Mastering Folders and Tags in OmniCanvas: An Organization Guide

Two Systems, One Goal

OmniCanvas gives you two complementary ways to organize notes: folders and tags. Used together, they create a flexible system that handles both hierarchical organization and cross-cutting themes.

Understanding when to use each — and how to combine them — is the key to staying organized as your note collection grows.

Folders: Your Primary Structure

Folders create a hierarchical tree structure. A note lives inside a folder, and folders can contain sub-folders. This mirrors how most people naturally think about organization — by category, project, or area.

When to Use Folders

Use folders for your primary organizational categories:

• Projects — One folder per active project (e.g., "Website Redesign," "Q3 Planning")
• Areas of life — Ongoing responsibilities (e.g., "Work," "Personal," "Health")
• Domains — Major knowledge areas (e.g., "Engineering," "Design," "Marketing")

OmniCanvas starts you with "Work" and "Personal" folders. Expand from there based on your needs.

Nesting Folders

Sub-folders add granularity without clutter. For example:

• Work

- Project Alpha - Project Beta - Meeting Notes

• Personal

- Reading Notes - Travel - Recipes

The folder tree in the sidebar shows your entire hierarchy at a glance. Click the arrow next to any folder to expand or collapse its children.

Tips for Folders

• Keep the top level shallow. Aim for 3-7 top-level folders. Too many creates decision paralysis when filing notes.
• Create project folders proactively. When you start a new project, immediately create a folder for it. This reduces the "unfiled notes" problem.
• Archive completed projects. When a project ends, you can keep the folder for reference or move notes to a general archive folder to keep your active workspace clean.
• Use the "Unfiled" section. Notes without a folder appear in the "Unfiled" section. Check this periodically and file or delete stale notes.

Tags: Your Cross-Cutting Themes

Tags are labels you attach to notes. Unlike folders, a note can have many tags, and tags do not form a hierarchy. They create horizontal connections across your folder structure.

When to Use Tags

Use tags for attributes that cut across folders:

• Status tags — "in-progress," "review," "done," "blocked"
• Type tags — "idea," "reference," "meeting," "decision"
• Theme tags — "design," "performance," "onboarding"
• Priority tags — "urgent," "important," "someday"

How Tags Power Other Views

Tags are not just labels — they drive OmniCanvas features:

• Kanban view uses tags as columns. Your status tags become a workflow board automatically.
• Graph view draws connections between notes that share tags. This surfaces related content across different folders.
• Search matches against tags, helping you find notes by attribute.
• Table view shows tags as a column, letting you sort and filter by tag.

Tips for Tags

• Use lowercase and hyphens. Keep tag names consistent: "in-progress" not "In Progress" or "inProgress."
• Limit to 15-25 tags total. Too many tags and you forget which ones exist. If you need more granularity, use folder sub-structure instead.
• Don't duplicate folders as tags. If you have a folder called "Marketing," you don't need a tag called "marketing" too.
• Review tags quarterly. Delete tags with fewer than 3 notes. Merge similar tags (e.g., "ui" and "design" might be the same thing for your purposes).

Combining Folders and Tags

The most effective system uses folders for structure and tags for attributes. A note's folder answers "where does this belong?" while its tags answer "what kind of thing is this?"

Example: Product Team Setup

Folders:

• Product Roadmap
• User Research
• Design Specs
• Sprint Notes

Tags:

• idea, decision, blocker, shipped
• mobile, web, api
• p0, p1, p2

A note about a mobile design decision lives in the "Design Specs" folder with tags "decision" and "mobile." You can find it by browsing the folder, searching by tag, or spotting it in the knowledge graph connected to other mobile-tagged notes.

Example: Personal Knowledge Base

Folders:

• Work
• Learning
• Personal Projects
• Health

Tags:

• idea, reference, journal
• python, design, writing
• review (for notes to revisit)

A Python tutorial note lives in "Learning" with tags "reference" and "python." When you start a Python project later, searching the "python" tag surfaces all your Python-related notes across every folder.

Common Mistakes

Over-Organizing

The biggest mistake is spending more time organizing than creating. Your system should be simple enough that filing a note takes less than 5 seconds. If you are agonizing over which folder or tag to use, your system is too complex.

Folders Only

Using only folders means you miss cross-cutting relationships. Two notes in different folders that share a theme have no visible connection without tags.

Tags Only

Using only tags means you lose hierarchical structure. Without folders, you have no way to group notes into clear projects or areas.

Too Many of Either

More than 10 top-level folders or more than 25 tags, and the system becomes hard to maintain. Prune regularly.

The best organization system is the one you actually use. Start simple — a few folders and a handful of tags — and add complexity only when you feel the need for it.