Help

Everything here is answerable in a paragraph. If something is not, that is a fault in the program and worth telling me about.

Starting out

Manifold opens with a sample document so there is something to look at. Ctrl+N starts a new one, Ctrl+O opens a .mfld file, Ctrl+S saves. A document is one self-contained file: pictures, drawings and macros travel inside it, so sending somebody a document sends them all of it.

Opening a paper you wrote elsewhere

A paper written in another structured editor opens the way a .mfld does: paragraph styles, lists, formulas, tables, notes, cross-references and figures all come across, and a picture beside the file comes with it. Whatever cannot be brought across is named when the document opens rather than quietly dropped — a migration that silently loses a figure is worse than one that tells you which one.

Choosing what a paragraph is

The dropdown at the left of the toolbar is the paragraph's layout — Section, Subsection, Theorem, Definition, Proof, Quote, and the rest. That is what makes a heading a heading rather than large bold text, and it is what numbering and the outline are built on. There is a shortcut for each: Alt+P then a number.

Hebrew, English and both

There is nothing to set. Each paragraph decides its own direction from what you type in it, so a Hebrew paragraph runs right-to-left and the English one after it runs left-to-right. If a paragraph guesses wrong — one that starts with a formula, say — the direction control beside the layout dropdown pins it.

Mathematics

Selecting inside a formula takes whole elements: a fraction or a bracketed pair comes as one piece, never half of one. Click a formula to open it, press Escape to leave.

Working a calculation out

Put the caret in a formula and choose Calculate, Differentiate or Integrate. The answer is written into the document as mathematics you can go on editing — not pasted in as a picture — and it can show every step, each one naming the rule it used: the product rule, L’Hôpital, integration by parts. How much working you want is a number on the command, from the answer alone to every rule spelled out. Explain this step goes the other way: it checks an equals sign you have written and says why it holds, or where it stops holding. None of this needs anything installed, and none of it leaves your machine.

Telling it which letters are functions

In a paper, f is usually a function and a is usually a number — and nothing in the notation says so. Insert → Named functions is where you say it: write one definition a line, f(x) = x^2, and from then on Calculate knows what f′(x) or f(3) mean. It is the difference between a calculator that can work on symbols and one that can work on your paper.

A formula too wide for the page

An equation wider than the column is broken for you, after a relation or an operator rather than in the middle of a term — which is where a mathematician would break it. The pieces stay one formula: you edit it as one thing and it re-breaks itself as you go, rather than becoming three formulas that have to be kept in line by hand.

Macros

Insert → “Math macros…” keeps your \newcommand definitions with the document, so \norm{x} renders while you write, exports correctly, and travels with the file. You can also merge in the definitions from somebody's preamble or .sty.

Numbering and references

Sections, equations, theorems, figures, tables and listings number themselves and renumber as you write. Give something a label (Insert → Label), then Insert → Cross-reference points at it: the reference shows the current number, and Alt+click jumps to it. If a label disappears, its references say ?? rather than pretending.

Pictures, drawings and programs

A picture from a file

The image button in the toolbar. Drag its edges to set the width as a share of the text column; the caption is ordinary text, so it can hold a formula and its own language.

A drawing written as code

Insert → “Drawing (TikZ)” puts an empty picture in the document. Select it and its code appears underneath: write TikZ and press Ctrl+Enter, or describe what you want in words and let a model write it. Either way Manifold compiles it before showing it, and if TeX objects you get the one line TeX complained about. The compiled picture is stored in the document, so a drawing still shows on a machine with no TeX — you only need TeX to change one.

A program

Insert → “Program (code listing)”, then pick the language — fourteen of them, pseudocode and algorithm2e among them. “Lines” numbers the lines; “Caption” makes it a numbered Listing or Algorithm you can refer to.

Tables

Click a cell and type; Tab moves to the next one and makes a new row at the end. Rows, columns, merging and the lines between them are all on the Grid menu. A table can carry a caption and be referred to by number like anything else.

Notes, footnotes and margin notes

A footnote sits at the foot of the page it is on and stays there as the text moves above it. A margin note goes in the margin. A note is for you: it lives in the document and never reaches the PDF. And if there is something the editor has no button for, raw LaTeX can be typed in directly.

Sending a copy to somebody

File → Send a copy makes a link. Whoever has it can read the document, edit it and send it back — no account, no sign-up. What comes back arrives as a version in your history rather than as a change made behind you: you compare it, and take back the parts you want. You can see who has replied, and withdraw the link at any time.

Tick They can read it, not change it and the link only reads: whoever has it sees every word as you type and shows a caret, and cannot change a thing. Your own link is never read-only — it is your document.

If they already have a Manifold account you can invite them instead of sending a link: type their address, and it arrives in their Cloud panel naming the document, who sent it, and whether they may write in it. Manifold does not tell you whether that address has an account — that would be a way to find out who has signed up — so it says only that it is waiting for them if they have one.

Writing at the same time

File → Edit together makes a link for a document you are both working in at once. Everybody sees everybody else’s caret, in a colour of its own with a name beside it, and what they type appears as they type it — nobody has to wait for a turn, and nothing overwrites anybody. It needs no account from whoever you send it to. The room closes when you withdraw the link, and the document is yours as it always was: a file on your own disk that opens without any of this.

Use Send a copy instead when you want somebody to go away and come back with changes you can look over before taking. Edit together is for the other case, when you are both in it now.

A notebook can be shared whole, with one link, from the cloud button in its panel. Everybody works anywhere inside it, and each row shows who is in which document — initials in the same colour as that person’s caret, overlapping like a hand of cards when there are several, with a ring for you. Move to another document and your place moves with you.

Your documents in the cloud

An account holds a second copy of a document, never the only one — what you write stays a file on your own disk, and everything in Manifold works without ever signing in. File → Keep a copy in the cloud starts it for the document you are in, and from then on every save sends it up. When you make a new document Manifold asks once whether to keep it too, and remembers your answer if you tick the box.

The Cloud panel, on the rail beside Outline and Versions, is where they live. Make folders, drag a document into one — or drag a whole folder into another, and everything inside it goes with it. The right button offers the same moves as a list, and Open, Rename, Download, Copy, Cut and Paste besides. Double-click a copy to open it in a new tab.

A notebook can be kept there too. The cloud button in the notebook panel sends it up with all of its documents; press it again and it sends what has changed. It appears in the Cloud panel as a folder with a notebook’s own icon, so it moves, is renamed and is copied like any folder — and Open the notebook brings it down to this machine as a real folder, wherever you choose to put it.

Work on two machines and neither will overwrite the other. If the cloud has a newer copy of something you have worked on, a dot appears on the Cloud button and the status bar offers to open it — in a tab of its own, so you can take what you want from each. A save is refused rather than allowed to write over what you have not seen.

The panel is somewhere to work, not a list. Ctrl+Z undoes what you did in it — a move, a rename, a paste, even a removal — and it is the panel’s own history, separate from the document’s. Copy, cut and paste work on documents, folders and notebooks; copying one also puts the real file on your system clipboard, so it can go to a file manager or an email. Paste it into your writing and you get its name.

Two documents cannot share a name in one folder; different folders are fine. If you move or rename one onto a name that is already there, Manifold asks whether to replace it or to keep both under a new name. A save is never interrupted by this — a name already taken is kept as Paper (2).mfld.

Notebooks

A notebook is a folder of documents kept as one object — chapters of a thesis, say. Settings can be applied to all of them at once, numbering runs across the whole notebook, and an export can cover the lot or the ones you tick.

Citations and the bibliography

Import a .bib file and its entries live in the document, so it stays complete on a machine that has nothing else on it. Cite an entry and it is numbered and listed; entries nobody cites are not printed. Manifold formats the list itself, so it is in the PDF whether or not BibTeX ever runs.

Contents, an index, a list of symbols

All of them print where you put them and fill themselves in: a table of contents, lists of figures, tables and programs, an index built from terms you mark as you write, and a nomenclature of symbols. Page numbers are worked out after the document is laid out, so they are the numbers that will actually be printed.

The document as a whole

Under Document: the class it is written as (article, report, book and the rest, which is what decides the styles on offer), the paper it is printed on, the margins, one column or two, and how the text is set. The page on screen is the page that comes out.

Parts that print, or don’t

Mark a passage as belonging to a branch — Solutions, say — and then say whether that branch prints. The handout and the answer key are one file rather than two that drift apart, and the passage you switched off is still there, still edited alongside everything else, simply absent from the PDF.

How it looks

Settings → Appearance has light and dark, the colours to build a theme from, and the material the chrome is made of — glass, solid or flat. A theme you save remembers both. The interface itself speaks English or Hebrew, and that is separate from what language you are writing in.

Two panes on one document

View → Split puts the same document on screen twice, side by side. It is one document, not a copy: type in either pane and both change, and one undo puts it back. Each pane scrolls on its own, which is the point — the statement in one and the proof in the other, forty pages apart.

Checking your writing

Spelling and grammar are checked on your machine as you write, by a rule-based engine that never invents anything. Click a marked phrase for the corrections, or open the Proofing panel to see them all. “Add to dictionary” teaches it a word for good; ignoring something is remembered across documents, and the panel's footer is the way back.

The same panel has “Check this paragraph”, which asks a model for a second opinion on the paragraph you are in. Its suggestions are offered, never applied — some of what it says is style rather than grammar, and it is yours to decline.

The Hebrew dictionary

Hebrew gets the checks that need no dictionary — final letters, acronym and abbreviation marks, spacing — with nothing installed. Telling a Hebrew word from a non-word needs a dictionary, and every one good enough is under a license Manifold cannot carry, so it is fetched separately or not at all.

Suggestions while you write

With the assistant turned on, Manifold offers a continuation of the sentence you are writing, ghosted after the cursor: Tab accepts it, anything else dismisses it, Alt+\ asks for one on demand. Three dots at the end of the line mean it is thinking.

Setting a model up

Settings (the gear) → Assistant. There are three choices:

You choose a model for English and one for Hebrew separately, because no single small model is good at both. What a paragraph is mostly written in decides which one answers it.

Versions of a document

The Versions panel keeps named snapshots inside the document. Name one before a rewrite, and later open it to see exactly which words changed — added and removed, in the prose, not as a diff of a file. “Restore” puts it back as a single undoable edit, and the version stays in the list.

Comments, for review

Select some words and open the Comments panel: a thread is anchored to that phrase, lives inside the document so it travels with the file, and is never printed — not in the PDF and not in the .tex. Resolve keeps a thread; delete is the one that removes it. A comment whose text you later rewrite is not lost: it stays in the panel and says its anchor has gone.

Letting an agent read or edit a document

Settings → Assistant has the one line your agent's configuration wants. Manifold ships a small MCP server the agent starts itself — nothing listens, and no port is opened. It can read the outline, read and edit blocks, search, and leave comments; asking for a review rather than an edit is the safer half, since a comment changes no words and is never printed. A document you have open in Manifold is never written from outside: the app's own saves would overwrite it, so the agent is refused and told to wait.

Getting it out

What Manifold installs for you

Writing, mathematics, saving and LaTeX export need nothing but Manifold itself. A few optional things want a program of their own — Chromium to export a PDF, TeX Live to change a TikZ drawing, SymPy for the harder integrals, a Hebrew dictionary, a model for the writing help. Manifold sees which of them are missing, says in one line what each is for, and installs it through your own machine’s package manager — apt, pacman, Homebrew or winget — when you press the button. It asks for your password the way your system asks, and nothing is fetched behind your back.

The list is in Settings → What Manifold can use, and it is shown once on a first run. Anything you do not install simply stays absent: the feature says so when you reach for it rather than failing quietly, and everything else goes on working.

Opening it the first time

Manifold is not code-signed — a signing certificate is a yearly fee, and this is free software in development — so each system asks once before it will run something it cannot trace to a paying developer. None of this is a warning about the app; it is a warning about the absence of a receipt.

macOS. Drag Manifold into Applications, then run this once in Terminal:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Manifold.app

That removes the mark a browser puts on anything it downloaded. Privacy & Security › Open Anyway is the route Apple documents and it does work on some versions — but on recent ones an app with no signature at all is refused before that button can help, which is what “I allowed it and it still would not open” means.

Windows. SmartScreen shows a blue card: More info, then Run anyway. Linux. Make the AppImage executable and open it.

Finding anything

Ctrl+K opens one search over everything: every command, every paragraph style, every one of the 993 symbols Manifold can draw, the headings in this document and the files you had open. Ask for what you want in your own words — a table, pseudocode, footnote — in English or in Hebrew; it answers questions rather than command names, and a slip or the wrong keyboard still finds the right row.

Beside each answer are two things. What it does is a small document with the command running on it — real text, the real command, before you have pressed anything. How to reach it pages through every way in: the keystroke, the menu it lives in, and whether the right button offers it where your caret is.

Keyboard

Manifold uses the shortcuts a mathematical editor has used for years, so if you have written this way before your fingers already know them. When a shortcut has more to come (Alt+M, say), a strip above the status bar lists what can follow.

Every command, and where it lives

Written out from the program itself, so it cannot fall behind it. Everything here is also reachable with Ctrl+K, which is usually quicker than finding the menu.