior > Show first attachment when notes is empty.

58: Attachment Previews

Most images, video, and audio files can be played directly inside TheBrain. Web pages, PDFs, Markdown and text files are also supported.

macOS: TheBrain will also automatically preview file types that are supported by Quick Look.

When you click on an attachment, the default action is to preview it inside TheBrain. From there you can click in the toolbar to open it in its default application. If you’d prefer to open attachments immediately in their default application, go to Preferences > Behavior > Content and change the setting for On click attachment.

59: Updating Content on Hover

To quickly see the content for a thought or link without activating it, turn on the Update displayed content on mouse hover or keyboard highlight option in Preferences > Behavior.

60: Thought Display Order

You can set the order of thought display in the Options menu using the Arrange Thoughts by submenu.

61: Labels

Labels can be assigned to thoughts and links. They are displayed on hover and are searchable.

62: Label a Thought when Creating

You can add a label to a thought when you create it by using the vertical bar character, |, after the name followed by the label. For example: My New Plan | to Rule the Galaxy.

63: Thought Icon Extras

If a thought has multiple attachments, the number in the corner of the thought icon indicates how many there are.

64: Pasting Thought Icons

If you copy an image into the clipboard, you can paste the image as a thought's icon by right-clicking on the thought and selecting Paste Thought Icon.

65: Stock Icons

There are almost 2,000 stock icons included with TheBrain. There are many ways to discover icons including by category, search and automatic suggestions.

66: Pasting Wallpaper

To quickly try out wallpaper, copy the image into the clipboard and right-click on the background then select Paste Wallpaper. Wallpaper that is mostly a single color tends to work better since it has less contrast.

67: Thought Background Colors

When using wallpaper, choose a thought background color that is similar to the wallpaper color, but more extreme. For example, if the wallpaper is dark blue, choose a darker blue for the thought backgrounds.

68: Narrow Fonts

Try selecting a narrow (condensed) font in the Brain Theme dialog box under the Options tab. This will allow you to see longer thought names in the plex.

Windows: Brain Theme is under the Options menu.

macOS: Brain Theme is under TheBrain menu.

69: Statistics

Choose Statistics from the File menu to see how many thoughts are in your brain and much more.

70: Connectedness

The Links per Thought number in Statistics is an indication of the overall connectedness of your brain. A pure hierarchy has a value of less than 1.

71: Selecting Thoughts

You can select multiple thoughts by using the Edit menu or by holding down

Windows: Ctrl

macOS: Cmd

and clicking. Click a thought to add it to the selection. Click a gate to select all the linked thoughts. Hold

Windows: Ctrl

macOS: Cmd

while clicking and dragging on the background to select a rectangular region of thoughts.

72: Advanced Selection Techniques (1 of 4)

Select the report results using Add All to Selection from the report's actions menu.

73: Advanced Selection Techniques (2 of 4)

Select the search results using Add Search Results to Selection from the search results actions menu.

74: Advanced Selection Techniques (3 of 4)

Toggle selected thoughts by clicking while holding

macOS: Cmd.

Windows: Ctrl.

You can toggle thoughts this way from the plex, search results, reports, recent changes list and the selection itself.

75: Advanced Selection Techniques (4 of 4)

Use Select Related Thoughts from the Edit menu to select thoughts based on their connections to the active thought.

76: Copy and Paste Thoughts

You can copy and paste thoughts between different brains. Select the thoughts you want to copy and use Copy Thoughts under the Edit menu to start. Then go to the thought where you want to add the copied thoughts and use Edit > Paste.

77: External Attachment Indicator

A black arrow in the lower left corner of an icon indicates that the attachment is external. External attachments are not synced to the cloud.

78: Multiple OS Support

TheBrain application is available for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and via the web at thebrain.com.

79: Link Properties

You can add labels, colors, and line widths to links. These properties can be used to highlight important relationships and provide additional details about how thoughts are connected. Create link types to quickly assign all these properties at once.

80: Adding People

Adding the people you know to your brain and connecting them to their friends and family can help you remember more about them.

81: People Context

Connecting business contacts to their companies and projects will provide you with an advantage years later when most people would normally have forgotten all the context that made your relationship beneficial.

82: Moving Multiple Thoughts

You can use multiple thought selection to quickly move a group of thoughts by linking and unlinking them. The selection is also a great way to delete a lot of thoughts at once.

83: Selection Persistence

If you leave the selection open when you quit TheBrain, it will be restored the next time you start the application.

84: Private Thoughts

When sharing a brain publicly, you can mark thoughts as private to prevent other users from viewing them. Toggle the privacy setting by clicking the padlock in the thought’s properties.

85: Pasting Images into Notes

You can cut and paste images into notes for a fast reference.

86: Pasting Text into Notes

Sometimes when you copy text from web page or other source you don’t want all the formatting included when you paste. To accomplish this quickly, press

Windows: Ctrl+Shift+V

macOS: Cmd+Shift+V

and just the text will be pasted. You can also set this to be the default way text is pasted via Preferences > Notes Editor > Clipboard.

87: Inserting the Date and Time into Notes

When using notes and you want to insert the current time, just click the Insert Time and Date icon from the notes toolbar. If your notes area is not wide enough to display the full toolbar, this command may be accessed via the actions toolbar button.

88: Quickly Resizing the Plex Window

Double click the background of the plex to instantly maximize it. You can also double click on the background of the content area toolbar to maximize it. This behavior must be enabled via Preferences > Behavior > Maximize the plex on double-click of background and content area on double-click of toolbar background.

89: Context-Sensitive Names

Commas in a thought's name change its display depending on the name of the active thought. A thought called Books, Art will be displayed as only Art when the parent thought Books is active.

90: Context-Sensitive Naming Shortcut

To create a thought that includes the name of the thought it is being created from at the beginning, start the name with a comma. To include the source thought's name at the end, end the name with a comma.

91: Renaming Context-Sensitive Thoughts

When you rename a thought that is used in another related thought's name, TheBrain will offer to automatically rename the related thoughts also.

92: Renaming Linked Thoughts

When you link to a thought from notes it will be automatically renamed when the target thought is renamed. If you change the text in the note so that it is different than the name of the thought, this prevents future renaming from being applied.

93: Multi-Term Search

Try entering more than one term into the search box. The instant results will show everything containing words that start with what you entered. For example, entering abs gen will find the thought Absolute Genius.

94: Searching Very Large Brains

If your brain is very large (over 30,000 thoughts), searching for common words such as theor very short terms of only a few letters may not be effective. Try searching for more unique terms instead.

95: Excluding Terms when Searching

To exclude items that contain a term, precede the term with "-". For example, pet -dog will find items that mention the word pet without the word dog.

96: Filtering Search Results (1 of 2)

To search only under the active thought and its children (up to 3 generations away) check Childward only at the top of the search results.

97: Filtering Search Results (2 of 2)

To search only within a specific set of thoughts add the thoughts to the selection prior to starting. Perform the search and check Selection only at the top of the results. (This option only appears while thoughts are selected in the plex.)

98: Turning Off Animation

You can turn off the animation of thoughts by moving the animation speed slider in the Look & Feel pane of the Preferences dialog box all the way to the left.

99: Creating Outlines from Thoughts

You can turn your thoughts into a text outline by selecting them and using Copy as Text Outline from the Edit menu. Just paste into your favorite editor, or even into the notes of one of your thoughts.

100: Finding Duplicate Thoughts

To find out if you have multiple thoughts with the same name in your brain, open the report area and select Duplicate Names as the report type. This is just one of the powerful tools available from the reports area.

101: Merging Thoughts

If you’d like to merge two or more thoughts (because they are duplicates or just refer to the same concept), select them by holding down

Windows: Ctrl

macOS: Cmd

and clicking them then right-click on the selection area and choose the Merge Thoughtscommand. The resulting thought will include all of the links, notes and attachments from all of the selected thoughts. The source thoughts will be forgotten.

102: Recent Changes (1 of 2)

Press the clock icon on the right side of the toolbar to show a list of recent modifications organized by day. If you are sharing your brain with other people, you can see who made the most recent change also. Hover over each entry to see the details of what was done.

103: Recent Changes (2 of 2)

From the recent changes list you can decide how many changes you want to see and filter the list by author using the actions menu in the top-right corner.

104: History

The history of changes for thoughts and links is automatically tracked. To see the history, expand the properties popup by clicking the arrow in the lower right corner, then click the hourglass icon.

105: Quickly Create an Isolated Thought [Orphan]

Want to create a thought without the need to link it from an existing thought first? Just type it into search, hold down Ctrl and Shift and press the Enter key.

106: Order Thoughts Using Numbers

Prefixing a thought with a number will sort it first when thoughts are arranged by name. It is not necessary to use leading zeros to sort numbers properly.

107: Order Thoughts Using Hidden Numbers

If you want to sort thoughts but don't want numbers displayed, put a period in front of the number. For example, ".1 Introduction" and ".2 Basics" will appear as "Introduction" and "Basics".

108: Ignoring Determiners when Sorting

If you are sorting thoughts by name and would like the sort order to ignore the first word because it is a determiner such as “the”, enclose the word to be ignored in parentheses. The parentheses will not be displayed and the name will sort alphabetically as if that word was not there.

109: Show Note Content in a Browser

If you'd like to see the note for a thought while you are in another area of your brain, open it in a browser by clicking on the Export button and selecting Open in Browser.

110: Tags vs Types

Tags and types are similar in that they both enable designating a thought as being part of a reference group. A thought can have multiple tags assigned to it but only one type. Types can be used to visually distinguish thoughts since colors, icons and labels are inherited from them.

111: BrainBox

Utilize BrainBox as an “inbox” for your brain. Add web pages from your browser using the BrainBox browser extension and

Windows: files from File Explorer via right-click Send to > BrainBox.

macOS: files by dragging them to TheBrain icon in the dock.

112: Toggle Thought Type Visibility

Thought types are special kinds of thoughts that you may sometime prefer to have hidden from view. To set whether you want a type to be visible when it is a parent of the active thought, right-click and choose Visible when Parent of Active Thought.

113: Linking Tags and Types

You can link tags and types as child or jumps thoughts. When linked this way, they will appear in your brain like any other thought and activating them will show all instances of the tag or type as children.

114: Tag Icons … Display … See also Tip 29

You can control how tags are displayed in the plex under Preferences > Look & Feel > Thoughts. Click on a tag icon to see all other thoughts with that same tag. Right-click on a tag icon for additional shortcuts and options.

115: Presenting in TheBrain

To make a presentation using your brain use View > Presentation Mode to hide much of the user interface and cover the entire screen. To search in presentation mode, just start typing. To exit, press the Escape key.

116: Attachment and Image Slideshows

To view all of the attachments on a thought sequentially, open the first one then use the Next and Previous buttons on the right side of the attachment toolbar. You can also do this for all of the images embedded into a note by double-clicking an image in notes.

117: Customizing the Thought Context Menu

If you find the right-click menu that appears for thoughts has some items you never use you can streamline it to make it more effective for your needs via Preferences > Behavior > Thoughts > Custom thought context menu.

118: Search the Internet from Your Brain

Want to Google something quickly? Use Options > Web Search or press

Windows: F4

macOS: Cmd+E

to initiate a search using the active thought’s name. To search for something in notes, select it, then activate the Web Search command.

119: Using Multiple Brains

If you have a lot of different brains you might want to visually distinguish them. Just right-click on a brain from the brains list to assign a custom icon.

120: Supercharge Your Notes with Markdown

For fast formatting of notes its easy to type the tags that represent headings, boldface and most other characteristics. When you use the toolbar to format something just look at the characters that are inserted in gray. You can type these directly to save time. For an overview of the tags used by TheBrain’s Markdown, see here.

121: Linking a Web Page from Notes

The fastest way to link text in notes to a web page is to copy the URL into the clipboard, select the text in notes you want to link it from and press:

Windows: Ctrl+V

macOS: Cmd+V

Instead of replacing the selected text a link will be added to it.

122: Adjust the Notes Toolbar

By default, the notes toolbar automatically adjusts itself to fit the available space, collapsing some commands into menus. If you’d prefer to always see every command available and have the toolbar’s height increase as needed, go to Preferences > Notes Editor > User Interface and uncheck Use compact toolbars for notes.

123: Related Thoughts Display in the Content Area

Below the note for the active thought is an automatic display of related thoughts. This includes the structurally related thoughts that are displayed in the plex as well as backlinks (thoughts that have link to this thought from their notes) and mentions (thoughts that have notes containing the name of this thought). You can toggle the display of these related thoughts via the context menu that appears when you right-click anywhere in the content area.

124: Mentions

When viewing a note TheBrain automatically recognizes the names of other thoughts within the text and highlights them. You can activate or link these thoughts via a right-click. By default only multi-word phrases and uncommon words are shown in this manner. To show more mentions or turn them off entirely, see Preferences > Notes Editor > Other > Mentioned thought names.

125: Encrypting File Attachments

If you have an especially sensitive file in your brain, you can encrypt it with a dedicated password. Just right-click and choose Encrypt... then enter the password you want to use.

126: Creating Documents from Multiple Thoughts

To create a document that contains the notes from several thoughts, select them in the order you wish them to appear, then right-click on the selection and choose Create Document.... From here you can preview and export a document in multiple formats including PDF, HTML and plain text. Experiment with the available options to match your needs.

127: Extract Child Thought

Sometimes it’s convenient to write in a linear format in note but later on you find you’d like to break out the content into separate thoughts so they can be more easily linked and visualized. To do this in a single step, just select the content you want as a separate thought, right-click and choose Extract Child Thought. The first line of text selected will become the name of the thought and the remaining content will be added to the new thought’s notes.

128: Searching TheBrain Application Commands

You can search the commands available in TheBrain by entering / in the search box. Selecting a search result will execute the command if possible. This is particularly useful for commands that you don’t use often.

KEYWORD ... documentation