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.

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

Ctrl+M

a formula in the line you are writing

Ctrl+Shift+M

a formula on its own line

\alpha then Tab

any symbol by name — Tab completes it

Ω in the toolbar

the symbol palette, searchable across every group at once

Tab inside a formula

the next place to fill in — a matrix cell, a macro's argument

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.

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.

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 instant checker is English only. Hebrew needs an engine that does not exist locally yet: the models that could try it are not reliable enough to be let near a theorem, and one that quietly changes what a theorem says is worse than no checker.

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:

Off	The default. Nothing is asked, nothing is sent, nothing is downloaded.
On this machine	Manifold looks for a model runtime you already have — Ollama, llama.cpp or LM Studio — and lists what it found. If you have none, it offers to fetch a model through the runtime itself. Nothing leaves your machine.
An API key	Any service that speaks the OpenAI chat shape. This is the one choice that sends your text somewhere else, and it says so.

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.

Some models “think” before they answer. They are much slower — minutes rather than seconds for a drawing — and Manifold tells you which model it is waiting for so you can judge. If suggestions feel slow, that is usually the model rather than the editor.

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.

Getting it out

PDF	`Ctrl`+`P`, or File → Export PDF. It renders the document exactly as you see it. Needs Chromium or Google Chrome installed.
LaTeX	File → Export LaTeX writes a real `.tex` with the right preamble, and the images beside it. Needs nothing.
Drawings	TikZ pictures need TeX Live (`xelatex` and `dvisvgm`) to be changed. Documents show the drawings they already have without it.

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.

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.