Understanding how Amplenote backlinks actually work
I thought backlinks in Amplenote were just wiki links. You know — you type double brackets, link to another note, and it just “works.” But the thing that took me too long to notice is that this link isn’t just navigation. It’s actually creating a dynamic menu of pages that point to the one you’re looking at. Which sounds magical… until you try to set up something like a weekly review and the backlinks list is full of random notes from six months ago because you mentioned the keyword casually. :/
Here’s how to control it. When you [[link]] to a note in Amplenote, that note automatically gains a backlink showing every note that mentions it. That list is sorted by whatever sort order you’ve got applied to the backlinks panel. The trick for a weekly review system is to only link intentionally from review pages — not from casual daily notes unless you really do want it showing up next Sunday.
I created a note called Weekly Review Template and inside it I wrote placeholders like [[Week of YYYY-MM-DD]] to create a chain. Then each week I duplicate last week’s note and link to it from the template. That way my template shows all past weeks in the backlinks, in order. No random junk, no accidental diary entries popping up.
Building a template note that pulls its own history
If you want true “last 10 weeks” style review pages without manual digging, you don’t actually filter in Amplenote (sadly, no fancy queries). You fake it with structure. I keep a single high level note called Weekly Reviews, and each new week’s review links back to that central one. Then every week, the backlinks section of Weekly Reviews becomes an instant historical archive. It’s not pretty, but it’s dead simple and doesn’t break when they push random UI updates.
I learned the hard way that if you link both ways — meaning you have the central Weekly Reviews note linking out to each week, and each week linking back — Amplenote counts both relationships, which keeps them near the top if you sort by most recently modified. Great when I’m on a Monday coffee buzz, terrible when I accidentally open Week 15 instead of Week 16 because they’re both “modified 1 minute ago.”
Creating the first week without getting lost
The first week is the annoying one because there’s nothing to link yet. What I do is make a blank Week 1 note and link it to my Weekly Reviews note. Then I immediately create a few fake ones (Week 0, Week minus 1). This way, when I’m looking at the backlinks for the very first time, I actually see a list forming. It’s like arranging index cards before you even have the meeting agenda. Yeah, it’s weird, but it helps me not forget why I set this up in the first place.
Also — make sure your note titles are consistent. Capitalization matters less in Amplenote than in some systems, but if half your weeks start with “Weekly Review” and the rest start with “WR,” the backlinks will sort a little oddly and you’ll swear the thing’s broken when really Amplenote’s just alphabetizing you into shame.
Setting up navigation so you actually use it
A backlinks list is only useful if you open the note containing it. I have this pinned in my sidebar in Amplenote under a category called “Meta Notes” alongside my Someday Maybe and Areas of Focus stuff. Every Sunday morning, I click that Weekly Reviews note, let the backlinks load, and then Command-click the latest week so it opens in a new tab inside Amplenote’s editor. This way I can flip between the current week and any older one I want to skim.
Without pinning it, I’d forget it existed. No joke — there was a period where I set all this up, went on vacation, came back, and never touched it for two months because I had hidden the note under some other random label. Out of sight actually is out of mind in this app.
Avoiding backlink spam in your review note
One of the things that can ruin a weekly review backlinks list fast is casual references. If you type [[Weekly Reviews]] in a passing sentence on some other page — like jotting down “Update weekly reviews on Sunday” — boom, it shows as a backlink in your central note forever. You can remove the link, but then your original thought isn’t clickable anymore. The workaround I use is writing {Weekly Reviews} or just bolding the text instead of linking. That way it’s obvious to me later, but it doesn’t get swept into the backlinks index.
If you need to reference the note and keep it in backlinks but want to prevent it from sticking around long term, you can link it and then later unlink that text manually after the review is done. Yes, it’s manual. No, there’s no backlog filter. And yes, I’ve forgotten to do it many times and wondered why August notes kept showing in January’s review list ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Using backlinks for prompting review checklists
This is the clever part that makes it worth the hassle. I keep a separate note with standard review prompts like “What open projects need next actions” and “What commitments did you flake on last week.” I link that checklist into my Weekly Review Template. Now, because of backlinks, that checklist note shows every real review I’ve done, which means if I ever want to scan my history of how thorough I was (or wasn’t), I just open the checklist and scroll its backlinks panel. It’s oddly motivating to see a wall of dates there — even the skipped ones glare at me.
One caveat: if you overwrite that checklist link accidentally and replace it with different words, it’ll break the backlink chain. That happened last fall when I renamed two prompts and suddenly that beautiful wall of weeks turned into a sad trickle of two notes.
The moment you know it works
You’ll know you’ve nailed it the first time you open the Weekly Reviews note and it just neatly lists all your past months without random noise. It’s weirdly satisfying. There’s no popup saying “Workflow Successful” — you’re just staring at exactly the thing you need, on time, without remembering how you built it in the first place. Which is exactly why I’m writing this down now before I forget and ruin it again 😛