Alongside its content, the title is one of the two main attributes of a note. It's the short, human-readable name shown in the editable field at the top of every note, and it's what identifies the note throughout the interface (in the Note Tree, in tabs, in the Breadcrumb and win Internal (reference) links.
Internally, notes are identified by a unique Note ID rather than by their title, so the title is purely for your benefit. This has a few consequences:
In addition:
To rename a note, simply click into the title field and type. Changes are saved automatically as you type.
You can also begin editing the title directly from the Note Tree[missing note] by selecting a note and pressing Enter (see Edit note title in Keyboard Shortcuts), which focuses the title field for the active note.
When the cursor is in the title field, pressing Enter moves focus into the note's content. For [missing note] notes this also inserts a fresh empty paragraph at the very top of the document, so you can start writing immediately — much like other note-taking apps.
This makes it possible to create a note, type its title, press Enter, and continue straight into the body without reaching for the mouse.
When you create a new note it's given a default title (new note) which is pre-selected, so you can type a name right away to replace it. The default title for new notes can be customized per-section — see [missing note].
If you decide you don't want the note after all, pressing Escape while the title of a freshly created note is still focused will discard it.
Some notes get their titles assigned automatically rather than typed:
For [missing note] Protected Notes, the title is not encrypted — only the content is. The title therefore remains visible in the tree and tabs even when no protected session is active. While locked, however, the title field is read-only and cannot be edited until you enter your password.
The titles of Protected Notes
[missing note] are encrypted along with their content. Before
entering your password, Trilium cannot decrypt the title, so it is shown
as [protected] in instead and the title cannot
be modified.
Once you enter your password and a protected session is active, the real title is decrypted and displayed, and becomes editable again.