Prerequisites

This article assumes you…

• are using a vanilla¹ edition of TiddlyWiki (TW)²
• and are familiar with the topics and terminology discussed in Infinite Ink’s Getting Started with TiddlyWiki in 2026.

Enable CamelCase linking

I want to be able to automatically create a tiddler and a link to it by simply writing something in CamelCase. To enable this:

1. Open ControlPanel by clicking the gear icon (⚙️) in the page toolbar.⁴
2. In ControlPanel, choose the Settings tab (3rd tab).
3. If it’s not already chosen, choose the TiddlyWiki subtab.
4. In the item titled Camel Case Wiki Links, check the checkbox labeled Enable automatic CamelCase linking.

To learn about CamelCase in TW, see tiddlywiki.com/#CamelCase or tiddlywiki.com/static/CamelCase.html.

Journaling

Every day that I use TW,² I create a journal tiddler to…

• track what I want to get done,
• track what I actually get done,
• autocreate and track new tiddlers by writing a string in CamelCase.

To learn about journaling in TW, see tiddlywiki.com/static/Creating%2520journal%2520tiddlers.html.

Add new journal icon to the page toolbar

To make it easy to create and/or go to today’s journal tiddler, I add “new journal” icon to the page toolbar.⁴ To do this, click the Tools tab in the sidebar and check the checkbox labeled new journal. The new journal icon now appears in the page toolbar.

Change the default title of journal tiddlers

To change the default title of journal tiddlers, click the gear icon (⚙️) in the page toolbar. In ControlPanel, select the Info tab (1st tab) and the Basics subtab. Scroll down to Title of new journal tiddlers and specify whatever you would like. I like:

YYYY-0MM-0DD ddd

To learn how to specify dates in TW, see tiddlywiki.com/#DateFormat or tiddlywiki.com/static/DateFormat.html.

Undo Escape key

Because I’m a vim user, I press the Esc key a lot when I’m writing with a keyboard.⁠⌨️ In TW, this produces a popup that says:

Do you wish to discard changes to the tiddler…

Since I never want the Esc key to produce this popup, I remap the meaning of Esc key in TW. Here is one way to do this:

1. Open ControlPanel.
2. Choose the “Keyboard Shortcuts” tab (6th tab).
3. In the first column of the table, locate > cancel-edit-tiddler
4. To expand this table row, click the leading >.
5. To edit this on all platforms, click the pencil icon next to the phrase All platforms
6. To delete the Esc shortcut, click the X next to Escape.

Use Vim key bindings when writing tiddlers

One way to use Vim key bindings in TW is to install these four plugins:

• CodeMirror
• CodeMirror Keymap Vim
• CodeMirror Search and Replace
• CodeMirror Close Brackets

To install these from the official TW plugin library, do the following.

1. In ControlPanel, select the Plugins tab (5th tab).
2. Click the blue “Get more plugins” button.
3. In the “Official TiddlyWiki Plugin Library” popup window, click the green “Open plugin library” button.
4. In the Plugins tab (2nd tab), scroll down to CodeMirror. NOTE that there is a blurb that says “With 16 sub-plugins available.”
5. Click the chevron ⟫ and read the description.
6. Click the four green “install” buttons next to each of:
   • CodeMirror
   • CodeMirror Close Brackets
   • CodeMirror Keymap Vim
   • CodeMirror Search and Replace
7. To save and reload, click the save button and then the reload button in the yellow popup bar along the top of the window.
8. In ControlPanel, select the Plugins tab (5th tab).
9. In the Plugins subtab, click the chevron ⟫ next to CodeMirror.
10. Read the five tabs (readme, usage, keyboard, license, contents).
11. In ControlPanel, select the Settings tab (3rd tab).
12. Select the CodeMirror subtab (2nd subtab).
13. In “CodeMirror keymap,” select “Vim” in the drop-down list.
14. In the sidebar, click the red save button.
15. In the sidebar, click the + to create a new tiddler.
16. Click the content text box.
17. Notice the cursor is green. This means you are in Vim’s normal (command) mode.
18. Type i to go into Vim’s insert mode.
19. Type some text.
20. To return to normal mode, type either Ctrl+C or Ctrl+[

If you want to live on the edge, you can try a newer CodeMiror plugin, which is available at github.com/BurningTreeC/tiddlywiki-codemirror-parser. (I have not yet tried this one.)

Endnotes