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Sync and encryption

Sync tnotes with Syncthing, iCloud Drive, Dropbox or git, and encrypt the vault with FileVault, gocryptfs or fscrypt — how conflicts and atomic saves keep notes safe.

Notes are plain files, so syncing and encryption are the file system’s job; tnotes only needs to behave well underneath.

Sync

Put a root inside a folder synced by Syncthing, iCloud Drive, Dropbox, or keep it in a git repository.

• Live updates. Changes from another device show up immediately: the watcher reloads clean tabs, dirty tabs keep their text. The cursor stays where it was.
• Atomic saves. A note is written to a temporary file and renamed into place, so a syncer never sees a half-written note.
• Conflicts, not overwrites. When the same note is edited on two devices, tnotes never overwrites the other side: it keeps its own text as name (conflict <time>).md. Syncthing’s name.sync-conflict-*.md and Dropbox’s name (conflicted copy).md are listed as ordinary notes so nothing is hidden from you.
• Ignored entries. Dot-prefixed files and directories — .stfolder, .git, .stversions, iCloud .name.md.icloud placeholders — are skipped.

git

cd ~/Documents/notes
git init && git add . && git commit -m "notes"

Commit from a cron job or a shell alias; .Trash/ can go in .gitignore or be kept for history.

Encryption

Encrypt the folder, not the notes, and point roots at the mounted, decrypted path. Everything — links, search, the CLI — keeps working, and a syncer only ever sees ciphertext.

# gocryptfs: cipher dir is synced, plain dir is what tnotes opens
gocryptfs -init ~/Sync/notes.enc
gocryptfs ~/Sync/notes.enc ~/notes
tnotes ~/notes

How files are stored

• One .md file per note; the filename is a slug of the first line (the title), and it is renamed when the title changes.
• Folders in the tree are directories on disk.
• Every root has its own .Trash/ that mirrors the folder layout, so trashed notes can be restored to where they came from.
• Nothing else is written next to your notes.