ZenNotes

ZenNotes 2.13.0 — inline Excalidraw drawing embeds, PDF export confirmation, and a tidier Settings

Installers for macOS, Windows, and Linux (x64 + arm64) are attached below once the build finishes. On macOS, brew install --cask zennotes/tap/zennotes; on Arch, yay -S zennotes-bin.

✨ Improvements

• Embed Excalidraw drawings inline in your notes: reference a .excalidraw (or Obsidian .excalidraw.md) drawing with the wikilink embed syntax and it renders inline as an image, in both the editor's live preview and the reading view — ![[diagram.excalidraw]], or sized with ![[diagram.excalidraw|600]] / ![[diagram.excalidraw|600x400]]. Click an embedded drawing to open it in its own Excalidraw tab, or right-click it for a drawing menu — Open drawing, Open in split, Copy image, Copy embed, and Reveal in File Manager. The command palette gains New Drawing, Embed Existing Drawing… (a searchable picker), and Embed New Drawing (create, insert an embed at the cursor, then open it). Previews are exported at 2× and cached so they stay crisp and fast, refresh when the drawing changes, and follow your light/dark theme so a drawing never shows a white box in a dark note. (#276, #278, thanks @junereycasuga)
• Confirmation after exporting a note to PDF: exporting used to give no feedback, leaving you unsure whether it worked. Now a small toast appears in the bottom-right after a successful export with a "Show in folder" button that reveals the saved PDF in your file manager, and it auto-dismisses after a few seconds. If an export fails, an error toast explains why and stays until you dismiss it (replacing the old blocking alert). (#257, requested by @ShowhyT, implemented by @wholetthekfcgo in #361)
• New theme — Kanagawa Paper Ink: a muted Kanagawa dark variant (ported from kanagawa-paper.nvim) with a custom very-dark-purple canvas for focus. Find it under Settings → Appearance → Kanagawa → Paper Ink. (#365, thanks @Kamyil)
• Choose where new drawings and databases are created: they no longer always land in the root of your vault. A new Settings → Vault → Notes → New Drawings & Databases section lets you place each (independently) in your primary notes area, in the active note's folder, or in a specific vault-relative subfolder you pick (e.g. assets/drawings). The choice is saved per vault and applies everywhere a drawing or database is created: the sidebar buttons, the command palette, and the home view. (#362)
• Turn off the blinking cursor: a new Settings → Editor → Blinking cursor toggle keeps the caret solid instead of blinking, for anyone who finds the blink distracting or prefers a steady cursor (matching the macOS "Prefer non-blinking cursor" accessibility setting). It applies to both the insert-mode caret and the Vim normal-mode block cursor, live, and persists per device. (#160)
• Tidier Settings: the Vault tab's overloaded "Notes" sub-tab is split up. Daily, weekly, and monthly notes plus the calendar now live in their own Periodic notes sub-tab, "Notes" keeps just note organization, and the folder-label sub-tab is renamed Folders (was "System"). Each sub-tab now shows its own accurate header, and two settings moved to where you'd expect them: Scroll offset (Vim scrolloff) and Time format now sit under Editor instead of Typography.

🐛 Fixes

• Excalidraw drawings follow your light/dark theme, including custom themes: a .excalidraw drawing used to ignore the active theme and render light whenever you were on a custom theme. It derived its light/dark mode by looking your theme up in the built-in themes list, and a custom theme's id isn't in that list, so the lookup quietly fell back to light. Drawings now read the app's resolved mode directly (the same data-theme-mode the rest of the UI uses), so a custom theme that declares dark mode renders dark, and an open drawing updates live when you switch themes or your OS dark mode changes. (#363, thanks @Kamyil)
• The calendar panel's task list stays in sync with your daily note: with the calendar panel open and the Tasks view closed, checking a task in your daily note (or adding a new one) did not update the panel's weekly task list, so completed tasks lingered and freshly added ones were missing until you opened the Tasks view. The panel refreshed its tasks only while a Tasks view was on screen; it now refreshes as you edit the note whether or not the Tasks view is open. (reported by Philipp)
• Opening a daily note drops you straight into it: with Vim mode on, using <leader>d (or the command / calendar) to open or create a daily note left focus on the selected sidebar item, so pressing i did nothing and you had to click into the note first. It only seemed to work when focus already happened to be in the editor. Opening a daily, weekly, or monthly note now lands focus in the editor in normal mode, so i starts insert right away. (reported by Philipp)
• Strikethrough now crosses out math: wrapping a formula in ~~…~~ (like ~~$a^2 + (2k+1)$~~) crossed out the surrounding text but left the rendered KaTeX untouched, because a formula renders as an inline block that a normal strikethrough line does not paint across. Struck math now shows a line through the formula in the current text color, matching struck text, everywhere rendered markdown appears (reading view, hover previews, comments, note embeds, and PDF export). (#359, thanks @LognanLi)

Keyboard-first and local-first, as always.