When you open Desmos Notebook, you’ll arrive at the editor of a blank notebook. From here, you can write text and expressions, and you can open the Item menu to add items to your notebook.

The main body of a notebook is a blank page. You can start typing straight away. The text formatting bar provides controls for paragraph styles , alignment , bold , italics , inserting inline math , and columns . This bar also has controls to undo and redo actions and displays Mute and Random toggles when applicable.

Open the Item menu to insert expressions, graphs, special characters backslash (\) and backtick (`) (which you can use for typing some forms of advanced math expressions), and references to variables.

You can press the Back Slash (\) key or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+O (Windows) or Ctrl+Cmd+O (Mac) to open the menu.

Open the Item menu and select Expression to add an expression to your notebook. Or, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Enter (Windows) or Cmd+Return (Mac).

You can then perform calculations or define variables or functions, which you can reference in other expression lines or within graphs. When applicable, the evaluation will appear in the expression line.

You can add Graphing, Geometry, and 3D Calculator graphs to your notebook in the editor. To do so, open the Item menu and select the desired type of graph. Or, use the keyboard shortcuts:

• 2D Graph: Ctrl+Alt+2 (Windows) or Ctrl+Cmd+2 (Mac)
• 3D Graph: Ctrl+Alt+3 (Windows) or Ctrl+Cmd+3 (Mac)
• Geometry: Ctrl+Alt+G (Windows) or Ctrl+Cmd+G (Mac)

You can also import a saved graph from the Graphing, Geometry, or 3D Calculator. First, paste the URL of the intended graph into the Item menu. Then, click the thumbnail that appears.

When you paste a graph into a notebook, you are importing that graph state. You are not creating a live connection to the original graph. This means that any changes you make to the graph in the notebook will not impact the graph in the calculator, and any changes you make to the graph in its calculator will not impact the notebook.

You can also organize your notebook by placing text, expressions, sliders, and graphs into columns.

Select Columns to add a column to the right or left of your current cursor selection. Each column takes up half the width of the notebook, and the height will adjust to the included content. You can then drag items within the column, too.

Select Paragraph Styles for options you can use to separate your notebooks into sections.

Titles, headings, and subheadings provide visual separation with varying font sizes. They also appear in a table of contents within your notebook. This linked table appears in the sidebar of the editor. Or, click the Table of Contents dropdown after clicking Preview or when viewing a shared notebook.

Click any heading or subheading from the table of contents to go to that section.

Click Variable Options to change the color associated with the variable or immediately go to the expression where that variable is defined.

To connect a variable to your notebook, open the graph with the variable and locate it within the expression list. Then, click Connect to Notebook . After you’ve linked a variable, it will appear under Notebook Variables.

To add a slider for any variable, click Variable Options and then Add Slider. If you define a variable within an expression in the notebook, you can also add a slider by clicking Add Slider within the expression line.

Click Slider Options to access settings to control any slider’s appearance and behavior. You can add a label (which defaults to the name of the variable), change the bounds or step size, and toggle the display of the slider value.

The upper and lower bounds and step size determine the values that your variable can take. If you define a variable in a graph and then connect it to your notebook, you can change the slider settings in that graph or in an expression line in the notebook.

Tokens represent variables or their values in text and in calculations within expressions and graphs.

To add a token, go to the Notebook Variables menu and click the intended token. Or, open the Item menu and add it from there.

You can choose whether the token shows the variable name or its value. Click the token wherever it appears in your notebook and toggle to your preference. Changing one token will not impact other tokens of the same variable throughout the notebook.

You can define and run actions in Notebook. Use the Right Arrow symbol (→) to define an action. You can create this symbol with a Hyphen (−) followed by a Greater Than symbol (>) in an expression line. For example, \(a→2\) sets \(a\) to \(2\), and \(a→a+3\) increases \(a\) by \(3\). Click Action to run the action once per click. All actions are visible both when editing and viewing a notebook. Learn more in our Actions article.

Buttons allow you to run actions with a single click from anywhere in your notebook.

Start by defining a notebook variable either in an expression line or by connecting it from a graph. Then, open the Item menu and click Button.

Alternatively, you can add a button directly from the Variable Options or Expression Options of a variable or an expression line that contains the definition of an action.

Once you add a button, click Button Options to change its label and color. In the On Click section, you can specify the action (or multiple actions separated by commas) that the button will run. If you’ve already assigned a variable to an action in your notebook, you can reference it here instead of rewriting the action.

Buttons can be inline with text throughout your notebook, including within columns, headers, or different text alignments. You can’t drag and drop them to place them elsewhere in the notebook, but you can copy and paste them to move them around. Explore buttons in our Simple Button Example notebook.

Click Share Notebook or use the shortcut Ctrl+Alt+S (Windows) or Ctrl+Cmd+S (Mac) to share your work. Select Share a Snapshot to create a link to the current version of your notebook. People with access to this link won’t see any changes you make to your original notebook. Or, you can select Share Your Saved Notebook to create a link that updates as you save changes to your notebook. Select Print to print a physical copy of your notebook or save as a PDF.

You can adjust the settings of any expression line to make it invisible or editable to viewers. Click Expression Options and then Hidden to hide that expression from viewers when they look at your shared notebook. Click Expression Options and then Editable to allow viewers to type into that expression line when viewing your shared notebook.

You can check how your shared notebook will appear to others by clicking Preview while in the editor. Or, press Ctrl+Alt+V (Windows) or Ctrl+Cmd+V (Mac).

When sharing, you can click Link Opens in Editor to direct your viewer to the editor instead. Or, you can also go to the editor from any shared notebook by clicking Open in Editor.