Links, embeds and files

Links between notes

• [[ suggests your notes. A link to a note that does not exist creates it.
• [[Groceries]] finds the note by file name, in any subfolder, ignoring case.
• [[Note|alias]] shows another text. [[Note#Heading]] points at a heading.
• @ suggests days and links to the daily note of that day: @today, @tomorrow, @yesterday, a weekday (@monday: the next one, never today), or a date (@2026-10-09). French names work too (@demain, @lundi). An address such as name@domain suggests nothing.
• Ctrl + click opens a link. Ctrl + Shift + click opens it in the pane beside.
• Each name in the aliases of a note's front matter is another name for it: suggested after [[, and followed by links, backlinks and the graph.

When a note is renamed, the links to it follow. See Renaming.

Backlinks

The Backlinks view of the panel (Ctrl + L) lists the notes that link to the open one, each with the line that holds the link.

• Links written with an alias, and links inside tables, count.
• Embeds count too, marked embedded.
• The list follows the note you open, not the one you preview while moving through the list. So you can look at each linking note in turn.

Tags

A #tag in the text, or a tags key in the front matter, tags a note.

• # in the palette lists the notes carrying a tag.
• The Tags view of the panel (Ctrl + T) lists every tag of the vault with its number of notes.
• Ctrl + click opens a tag of the text.

Embedded sections

A line holding only ![[Note#Heading]] shows that heading, and what is under it up to the next heading of the same level, in place and live.

• Look: the section is drawn in a frame, with a thin bar on its left in the accent color and the name of its note at the top right. It follows the theme and wraps to the page.
• Open the source: click the name, double click the frame, or press Alt + Enter on its line. The note opens at that section, and Alt + Left comes back. Ctrl + click on a [[Note#Heading]] link does the same.
• Suggestions: typing ![[Note# suggests the headings of the note, and ![[Note#^ its blocks. This works after [[ too.
• Read-only: to change the text, change it in its note.
• Loops: an embed that leads back to a note already in the chain says circular embed. Three levels are shown at most.
• Renames: renaming the note rewrites the embeds and links to it. Renaming the heading (the same headings but one, saved) rewrites #Heading in the other notes.
• Only alone on its line: inside a sentence, a list item or a code block, it is a plain link. ![[picture.png]] is still a picture.

The file stays plain Markdown: other apps show the line as a link.

Pictures

![](picture.png) or ![[picture.png]] shows the picture under its line: PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, SVG, BMP, TIFF or AVIF. Bref looks for it next to the note, then at the top of the vault, then by its file name anywhere in the vault.

• Ctrl + V with a picture in the clipboard saves it next to the note and inserts its ![](…) line.
• Typing ![[ suggests the diagrams and pictures of the vault.
• Enlarge: point at a picture (PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP…), a formula, an SVG or a Mermaid diagram, and a magnifier button appears at its corner, or beside it when it is too small to hold it. It opens a viewer: Ctrl + wheel zooms around the pointer, and dragging moves the picture. See the viewer.
• A click on the picture itself still places the cursor. A missing or unreadable picture has no button.

Pictures are part of the vault. See Files on disk.

Dropping files

Drag files or folders from your file manager onto the window. The originals never move, and nothing is overwritten: a name already taken becomes name 2.

On a note. A line shows between two lines of the text, never inside a table, a code block or the YAML header. A label next to the pointer says where the items will land. They are copied next to the note, like a pasted picture, and each gets a line at that place:

One Ctrl + Z takes the lines back; the copies stay.

On the tree. The folder under the pointer is tinted (on a file, the folder that holds it), and the label names it. A drop between rows goes to the root of the vault. The new files are shown and selected, and a message says how many files were copied and how many items were left out.

On the welcome screen, a dropped folder becomes the vault.

What is copied: folders with everything in them, except hidden files and symbolic links, which are counted, not copied. A folder is never copied into itself. The copy runs in the background, so a large video does not freeze the window.

Files the vault lists: pictures, CSV and TSV tables, and attachments (pdf, video and audio, archives, Office and OpenDocument files, txt, json…). They show in the tree and the palette. [[name.pdf]] opens them in the application of your system, and renaming one rewrites the links to it. Other types are copied but not listed, so no link is written for them.

[[Folder]] opens the folder as a list page when no note has that name.

Not possible: pasting files copied in a file manager (the toolkit only passes text and pictures), and playing video or audio inside a note.