MarkNode gives you three ways to find your way around a project: Quick Open, a keyboard-driven popup for jumping to a file or a match; the Find panel, a docked panel for working through many results; and Recent Files, a history of what you have opened.
Quick Open
Press Cmd+O on macOS or Ctrl+O on Windows and Linux to open the Quick Open popup. It has three tabs along the top — Docs, Files, and Content — and you can switch between them by clicking a tab or with a keyboard shortcut:
| Tab | Shortcut | What it searches |
|---|---|---|
| Docs | Cmd+O / Ctrl+O | Document files (Markdown, text) by name. Shows your recent documents when the box is empty. |
| Files | Cmd+Shift+O / Ctrl+Shift+O | Every file in the project by name. Shows recently opened files when the box is empty. |
| Content | Cmd+P / Ctrl+P | The text inside your files — full-text search, with a snippet of each match. |
In the Docs and Files tabs, matching is fuzzy, so you do not need to type the exact name:
- Typing
api docmatchesapi-documentation.md,api_docs.md, ormy-api-docs.md - Words can match in any order —
doc apifinds the same results asapi doc - Results are ranked by relevance, with recently opened files ranked higher
In every tab, press Enter to open the selected result, use the arrow keys to pick a different one, and press Escape to close the popup without opening anything.
Content tab vs. the Find panel: the Content tab is the fast way to run a search and jump straight to one result. When you want to keep the results open and work through many matches, use the Find panel below.
The Find Panel
The Find panel is a docked panel at the bottom of the window that keeps search and reference results in tabs, so you can revisit them while you edit. Open it with the Find icon in the activity rail on the far left, or with the shortcuts below. It shares the bottom area with the Terminal and Problems panels.
Find in Files
Press Cmd+Shift+F on macOS or Ctrl+Shift+F on Windows and Linux to start a full-text search across the project. Results are grouped by file; click a result to open the file and jump to that line. The input bar has three toggles:
- Match case (
Aa) — make the search case-sensitive - Whole word — match complete words only, so
logdoes not matchloggerordialog - Regex (
.*) — treat the search term as a regular expression
Find in Files respects standard ignore files such as .gitignore. Files and folders listed there — build output, node_modules, generated files — are excluded automatically, keeping results focused and searches fast.
Find References
To see everywhere a document is linked from, use Find References. Trigger it by right-clicking a Markdown file in the file explorer and choosing Find All References, by right-clicking a link in the editor or preview, or from Tools > Find References (Shift+F12). The results open as their own tab in the Find panel, listing every place in the project that links to the target file. This is useful before renaming or moving a file, so you know what will need updating.
Running a new search of the same kind replaces the active tab in place; a search of a different kind opens a new tab.
Recent Files
The Recent Files view shows a history of documents you have opened, organized by date. Open it from the Recent icon in the activity rail.
Files are grouped into time periods — today, yesterday, this week, earlier — so you can find a document you were editing last Tuesday without remembering its name or location. Click any entry to open the file.
Recent Files tracks files across all projects, not just the currently open folder, making it useful when you work across multiple projects throughout the day.