A trip to Lisbon starts as one note.

Then the flight confirmation goes in, and the hotel address, and the list of restaurants a friend sent, and a packing list. By the second week it's a long scroll where the thing you need at the airport is somewhere below the thing you needed last Tuesday.

The usual fix is to split it into three notes: Lisbon plan, Lisbon bookings, Lisbon packing.

That works until you're looking for the hotel's check-in time and can't remember which of the three it went in. Or you share one with the person you're travelling with and forget the other two.

Tabs are the other fix.

One note, one title, with a row of tabs across the top: Plan, Bookings, Packing. One panel shows at a time, and each holds anything a note can: a checklist, a table of flight times, a photo of the booking, a callout with the address you'll need to show a taxi driver.

Adding Them

Type /tabs, press ⌃⌥B on a Mac, or use the tabs button in the toolbar.

The line you're on becomes the first tab, with an empty second one beside it. The plus at the end of the row adds another.

The ⌃⌥ keys (Control and Option together) are Mac only, because on Windows and Linux that pair types characters like @ and €. Everywhere else, the slash menu and the toolbar do the same job.

Renaming, Reordering, Removing

• Rename: double-click a title, or double-tap it on a phone.
• Remove: while you're renaming, a bin appears beside the title. It removes that tab, and it asks first, because whatever is in the tab goes with it.
• Reorder: hold a title and drag it along the row. On a phone, hold it still for a moment first, then slide.
• Take them away: press ⌃⌥B again inside the tabs.

When there are more titles than fit, the row slides sideways. So a kitchen renovation with a tab for every room still fits on a narrow screen.

Which Tab Is Showing Is Yours

The tab you have open isn't saved with the note.

That's the decision I'd defend hardest, because a shared note shouldn't move under you. If you share the Lisbon note and your partner has Packing open while you're in Bookings, neither of you moves the other's screen.

Which tab is showing is yours. It isn't part of the note.

The same goes for undo. Undo takes back words, not tab switches.

And if the change it takes back sits in a tab you can't see, that tab comes forward, so you can see what happened.

Where Tabs Show Up

• A published page keeps them, and they still switch.
• On paper there's nothing to click, so every tab is printed under its own title, one after the other.
• In Markdown, tabs are written with comment markers (<!-- tabs -->, <!-- tab: Title -->, <!-- /tabs -->), which is also how the assistant and a connected app write them.

There's more in blocks you can add.

When Not to Use Them

Tabs hide things. That's the point, and it's also the cost.

A reader skimming the note sees one panel and the titles of the others, not what's in them. For a note you read top to bottom, like a recipe or meeting minutes, headings are better: everything stays in view, and a table of contents can point at each one.

Tabs earn their place when the parts of a note are used at different moments.

The plan before you go. The bookings at the counter. The packing list the night before.

Same trip, same note, and only the part you need in front of you.