Your vault

What a vault is

A vault is a folder. Each note in it is a plain Markdown file, and a note’s folder in the sidebar is its real folder on disk: move a file in Finder and the note moves too. MindLake marks the folder as a vault with a small hidden file called .mindlake.

To keep lists and search fast, MindLake also keeps an index of each vault on your Mac. The files always win: if the index is lost or damaged, MindLake rebuilds it from the vault.

You can edit notes in other apps while MindLake is open. It watches the vault and picks up changes as they land, including edits from your iPhone. Changes to the note you have open appear once you move to another note. To reread the folder by hand, choose File ▸ Scan Vault (⌘R).

Where it lives

You choose where your first vault goes during setup: in iCloud Drive, so your other Macs and your iPhone see it; only on this Mac, in a folder nothing syncs; or in another cloud folder such as OneDrive, Dropbox or Google Drive. You can also open a vault or folder you already have. See First run.

To see exactly where a vault is, click its name at the bottom of the sidebar to open the vault switcher, then choose Reveal in Finder from the vault’s ⋯ menu.

Vaults you create later go in your vaults home, the folder the switcher lists them from. By default it’s a folder in iCloud Drive. To use another, choose Change… from the ⋯ menu beside its path in the switcher, or set Vaults home location in Settings ▸ General. Changing it doesn’t move the vaults you already have.

How it’s organised

When setup makes a new vault, it offers a way to organise it: Folders by subject, PARA, Zettelkasten, Johnny.Decimal, Atlas, Calendar, Efforts, One place with links and tags, or your own system. MindLake makes that method’s folders and a Start here note in the Inbox that explains it. They’re ordinary folders: rename, move or delete them whenever you like. An existing vault you open is left as it is.

What’s inside

Your vault/
  Inbox/               notes you have not filed yet
    Start here.md      how your chosen method works
  Projects/            your own folders, as deep as you like
    Kickoff.md         a note
    Roadmap.canvas     a canvas
    Budget/            a list: data.csv and schema.json
  Chats/               conversations with the assistant
  Sources/             files attached to notes
  Screenshots/         screenshots you take
  Voice/               voice recordings from the menu bar
  Screen Recordings/   screen recordings from the menu bar
  settings.json        a copy of your settings
  snippets.json        your snippets
  lexicon.txt          words you have taught transcription
  .mindlake            marks the folder as a vault

Chats, Sources, Screenshots, Voice and Screen Recordings appear the first time you use them. Notes you haven’t filed go in Inbox, and nothing stays loose at the top level: a note that lands there, from MindLake or another app, is moved into Inbox. Lists (folders holding a data.csv) and canvases (.canvas files) sit beside your notes in the same folders. For what’s inside each file, see File format.

Switch and add vaults

The vault switcher lists your vaults; click one to switch. Each vault is separate, with its own notes and folders.

• Create new vault makes an empty vault in your vaults home.
• Open folder as vault turns an existing folder of Markdown notes into a vault and works on its files where they are.
• Import notes copies Markdown files or CSV tables, or a whole folder of them, into the current vault. Subfolders become folders.

The switcher can’t rename or delete a vault yet, and MindLake Sync, listed there as Coming soon, isn’t available.

Notes you already have

Markdown files without a frontmatter block aren’t notes yet, so they don’t appear in your library. MindLake counts them beside their folder in the sidebar; right-click the folder to convert them. Converting rewrites each file in MindLake’s note format, with a frontmatter block at the top.

To have Markdown files open in MindLake when you double-click them in Finder, choose it in Settings ▸ General ▸ Markdown files ▸ Open .md files with. The list has every app that can open Markdown, MindLake first, and shows the one macOS uses now. Files already in your vault open as ordinary notes.

A .md file from outside your vault opens in a window of its own, where you edit the file where it is. Its ⋯ menu has Export as PDF…, Share as PDF…, Copy Markdown, Reveal in Finder, Open in Default App, and Save to MindLake, which copies the file into your vault and leaves the original alone. After that the window edits the vault’s copy, and the menu says Show in MindLake instead.

Sync and back up

No MindLake server holds your notes. To have them on another device, keep the vault in iCloud Drive, or in a folder another sync tool looks after. Your iPhone reaches it through iCloud Drive.

For backups, turn on Daily local backup in Settings ▸ General and choose a folder, such as one on an external drive. Once a day, MindLake copies the current vault into a dated folder there and keeps the last 7 copies, or as many as you choose. Back up now makes one straight away. Each copy is plain files: to restore, copy it back. See Sync and backups.