Getting started
Welcome to World Note. This guide gets you from a blank screen to a map with a region, a marker, and a linked note.
Create or open a project
Section titled “Create or open a project”When World Note opens, you land on the welcome screen. A World Note project is just a folder on your disk — your maps, images, and notes live inside it.
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Click Create New Map, give it a name, and choose where to save it.
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Or click Open Existing Folder to reopen a project you made before. Recent projects also appear as tiles for one-click access.
The layout
Section titled “The layout”Once a project is open, the window has three areas:
- Left panel — the file tree and full-text search across your notes.
- Center — the map canvas, where you draw. A toolbar sits along the bottom.
- Right panel — the map hierarchy (your regions and markers as a tree) in map view, or the outline and backlinks in document view.
The window has its own title bar; the tabs at the top switch between open documents.
Core tools
Section titled “Core tools”Pick tools from the bottom toolbar, or use the keyboard. The defaults:
| Tool | Key | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Select / Move | V | Select, move, and reshape regions and markers |
| Pan | H (or hold Space) | Drag the map around |
| Draw Region | D | Draw a region by free-hand, or brush add/subtract |
| Magic Wand | W | Snap a region to the terrain under a lasso |
| Place Marker | M | Drop a marker with the chosen icon |
| Terrain Brush | B | Paint land and water (in Background edit mode) |
Draw your first region
Section titled “Draw your first region”-
Press
Dfor the Draw Region tool. -
Click around the canvas to trace an outline, then close the loop. A confirm bar appears — accept it to create the region.
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Switch to Select (
V) and drag the handles to reshape it. If a drawn region sits fully inside another, it becomes a child region in the hierarchy — perfect for a city inside a kingdom.
Place a marker
Section titled “Place a marker”Press M, choose an icon from the toolbar’s marker picker, and click the map.
Markers can use built-in icons or your own uploaded images.
Save your work
Section titled “Save your work”Press Ctrl+S (Cmd+S on macOS) to save. Use Ctrl+Shift+S for Save As.
Where to next
Section titled “Where to next”- Terrain & the map look — paint and generate land, water, textures, and stamps.
- Documents & wikilinks — link notes to the map and build a world wiki.