Getting started

Install

1. Request your download link from the Nomima site — enter your email and we'll send a link to the .dmg. Nomima is free and built for Apple Silicon Macs (M1 and later, macOS 11+).
2. Open the .dmg and drag Nomima into your Applications folder.
3. Launch it. That’s the whole setup — there is no sign-up, login, or onboarding form.

Where your notes live: on first launch Nomima creates a local vault on your Mac. Everything — notes, files, the knowledge graph — is stored there. It leaves your device only when you choose to use Summon (AI) or publish a note. See Settings & privacy for details.

The Welcome notebook

A fresh vault opens with a “Welcome to Nomima” notebook. It’s a live playground, not a read-only tour: it already contains real @mentions, #hashtags, tasks and dates, so the Knowledge Graph and the colored minimap on the right edge light up immediately. Edit it, break it, delete it — it’s yours.

The interface at a glance

The whole window is just three things: your notebooks on the left, the editor in the middle, and everything Nomima builds from your writing around the edges — a table of contents, a colored minimap, a live graph, and the AI assistant.

1. 1 · Sidebar — Search, Home, Inbox, Summon Tasks, your notebook list, and Knowledge Graph / Insights / References / Settings pinned at the bottom.
2. 2 · Editor — where you write. Type / for blocks, @ for people and things, # for topics and projects.
3. 3 · Table of Contents — a persistent outline of the open note by heading, mention, hashtag or task; it highlights what’s in view as you scroll. Toggle it from the ⋯ note menu.
4. 4 · Smart Scrollbar — the colored rail on the right: a minimap of every tag, date, reminder and comment. Hover to magnify, click to jump.
5. 5 · Note cover graph — a compact, interactive Knowledge Graph above the note showing what it connects to.
6. 6 · Summon — the glowing button in the bottom-right opens the AI assistant.

Also worth knowing: Home is your daily agenda (overdue, today, upcoming), and a Smart View reorganizes the whole vault by mention, hashtag, date, task or file — both built automatically from what you write.

Where notifications live: Nomima has no separate notifications bell. Anything due or overdue surfaces in two places you already use — the overdue and upcoming badges on Home, and the Alerts lens in Smart View (its pill carries a red count when something needs attention).

Your first ten minutes

Do these in the Welcome notebook (or a new one). Each step takes seconds — by the end you’ll have used the entire core loop.

1. Create a notebook

   Click the new-notebook button in the sidebar, type a title, and press Enter — the caret drops straight into the page. Then just write; plain paragraphs are fine. Structure is opt-in, never required.

   ⌕ Search…

   ⌂ Home

   ▤ Summon Tasks

   Notebooks

   ＋ New Notebook

   👋 Launch plan

   Launch plan

   New notebook · just now

   Start writing — press / for a block, @ for a person, # for a topic…

2. Add a task list

   Type [] then a space at the start of a line, or type /task and pick Task List. Give it a title, press Enter, and add items — check them off from anywhere and every view stays in sync.

   ▤ Launch checklist

   ✓Draft the announcement

   Line up @Sara Chen for review

   Ship by Fri 5pm

3. Tag a person with @

   Type @ and a name — @Sara — and press Tab to accept. It becomes a @Sara pill connected to everything else that mentions Sara. As you type, Nomima even suggests names you’ve used before.

   Follow up with @ Sara Chen@Sara on the deck

   People

   ● Sara Chen person

   ● Sam Ortiz person

   ● Salesforce company

   Create

   ＋ New person “Sa…”

4. Tag a project with #

   Type # and a topic — #launch → #launch. Mentions are the who/what; hashtags are the themes and projects. Both become filters and graph connections.

5. Write a date in plain words

   Type “call the venue tomorrow 3pm” — the words turn into a live tomorrow 3pm pill that shows up in Home and the Dates view. Turn any date into a countdown reminder with a desktop alert.

   Call the venue tomorrow 3pm

   🕐 Reminder · in 18h 42m · desktop alert

6. Watch it connect

   Glance at the cover graph above the note: @Sara and #launch are already nodes, wired to this note and to anywhere else you’ve used them. You built a knowledge graph without thinking about it.

7. Find anything with ⌘K

   Press ⌘K to search notebooks, blocks, every mention, hashtag, date and file — and to run commands. Press Enter on a tag to open its Smart View lens; stack several to filter by all or any.

   ⌕ launch⌘K

   Notebooks

   📄 Launch plan notebook

   Tags & dates

   ＠ @Sara Chen 3 notes

   ◷ Fri 5pm 2 notes

   Commands

   ⚡ New notebook ⌘N

Organize the sidebar

Your notebooks live in the sidebar, and you can arrange them however you like:

• Reorder by hand. Drag a notebook up or down — a glowing line shows exactly where it will land, and the order sticks. (Pinned notebooks still sit at the top.)
• Nest a page under another. Drag a notebook onto the middle of another one to tuck it inside as a child page; the parent gets an expand arrow. Drag it back out to un-nest.
• Group with folders. Click the folder button next to the notebook list to make a folder, then drag notebooks onto it to bundle them — even notebooks that already have child pages. A folder's ⋯ menu lets you rename it, give it an icon, add a notebook, or delete it. Deleting a folder keeps your notebooks — they just move back out to the top level.
• Open a folder's overview. Click a folder's name (not its icon — that still expands it inline) to open a full-page overview of everything inside it. Toggle between a List that keeps the structure — notebooks with their pages indented underneath — and a Cards grid that lays every notebook and buried page out as even, preview-rich tiles, so a page tucked several levels down is just as easy to spot as a top-level one; your choice is remembered. A search box at the top filters as you type and looks inside your notes, not just titles.

The drag tells you what it'll do: a line means "reorder here," a highlighted row or folder means "drop inside," and a red ⊘ means "you can't drop that there" (for example, a folder can't go inside another folder).

Find anything

Press ⌘K to open the command palette. It searches notebooks, blocks, every mention and hashtag, dates (“tomorrow”, “friday”…), and files — and it runs commands like creating a notebook or opening Settings. Press Enter on a tag to open its Smart View lens; you can even stack several tags to filter by all or any of them.

Retrace your steps: Nomima remembers where you’ve been. Use the back and forward arrows in the titlebar — or ⌘[ and ⌘] — to move through the notebooks and views you’ve visited, and the breadcrumbs next to them show where you are.

Where to go next

• Blocks — everything the / menu can insert.
• Mentions & hashtags — tag types, custom types, and entity cards.
• Dates & reminders — natural-language dates and desktop alerts.
• Smart Views & Home — see your vault from every angle.