🧭navigation

Moving around the tree

There are several ways to move around your tree in Loom: by clicking the map, using buttons in the story textbox area, and using hotkeys.

methods of navigating

navigating with the map

Clicking on a node in the map moves the current path of the story to end at that node. If you hover over a node on the map, a preview of the path will appear in the textbox in gray, and a preview of that node's text will appear in a tooltip on the map.

navigating with the story textbox

It is also possible to navigate using only the story textbox.

• When you are actively editing a node in the textbox, arrows for navigating to the previous and next sibling and buttons corresponding to each sibling will appear.

  • Clicking on the sibling buttons will move your path to the sibling. Hovering will display a preview of the sibling's path in the textbox. Notice how the corresponding nodes in the map are highlighted.

• If a node has children but none of them are shown in the textbox, "..." will appear under the text, and clicking on it will navigate to a child.

• Right clicking on a node in the textbox and choosing "Move here" from the context menu moves the current path to end at that node: the same effect as clicking the node in the map.

navigating with hotkeys

The fastest and recommended way to navigate is using hotkeys.

View all keyboard shortcuts in Loom with ⌘H / ctrl+H

Navigation hotkeys:

⌥W | Alt+W : move to parent

⌥A | Alt+A : move to previous sibling (left on map)

⌥D | Alt+D : move to next sibling (right on map)

⌥S | Alt+S : move caret to the end of actively editing node, or move to child

⌥Z | Alt+Z : move to previous node in preorder

⌘X | Alt+X : move to next node in preorder

⌘R | Alt+R : move to the root node of the tree map

If there is an active node, navigation commands will move the active node; otherwise, they will move the selected node. Moving the active node off the current path will also cause the selected node to change.

undoing / redoing navigation

Loom tracks your navigation history, so you don't need to worry about losing your place in the tree. You can undo/redo navigation using the <- -> buttons on the top bar, just like a web browser.

You can also undo and redo navigation using hotkeys:

⌥, | Alt+, : go back in navigation history

⌥. | Alt+. : go forward in navigation history

path persistence

To make it easier to explore counterfactuals without losing your place, Loom will keep you on the most recent path when you move between variations using hotkeys or textbox buttons. The easiest way to understand what this means is to see it in action:

Navigating by clicking on the map does not have the same effect: it will always move you to a path that ends at the clicked node.