Comments

Leave yourself a remark about a sentence or a paragraph without writing it into the note's text.

Add a comment

Select the words you want to comment on. To comment on a whole paragraph, just put the cursor in it.
Click the speech bubble in the bar over the selection, choose Note ▸ Add Comment (⇧⌘K), or right-click and choose Add Comment.
Type the comment and press Return to add it. To start a new line in it, press ⇧Return or ⌥Return.

Select the words you want to comment on. To comment on a whole paragraph, just put the cursor in it.
Tap Add Comment in the menu over the selection.
Type the comment and tap Return on the keyboard to add it. With a hardware keyboard, Return adds it and ⇧Return or ⌥Return starts a new line.

The passage turns yellow, and the thread opens with the cursor ready in it. The field grows as you write, up to six lines, then scrolls. If you open a thread and leave without writing anything, the yellow goes away again.

A block's own menu has Add Comment too — the menu of its grip (☰). A comment goes on one block or on the words you select; with several blocks selected there is no Add Comment.

Reply, edit and delete

Add more comments under the first one in the same thread. Each comment shows when it was written.

Edit — choose ⋯ ▸ Edit Comment. The comment becomes a field you edit in place; Return or Save keeps the change, Escape or Cancel drops it.
Delete a comment — choose ⋯ ▸ Delete Comment. NotaBene asks first, then removes only that comment; the rest of the thread stays.
Delete a whole thread — in a thread opened from its yellow passage, its own ⋯ deletes the whole thread. Where several threads are shown together, each has ⋯ ▸ Delete Thread.

Read comments

A commented paragraph, list item, heading or callout has a line under it with a speech bubble — for example 2 comments · 11:41: how many comments it has, and when the newest was written. A block has one such line however many of its passages are commented.

On the Mac, and on an iPad with a trackpad, holding the pointer over the line shows the newest comment.

Click or tap the line to open the thread. If the block has several threads, they open together in a sheet, in the order they stand in the text — each under its quoted passage, with its own reply field and ⋯ ▸ Delete Thread. Choose Done or press Escape to close it; everything is saved as you write.

In the sheet, pointing at a thread brightens its passage in the note behind.

Click or tap a yellow passage to open just its own thread.

The thread opens in a popover under the passage.

The thread opens in a sheet at half height, with the passage quoted at the top, since the sheet covers it. A long thread opens at its end, where the reply field is.

The line under a block is only on screen; it is not part of the note's text.

See every comment in the note

Open Info ▸ Comments. It lists every thread in the order it stands in the text: the passage, the latest comment, how many there are and when.

Click or tap a thread to scroll to its passage and open it.
Right-click it, or touch and hold it, to delete the thread.

Searching finds a note by the words of its comments too.

When the commented text is deleted

If you delete the whole passage, its thread is kept: it moves to Info ▸ No Longer in the Note, with the passage struck through. If the text comes back — with Undo, or by restoring an earlier version — the comment goes back onto it.

While you edit, a comment stays with its words. Words typed in the middle of a passage become part of it; words typed after it don't; text added above it moves it along.

Where comments go

Your devices — comments sync with the note. Two devices commenting on the same note at the same time keep both comments.
Duplicate and merge — a duplicated note keeps its comments, and merged notes bring theirs into the merged note.
Templates — a template, and a note made from one, start without comments.
Copy, export and print — copying commented text doesn't copy its comment, and exporting or printing a note leaves its comments out.