The 5 Capacities Features and Tricks that I use Daily

Here are the 5 things that I currently use every time I open Capacities, that make me go 🤯 every time… All of these features are on the free plan too!

1. ‘Created on this day’

I can’t tell you how many times I tried to remember to timestamp my notes so that I could create a query to show me what I created on a day… However Capacities just does it for me!

You can find this section in every daily note, and you can choose how you want to review the content you’ve created: do you want a list/wall/gallery view or do you want to embed the content so you can edit it from the daily note? The choice is yours. I always choose the wall view!

I also like that scrolling back through your daily notes shows you what kind of things you’re interested in at a given time, so it’s a really nice reflection layer to my note-taking practices too, and best of all, I have to put no effort in to do this!

2. The Wall view

One frustration with note-taking apps I have previously used is that I couldn’t make my knowledge look how I wanted it to. I spend hours taking notes because it’s my hobby, so it’s important everything looks good too.

Capacities’ UI is gorgeous and the softer colours are excellent compared to other apps, but my favourite visual feature is the wall view. It lets you see all your content in this dynamic view which I just find so visually appealing and I love seeing this view fill out as I add more content. You can now also define what properties are shown in this view to have even more visual customisation.

The wall view is also brought into the backlink section which is so nice to see. I find this more inspiring than a plain list of backlinks.

3. The Command Palette

I am a command palette fan. If an app has one, I’m going to spend the time learning how to use it because it pays off immensely. It makes navigation faster and there’s often hidden actions that just really help you out multiple times a day.

Capacities’ is no different. It’s how I change spaces, it’s how I open content, it’s how I get back to the daily note, it’s how I search my content quickly (including a quick search for the content of my properties)…

It helps me move faster which works really well for a PKM app. It’s where my brain is moving the fastest, I’m thinking, connecting, getting excited about what I’m learning about, so reducing any friction to getting thoughts down or checking facts is essential, and the command palette is a great way to achieve this.

4. Creating content in-line

So the command palette is a great way of navigating quickly, but it also means I barely have to leave my keyboard. Another way to use your keyboard in Capacities is to create content in-line.

All content in Capacities has to have a defined object type, which is essentially categorising it based on the content you’re going to write about. e.g a book/event/definition/person/meeting. When you create new content, you have to define that first.

You can do this in many ways, but my favourite is in-line.

The best trick is to type @{object-type-name}/{new-contet-name}.

That way, if you already have content with that name belonging to that object, it will just reference it. If you don’t have content with that name belonging to that object, it will create it for you, and will reference the new content too.

5. Bulk create new content

Sometimes though you just need to get things out of your head quickly and think about where to put them later. The ‘turn into’ feature is your best friend for this.

You can select any group of blocks and turn them into pieces of content belonging to an object type. For example, you can brain dump tasks at the end of the day and turn them into task entries:

This idea works for all sorts of use cases!

You can also do this one-by-one with the #, which is good if you don’t have a list of things to create:

This function creates an embed in the page, which means you can fill out the properties there and then, or you can change how this link looe we go, my favourite Capacities features right now. I really like how easy Capacities is to use and discovering new tricks along the way helps make using it even more enjoyable!

Disclaimer: I work for Capacities now, but this article is not part of our work together. All opinions are my own, and were set long before I began working with the team!