Special Notes
Dendron has builtin support for a variety of special note formats. These notes can be created using regular lookup - these commands provide convenient shortcuts for frequently used notes.
Daily Journal
The daily journal helps you keep a journal for each day of the year. By default, it will create the journal under daily.{date}
though this is configurable by setting the dendron.dailyJournalDomain
.
You can create a daily journal using > Dendron: Create Daily Journal Note
or Cmd+Shift+I
shortcut.
Journal Note
A journal note is a self contained note that is meant to track something over time. Examples of journals include recording workout sessions, making meeting notes, and keeping a mood journal.
To create a journal note, trigger a lookup and then click on the calendar icon.

By default, Dendron will create the journal note with the following hierarchy {domain}.journal.{y.MM.dd}
. {domain}
is the domain of the current active note when you execute New Journal Note
.
A reference for date formatting tokens can be found here
Scratch Note
A scratch note is a self contained note that is meant to be used as scratchpad. Use it for thoughts or when you want to expand on a bullet point. Scratch notes are created in the scratch
domain and have the following format: {domain}.journal.{y.MM.dd.HHmmss}
.

Configuration
All special notes support the following configuration options
- NodeType has the value of
Journal
orScratch
default{NodeType}Name
Determines the node name.
Defaults:
- Journal:
journal
- Scratch:
scratch
default{NodeType}DateFormat
Determines the date format.
Defaults:
- Journal:
Y-MM-DD
- Scratch:
Y-MM-DD-HHmmss
default{NodeType}AddBehavior
Determines how note is added in relation to current hierarchy. Say you have the following schema:
schema:
- id: pro
parent: root
namespace: true
Possible values:
- childOfDomain
- note is added as child of the domain of the current hierarchy
- eg:
- current open note:
pro.dendron.demo.md
- path of new journal note:
pro.journal.2020-08-03.md
- current open note:
- childOfDomainNamespace
- note is added as child of the namespace of the current domain if it has a namespace. otherwise behaves the same as
childOfDomain
- eg:
- current open note:
pro.dendron.demo.md
- path of new journal note:
pro.dendron.journal.2020-08-03.md
- current open note:
- note is added as child of the namespace of the current domain if it has a namespace. otherwise behaves the same as
- childOfCurrent
- note is added as a child of the current open note
- current open note:
pro.dendron.demo.md
- path of new journal note:
pro.dendron.demo.journal.2020-08-03.md
- current open note:
- note is added as a child of the current open note
- asOwnDomain
- note is created under the domain specified by the
dendron.default{NodeType}Name
config value - eg:
- current open note:
pro.dendron.demo.md
- config:
dendron.defaultJournalNoteName: "journal"
- path of new journal note:
journal.2020-08-03.md
- current open note:
- note is created under the domain specified by the
Defaults:
- Journal:
childOfDomain
- Scratch:
asOwnDomain