Tabs, panes & workspaces
Altretta lets you arrange many open notes into exactly the layout a task needs — tabs, split panes, pop-out windows — and save that arrangement as a named workspace you can restore later. Setting up your view is part of the work, so Altretta makes it fast and repeatable.
Tabs
Open notes in tabs and switch between them just like a browser. Following a wikilink can open its target in a new tab, so you can chase a chain of ideas without losing your place. Reorder tabs by dragging, and close the ones you're done with.
Split panes
Split the view into multiple panes to see more than one note at once.
Put two notes side by side — draft in the left pane, keep a reference or an outline in the right. Ideal on a wide screen.
Stack two panes top and bottom — handy for comparing a note against another, or keeping a task list below the note you're writing.
Each pane holds its own tabs, so you can build a genuine multi-note layout: a working pane, a reference pane, and a scratch pane, each with several notes open.
Stacked tabs
Turn a pane's tabs into stacked tabs to see them as a cascade rather than a single row. Instead of one note at a time, the pane shows its notes as overlapping cards you can fan through — useful when you're moving between many related notes and want them all visible at a glance.
Linked scroll
Turn on linked scroll to bind two panes together so they scroll in step. Scroll one and the other follows — the fastest way to compare two versions of a document, a note against its translation, or a spec against its implementation notes side by side.
Pop-out windows
Need a note on a second monitor or permanently in view? Pop a note out into its own OS window. The pop-out is a fully live editor — edits sync back to the same .md file in real time — so you can keep a reference, a checklist, or your daily note open beside the main window, or on another screen entirely.
Pop out your daily note or a running task list and park it on a second monitor. It stays live all day while you work across tabs and panes in the main window.
Saved workspaces
A layout you built for a task is worth keeping. Save your current arrangement as a named workspace — which notes are open, how the panes are split, what's in each tab — and restore it in one click later.
Arrange your view
Open the notes you need and split the panes the way the task wants them.
Save it as a workspace
Give the layout a name — "Weekly review", "Writing", "Research" — and Altretta stores the whole arrangement.
Restore it anytime
Reopen the workspace to bring back every note and pane exactly as you left them, so you drop straight back into the task.
Workspaces capture your view, not your content. The notes themselves stay plain .md files on disk — a workspace just remembers how you had them arranged.
Building a working view
Put the pieces together for a real task. For a weekly review you might split right, keep your daily note in the left pane, stack your open project notes in the right, pop out a task list to a second monitor, and save the whole thing as a Weekly review workspace. Next week, one click rebuilds it.