How do I hide or delete checked items?

Open the note’s ⋯ menu. Both are right under Find in note:

• Hide checked items takes ticked items out of sight, so a to-do list shows only what’s left to do.
• Delete checked items clears every ticked item out of the note at once.

On a Mac they’re called Hide Checked Items and Delete Checked Items, and they’re in the Edit menu too.

Hide checked items

Click it and every ticked item disappears. Under each list, a gray line says how many it’s hiding.

The count includes ticked items nested inside other items. A list where everything’s ticked shows just that line.

Tick something while it’s on and it hides right away. Click Hide checked items again to bring everything back. The menu shows a check mark beside it while it’s on.

It’s one setting for your whole account, not for one note. Turn it on and every note hides its ticked items, on every device. You’ll also find it in Settings, as Hide checked items, right under Show list guide lines:

• Web, Mac and Windows — Settings → Preferences → Editor.
• iPhone and iPad — Settings → Editor. On iPhone, Settings is on the More tab.
• Android — the More tab, then Settings → Editor.
• CLI — harbor settings set --editor-hide-checked. Add =false to turn it off.

Hidden, not gone

Hiding only changes what you see in the editor. The items are still in the note:

• They print, and they’re in every export and download.
• A public share link and version history show them.
• Select a stretch of the note that runs across them and they’re part of it. Copy takes them along, and cut or delete removes them too.
• Find in note skips them while they’re hidden. A search across all your notes still finds the note, so turn Hide off to see the match.

Delete checked items

Click it and every ticked item in the note is gone. There’s no “Are you sure?”. Instead, a message pops up with an Undo button:

Click Undo and they all come back. With a keyboard, ⌘Z on a Mac or iPad and Ctrl+Z everywhere else does the same.

The message only stays a few seconds, and its Undo stops working once you change the note. Missed it? Use the editor’s own Undo: the button at the start of the formatting toolbar, or on a phone or tablet, at the left end of the formatting bar once you tap back into the note. More in How do I undo a change in a note?

It clears the whole note, including items inside folded sections and items you’ve hidden. A list with nothing left in it goes too.

It’s grayed out when there’s nothing to delete. If your account has gone read-only, you can still hide checked items, but you can’t delete them.

A ticked item with unfinished steps stays

If you tick an item but something nested under it is still unticked, the job isn’t done. Harbor leaves it alone: Hide doesn’t hide it and Delete doesn’t delete it. The unticked step under it stays too.

Hide and Delete always act on exactly the same items, so what you see hidden is what Delete would clear.

Moving an item to another checklist

On the web, a phone or a tablet, drag it by its grip into the other list. It’s the quick way to carry an unfinished to-do from Monday’s list to Tuesday’s.

• Web — point at the item and a six-dot grip appears to its left. Drag it onto the other list: to the top, between two items, or to the bottom. A blue line shows where it’ll land. Aim for the list’s items. Let go in the gap between two lists and the item becomes a one-item list of its own.
• iPhone, iPad and Android — tap the item, and a grip appears in the left margin. Drag it into the other list. It only goes into a list of the same kind at the same indent, so a top-level checklist item lands in a top-level checklist. To move a nested step into a list that isn’t nested, outdent it first.
• Mac and Windows — dragging can’t move an item to another list. On a Mac, the grip moves a whole list. On Windows, a drag moves an item only within its own list. Cut the item and paste it into the other list instead. That works in every Harbor app.

One Undo puts a drag back where it was.

Where it works

Hide and Delete are in every Harbor app: web, Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad and Android. Web clips and locked encrypted notes can’t use either one.

Don’t see them? Update Harbor to the latest version.