Working with buffers

Buffers in Scratch are intentionally lightweight. There are no folders, no tags, no metadata. Just an ordered set of Markdown files that you move through with the keyboard or trackpad.

Create a buffer

Press ⌘N. A new empty buffer becomes the current buffer; the previous buffer is saved.

The first line of any buffer is its title — there is no separate title field. Empty buffers show as “Untitled” in search results.

Move between buffers

Action	Shortcut
Next buffer	⌘ ⇧ ]
Previous buffer	⌘ ⇧ [
Trackpad	Two-finger swipe left or right

The footer shows your position in the set, e.g. 3 of 12.

Delete a buffer

Press ⌘⇧⌫ to delete the current buffer. Scratch moves to the next available buffer; if it was the last one, a new empty buffer is created.

There is no undo for delete — the file is removed from disk. If you need history, use Time Machine, or set Settings → General → Buffer location to a versioned sync folder.

Find in the current buffer

Press ⌘F to open the find bar. Type a query, press Enter for the next match, Shift+Enter for the previous, Esc to close.

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Search across all buffers

Press ⌘⇧F to open cross-buffer search. Type a query and Scratch returns matching buffers, ranked by relevance, with a short preview around each hit.

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• ↑ and ↓ move between results.
• Enter opens the highlighted result and jumps to the match.
• Esc closes the search panel.

The query runs against the full text of every buffer. Search is fuzzy: small typos still find matches. Index updates happen in the background as buffers change — you don’t have to do anything.