Getting started
How to install Jotura, open a folder as a vault, see what it writes to disk, and find your way around the sidebar, tabs, and command palette.
Jotura edits an ordinary folder of markdown files on your disk. You can start writing as soon as you pick a folder, because Jotura imports nothing into a library or database and needs no account.
This page covers installation, opening a vault, what Jotura writes to disk, how saving works, and the parts of the window you will use every day.
Install the app
The one-line installer
The install script works in five steps, in this order:
- It fetches the release manifest from
releases.jotura.io. - It downloads the installer artifact for your operating system and CPU.
- It verifies the artifact’s SHA-256 checksum against the manifest. Nothing is installed if the checksum does not match.
- It installs the desktop app and puts the
joturacommand-line tool on your PATH. - It launches the app.
On macOS and Linux:
curl -fsSL https://jotura.io/install.sh | bash
On Windows, in PowerShell:
irm https://jotura.io/install.ps1 | iex
Re-running either script upgrades an existing install in place. You can read both scripts first: they are published at jotura.io/install.sh and jotura.io/install.ps1.
Where the one-liner puts things
| Platform | The app | The CLI | Also written |
|---|---|---|---|
| macOS | /Applications/Jotura.app, unpacked from the universal .app.tar.gz with the quarantine flag cleared |
A symlink at /usr/local/bin/jotura pointing into the bundle |
Nothing else |
| Linux, default | ~/.local/share/jotura/Jotura.AppImage |
~/.local/bin/jotura, extracted from the AppImage |
~/.local/share/applications/jotura.desktop and ~/.local/share/icons/jotura.png |
Linux with --deb |
A system package, installed with apt-get or dpkg |
/usr/bin/jotura |
Nothing else |
| Windows | The MSI’s install directory | jotura.exe in that same directory |
Nothing else |
Three caveats sit with those rows. The macOS symlink needs sudo, and if you decline it the CLI still runs from inside the app bundle. On Linux the script warns you when ~/.local/bin is not already on your PATH. The --deb path also needs sudo, and the script refuses that flag without it.
The Windows MSI runs with msiexec /passive, so expect a Windows User Account Control elevation prompt. The macOS and Linux script may ask for your login password.
Installer flags
The macOS and Linux script takes flags after a -- separator when you pipe it into bash:
curl -fsSL https://jotura.io/install.sh | bash -s -- --no-launch
| Flag | Effect |
|---|---|
--no-launch |
Do not launch the app when the install finishes. |
--deb |
Linux only. Install the .deb system package instead of the AppImage. |
-h, --help |
Print the script’s help and exit. |
The Windows script takes a parameter rather than a flag, and PowerShell cannot pass parameters through irm ... | iex. Download the file first if you need it:
irm https://jotura.io/install.ps1 -OutFile install.ps1
.\install.ps1 -NoLaunch
Both scripts also honor two environment variables that exist for continuous integration rather than everyday use. JOTURA_INSTALL_DRYRUN=1 stops after the download and checksum check, and JOTURA_MANIFEST_URL overrides the release manifest URL.
Neither script touches AI agent configuration. To give an agent access to your notes, install the Jotura skills from the jotura-agents marketplace, as The agent surface describes.
Manual installers
Every artifact is linked from the download page, which serves version-stamped filenames such as Jotura_0.11.1_universal.dmg.
| Platform | Artifact | Install |
|---|---|---|
| macOS, Apple Silicon and Intel | Universal .dmg |
Open the disk image and drag Jotura to your Applications folder, replacing any earlier version. |
| Windows 10 and 11, x64 | .msi |
Run the installer. |
| Linux x64 and arm64 | .AppImage |
Mark it executable and run it. See the commands below. |
| Linux x64 and arm64 | .deb |
Install it with dpkg, or double-click it in your package manager. |
| Android arm64 | Google Play, or a direct .apk |
Install from Play for one-tap updates, or open the APK and allow installs from your browser when Android asks. |
For the x64 AppImage, from the directory you downloaded it into:
chmod +x ./Jotura_*_amd64.AppImage
./Jotura_*_amd64.AppImage
For the x64 .deb:
sudo dpkg -i ./Jotura_*_amd64.deb
On arm64 machines, substitute _arm64 for _amd64 in both commands.
Two operating-system warnings are expected on the manual path, because the builds are not signed with a paid developer certificate. The one-line installer avoids the macOS one by clearing the quarantine flag itself.
On macOS, recent versions say that Apple could not verify Jotura is free of malware. To get past it:
- Open System Settings, then Privacy & Security.
- Scroll to the Security section and click Open Anyway next to the Jotura message.
- Confirm with Touch ID or your password.
- Click Open Anyway once more in the dialog that follows.
Later launches work normally. On Windows, SmartScreen warns that this is an unrecognized app: click More info, then Run anyway.
Updates
The desktop app updates itself. It checks five seconds after launch and then every four hours, so a version released while you are working may take a while to appear. Development builds never check.
When a check finds a new version, the status bar at the bottom of the sidebar shows Update ready - restart. That label appears before anything has been downloaded. Clicking it downloads and installs the update, showing Updating… {percent}% and then Restarting… before the app relaunches. A failed download puts the label back to Update ready - restart so you can try again.
The Linux .deb package is the exception: it does not auto-update. Re-run the install script or install a newer .deb to upgrade it.
Getting the CLI on your PATH
The jotura command-line tool ships inside every desktop installer. How it reaches your PATH depends on the platform.
| Platform | How the CLI gets on PATH |
|---|---|
| macOS | Open Settings, expand Advanced, then Command-line tool, and click Install. Jotura runs an osascript command with administrator privileges to symlink /usr/local/bin/jotura to the bundled binary, so macOS prompts for an admin password. Remove it later with sudo rm /usr/local/bin/jotura. |
| Windows | The MSI adds its install directory to the system PATH, so nothing is needed. Terminals that were already open keep their old PATH until you restart them, which is the usual reason jotura looks missing right after an install. |
Linux .deb |
The package installs the binary at /usr/bin/jotura, which is already on PATH. |
| Linux AppImage | Jotura copies the binary to ~/.local/bin/jotura for you. That directory must already be on your PATH. |
On Windows and on the Linux AppImage, Jotura shows a one-time prompt at startup offering to do this for you. It records that the prompt was shown whether you accept or decline, so it never asks a second time and cannot be brought back.
After that, the Settings card is where you install the CLI. It appears on macOS, Windows, and the Linux AppImage, and is absent only on the Linux .deb, where the package has already handled PATH. On Windows the app decides whether the CLI is installed by reading your user PATH, while the MSI writes the system PATH, so Jotura can report the tool as not installed when it already works. Clicking Install in that case adds a second, user-level entry.
Full CLI setup, including vault selection and shell completion, is covered in Install and setup.
Open a vault
A vault is a folder. Jotura itself never creates one, but the system folder picker on macOS and Windows has its own New Folder control, so you can make an empty one without leaving the dialog.
- Click the vault button in the sidebar header. Before a vault is open it reads
Open vault…, and afterwards it shows the vault’s folder name. - Pick a folder in the dialog titled Select a vault folder.
- The folder name becomes the vault name, and the tree fills with whatever markdown files were already there.
If you select something that is not a directory, the open fails and nothing is created. Jotura does not copy, convert, or move your existing files, which stay where they are, readable and writable by every other tool on your machine.
What the first open writes
Opening a vault writes one hidden directory, .jotura/, for Jotura’s own state. Your notes are not touched, and no daily notes are created until you click a day in the calendar.
If you want upcoming daily notes created for you, turn on Create upcoming daily notes under Settings, Daily Notes. Jotura then creates an empty note for today and the following days on each vault open, at Daily/<year>/<month>/<YYYY-MM-DD>.md. The Auto-create window stepper beside it sets how many days, from 1 to 60, with a default of 14. The feature itself is covered in Daily notes, tasks, and templates.
Switching and reopening vaults
The vault button switches vaults at any time. Picking the vault that is already open skips the search index rebuild, though it still closes every open tab and collapses the folder tree.
On the next launch, Jotura reopens the last vault automatically. The path is stored as lastVaultPath in the app’s settings file, and it is the only setting that decides which vault opens. Other state also lives outside the vault, including the sidebar widths and the per-vault list of recently closed tabs.
If the vault you want is already in your Jotura account, there is a second route onto a new machine. Settings, Account & sync, Restore vault from cloud downloads a remote vault into an empty local folder. See Sync and sharing.
Opening an existing Obsidian vault
An Obsidian vault is already a folder of markdown files, so you point Jotura at it and start working without any export or migration step.
Jotura ignores Obsidian’s .obsidian/ configuration directory and its .trash/ folder everywhere: the file tree, search, sync, and the file watcher all skip them. Reading a vault writes nothing into it. Round-trip fidelity is a tested invariant: opening a note and saving it without edits produces a byte-identical file, held in place by the round-trip fixture suite, including a set of Obsidian-syntax fixtures. Jotura’s own state goes in a hidden .jotura/ directory, described below. Obsidian Sync skips hidden folders, so that state stays per device. A cloud drive such as iCloud or Dropbox copies it, which is harmless.
Running both apps against the same folder works, with one caveat about who resolves what. Jotura never prompts about a file that changed on disk: it merges the disk version into your open editor, as described under saving below. That protects the Jotura side only, so avoid having the same note open for editing in both apps at once.
Jotura reads three files from .obsidian/ and never writes there.
| File | What Jotura takes from it |
|---|---|
app.json |
The attachment folder, attachmentFolderPath. Embeds such as ![[diagram.png]] resolve through it. |
daily-notes.json |
The daily notes folder, date format, and template. See Daily notes. |
templates.json |
The templates folder, listed alongside Jotura’s own templates. |
The syntax you used in Obsidian is the syntax Jotura uses. Wikilinks with aliases, headings, and block references, embeds including sized images such as ![[photo.png|300]], callouts such as > [!note], task states such as - [/], ==highlights==, $inline$ and $$block$$ math, %% comments %%, footnotes, block ids, and nested #tags are all first-class editor features and are kept byte-for-byte through edits. Images, highlights, callouts and maths render on the desktop; comments show as styled text, and the phone shows maths as written. The editor has a section on each.
Some Obsidian features do not carry over, and you should check this list before you switch.
| Obsidian feature | In Jotura |
|---|---|
| Community plugins | No plugin system. Dataview queries and Templater syntax sit in your notes as plain text. |
| Graph view | Does not exist. |
| Canvas and Bases | .canvas and .base files appear in the tree and open as plain JSON text. There is no canvas editor and no Bases view. |
| Excalidraw | .excalidraw.md notes open in source mode. The drawing is not rendered. |
| Transclusion | Note embeds keep their syntax and show as a chip with the note’s name; the note’s text is not pulled in. |
| Themes | Jotura has its own appearance settings. Theme, editor font, and font sizes are in Settings. |
| Obsidian Publish | No publishing feature. |
Wikilinks in [[double brackets]] resolve the way Obsidian resolves them: case-insensitively, by shortest matching path, with #heading and #^block anchors stripped and frontmatter aliases honored. Jotura decorates them in the editor, marks links whose target is missing, and opens the target when you click one. Clicking a link with no target asks No note named "{name}". Create it?, so a broken link is one click from becoming a real note. A longer walkthrough lives in Coming from Obsidian.
Document conversion is the one feature that behaves differently in an Obsidian vault. In an ordinary vault, PDFs and Office files are converted into searchable markdown siblings automatically. In a vault with an .obsidian/ folder that setting is switched off the first time Jotura opens a vault it has never opened before, no notes are written, and a notice offers Convert now if the vault holds convertible documents. A vault Jotura has opened before is left as it is. A vault the jotura CLI has already written to counts as opened, because the CLI’s write lock creates the .jotura folder. See Documents.
Where files live on disk
Your notes are the folder you picked, and they stay ordinary files. Jotura adds a few visible folders in the vault root, plus one hidden directory for its own state.
| Path | What it holds | When it appears |
|---|---|---|
<vault>/Daily/ |
Daily notes, filed as <year>/<month>/<YYYY-MM-DD>.md. Ordinary notes in every other respect, including sync and search. |
When you first click a day in the calendar, or on vault open once Create upcoming daily notes is turned on. The folder name defaults to Daily and has no control in Settings. In a vault with .obsidian/daily-notes.json, the folder and file layout from that file are used instead. |
<vault>/attachments/ |
Imported documents, and files you paste or drop into a note. | The first time you import something. Rename it under Settings, Advanced, Files & folders, Default document folder. |
<vault>/Jotura/ |
Vault-wide settings in settings.json, plus files such as your reading positions that sync with the vault. This folder can never be shared. |
When you change a setting that applies to the vault, or when sync or the phone first writes there. |
<vault>/Highlights/ |
One highlights note per book, written by the Android book reader. | When you first highlight a passage on the phone. See Books and highlights. |
<vault>/.jotura/ |
Jotura’s own state for this vault, detailed below. The file tree, the search index, and sync all skip it. | On vault open. |
Inside that hidden directory:
| Path | What it holds |
|---|---|
<vault>/.jotura/trash/ |
Soft-deleted notes, each with a .trashmeta JSON sidecar recording the original path, size, and time. |
<vault>/.jotura/templates/ |
Note templates, one markdown file per template. Nested names such as work/standup are allowed. |
<vault>/.jotura/history/ |
Local autosave snapshots for version history. |
<vault>/.jotura/sync.db |
Sync state, present only when cloud sync is enabled for this vault. |
<vault>/.jotura/vectors.db |
The semantic search index, present only when semantic search is enabled. |
<vault>/.jotura/shares/ |
The share registry and per-share sync state. |
<vault>/.jotura/write.lock |
The cross-process write lock that keeps the app and the CLI from writing over each other. |
Imported documents such as PDFs and Word files are stored as themselves, with a converted markdown mirror written as a sibling file. The tree hides the mirror, so report.pdf.md never appears next to report.pdf. See Documents.
Application settings live outside the vault, in the operating system’s configuration directory.
| Platform | Settings file |
|---|---|
| Windows | %APPDATA%\jotura\settings.json |
| macOS | ~/Library/Application Support/jotura/settings.json |
| Linux | ~/.config/jotura/settings.json |
The same jotura directory holds the downloaded local embedding model under models/ if you enable semantic search. The secrets sit beside it on macOS and Linux, written with owner-only permissions and never synced: the sync key cache in sessions/, the account tokens in auth.json, your device and sharing identity keys in keys.json, and your OpenAI API key in openai.json. On Windows those secrets live in %LOCALAPPDATA%\jotura instead, encrypted with your Windows account (DPAPI) so only you, signed in to this machine, can open them. Setting the environment variable JOTURA_SECRET_STORE=plain keeps the older plaintext files in %APPDATA%\jotura.
The full-text search index lives in the operating system’s cache directory rather than in the vault, so a cloud drive cannot evict it. Index copies left in <vault>/.jotura/index/ by older versions are deleted on open.
The settings file is written atomically with owner-only permissions, the same write-to-temporary-file-and-rename approach used for notes. A settings file that fails to parse is set aside as settings.json.corrupt before defaults are used.
Settings that belong to a vault rather than a device, such as the default document folder, the Task window and Convert documents automatically, live in the vault itself at <vault>/Jotura/settings.json and sync with it.
Note contents are never encrypted on disk. At-rest protection is the operating system’s job, through FileVault, BitLocker, or the equivalent.
Encryption applies to cloud sync, where notes are encrypted on your device before upload. See Security and Sync and sharing. Cloud sync requires a paid subscription, priced on the pricing page.
Saving happens on its own
Jotura has no save shortcut. Cmd+S and Ctrl+S are deliberately left unbound, because every edit is saved for you.
| Trigger | When it fires |
|---|---|
| Autosave timer | 1000 milliseconds after your last change. |
| Blur flush | When the editor loses focus. |
| Visibility flush | When the window becomes hidden, for example when you switch to another application. |
The same three triggers apply in the WYSIWYG editor, in source mode, and in plain-text tabs. Tabs opened read-only never become dirty and therefore never autosave. All saves pass through a serial queue, so an autosave timer and a blur flush cannot collide.
A tab with unsaved changes shows a small dot after its title in the tab bar. In practice the dot appears and disappears within a second of you pausing. Screen readers hear Saved when a save completes, since there is nothing on screen to watch.
If a note changes on disk while you have it open, Jotura does not interrupt you. It merges three versions silently: the content the tab started from, your editor content, and the fresh file on disk. It retries up to three times and announces Merged changes from disk to screen readers. Conflict files are never created.
The one case that does ask you is a note that vanished. If the file was deleted or moved outside the app, the editor shows a banner reading This note was deleted or moved outside the app. It offers two buttons: Close tab, and Recreate with my version, which writes your editor content back to the original path.
A first tour of the window
The sidebar
The left sidebar has a header, a pane switcher, the pane itself, and a status bar pinned to the bottom. The header carries the Jotura logo, the vault button described above, and a settings gear. Below it sits an icon-only pane switcher with four panes.
| Pane | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Files | The vault’s folder tree. |
| Search | Search with arrow-key navigation and Keyword, Semantic and Smart modes. The last two need search by meaning to be turned on. Keyword mode adds three toggles, labelled in the UI with the literal glyphs Aa for case sensitive, W for whole word, and "" for phrase. |
| Tags | Tags declared under a tags: key in note frontmatter, plus #hashtags typed in note bodies outside code. Selecting one lists the notes that carry it. |
| Shared | Shares you have received and shares you have created. |
The Files pane adds two buttons, Expand all folders and Collapse all folders. While the search index is building, a strip reads Indexing… {done}/{total}.
The status bar shows only the app version when nothing is happening. During background work it shows a spinner and the single highest-priority task, in the order converting, embedding, indexing, syncing, with a +{n} badge and a tooltip when more than one is running.
Three of those four read {Name} {done}/{total} · {eta} left. Syncing is the exception: it reads Syncing {n} pending, or Syncing … when nothing is queued, and never shows an estimate.
Press Cmd+\ or Ctrl+\ to toggle the sidebar. Collapsed, it becomes a single Show sidebar button.
You can resize the sidebar by dragging its edge, between 200 and 600 pixels, defaulting to 300. The drag handle is also focusable with Tab, and once focused the left and right arrow keys resize in 16-pixel steps. The width is saved immediately. The right sidebar resizes by mouse only.
The file tree
The tree is fully keyboard navigable once focus is inside it.
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
| Arrow Down, Arrow Up | Move through the visible rows. Children of collapsed folders are skipped. |
| Arrow Right | Expand a collapsed folder, or move down one row if it is already expanded. No effect on files. |
| Arrow Left | Collapse an expanded folder, otherwise jump to the parent folder’s row. |
| Enter | Open the focused file. |
| F2 | Start an inline rename on the focused row. |
Inline rename and create inputs both submit on Enter and cancel on Escape. They differ on blur: clicking away from a rename submits it, while clicking away from a create cancels it. A create input preselects the name up to the last dot, and a rename selects the whole name. Double-clicking a file row also starts a rename.
Drag a file or folder onto another folder to move it. Jotura implements the move as a rename, so the file keeps its content and its version history. Dropping a folder into itself or into one of its own descendants is refused, with the announcement A folder can't be moved into itself.
Dropping files from your operating system onto the tree does something different. It imports them into the folder you dropped on, or into the vault root if you dropped on empty space. This is the main entry point for adding PDFs and other documents.
Right-clicking a row opens a context menu. Which items appear depends on the row.
| Item | Appears for |
|---|---|
| Open in browser | HTML files. |
| Open original externally | Imported documents and plain-text files, except scripts such as .py or .sh. |
| Reveal in File Explorer, Reveal in Finder, or Show in folder | Every row. The wording follows your platform. |
| Copy path | Every row except the vault root. Copies the vault-relative path and announces Path copied. |
| New note | Every row. |
| New note from template | Folders. |
| New folder | Folders. |
| Paste | Every row, while something is cut. |
| Expand all folders, Collapse all folders | Every row. |
| Share… | Rows that are not already shared and are not the vault root. |
| Manage sharing… | Share mount roots. |
| History | .md files only. |
| Cut | Every row except the vault root. |
| Rename | Every row except the vault root. |
| Move to trash | Every row except the vault root. |
Move to trash moves the entry into <vault>/.jotura/trash/, not your operating system’s trash, and announces Moved "{name}" to trash. The desktop app has no trash browser: restoring or permanently purging trashed items is done from the CLI, covered in Creating, moving, and deleting.
Tabs
The tab bar appears only once something is open.
- A dot after the title means unsaved changes. The close control is a
×. - Drag tabs to reorder them. Search, history, home and Agent Memory tabs cannot be dragged and cannot be dropped onto.
- Right-click a tab for Close, Close others, and Close all.
- A vertical scroll wheel scrolls the bar horizontally, and the active tab scrolls itself into view.
- Closed tabs are remembered, 30 of them, deduplicated by path and stored per vault, which is what
Cmd+Shift+TorCtrl+Shift+Treopens.
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Close active tab | Cmd+W or Ctrl+W |
| Reopen last closed tab | Cmd+Shift+T or Ctrl+Shift+T |
| Next tab | Cmd+Tab or Ctrl+Tab |
| Previous tab | Cmd+Shift+Tab or Ctrl+Shift+Tab |
The Command and Control keys are interchangeable for these global shortcuts on every platform, because the handler accepts either modifier. Two consequences follow from the tab-switching pair specifically.
The first affects the editor. Jotura claims the modifier-plus-Tab combination and cancels the browser default, so Tab does nothing inside the editor while Cmd or Ctrl is held. Indenting a list item needs Tab pressed on its own.
The second affects macOS. The system application switcher normally claims Cmd+Tab before the app ever sees it. If tab switching does not respond there, use Ctrl+Tab or the Next Tab and Previous Tab entries in the command palette.
Quick open
Press Cmd+P or Ctrl+P to toggle quick open, then type part of a file name.
- The match is a fuzzy match on the file’s base name and on any
aliasesthe note declares in its frontmatter. Folder paths and note content are not searched. - Commands and tag filtering live in their own surfaces, so quick open has no
>prefix and no#tagfilter. - Typing is debounced by 80 milliseconds and the list shows at most 20 results.
- Arrow Down and Arrow Up move through the list, which clamps at both ends rather than wrapping, and Enter opens the highlighted file. Escape closes.
- The placeholder reads
Search files by name…and an empty result set readsNo files match. - Closing quick open deliberately keeps your query, so reopening shows it again. The input is selected, so typing replaces it.
For content search, tags, and semantic search, see Search.
The command palette
Press Cmd+Shift+P or Ctrl+Shift+P to toggle the command palette. It lists every command with its group and, where one exists, its shortcut. The placeholder reads Type a command… and an empty result set reads No commands match. Filtering is a fuzzy subsequence match on the command name that rewards consecutive runs and prefix matches.
There are twenty-one commands.
| Command | Group | Shortcut |
|---|---|---|
| View: Toggle Sidebar | View | Cmd/Ctrl+\ |
| Editor: Toggle Source Mode | Editor | Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+E |
| Open Settings | App | none |
| Search Vault | Search | Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+F |
| Open Home | App | none |
| Open Agent Memory | Vault | none |
| Open Search Panel | Search | none |
| Open Quick Open | Search | Cmd/Ctrl+P |
| Close Tab | Tabs | Cmd/Ctrl+W |
| Reopen Recently Closed Tab | Tabs | Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+T |
| Next Tab | Tabs | Cmd/Ctrl+Tab |
| Previous Tab | Tabs | Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+Tab |
| New Note (in vault root) | Files | none |
| New Note from Template… | Files | none |
| Share Current Note… | Files | none |
| History for Current Note | Files | none |
| Insert Link to Note… | Editor | Cmd/Ctrl+L |
| Insert Embed… | Editor | Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+L |
| Open Command Palette | App | Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+P |
| Export as HTML… | Editor | none |
| Print / Save as PDF | Editor | none |
Three of those shortcuts need editor focus. Cmd/Ctrl+L, Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+L and Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+E are bound only inside the editor, so from anywhere else in the app you reach them through the palette. The full chord list, including formatting, lists, and tables, is in Keyboard shortcuts.
Two commands can decline to run, and neither says so. History for Current Note does nothing when the active tab is a search, history, home or Agent Memory tab, or when the file is not a .md note. Share Current Note… makes the same tab check but no markdown check, so it will open the share picker for any file tab.
Creating your first note
New Note (in vault root) switches the sidebar to the Files pane and opens an inline create input at the root of the tree. Type a name and press Enter. The same input is available from the tree’s New note context-menu item, which creates the note inside the folder you right-clicked. The dashboard’s New note button does the same thing.
Escape
Escape is handled globally, and the first match in this order wins:
- Close the command palette if it is open.
- Close the settings modal if it is open.
- Close quick open if it is open.
- Close the active tab if it is a search tab.
If none of those apply, Escape falls through to whatever has focus. Modal dialogs handle their own Escape, and every modal traps focus while it is open, returning focus to wherever it came from on close.
The dashboard
Whenever no tab is active, and on the Home tab that Open Home opens, you see the dashboard: a greeting, the date and a clock that re-ticks every 30 seconds, and the vault name. It offers four quick actions, New note, Quick open, Search vault, and Command palette, plus lists of Recently modified and Recently closed notes.
The keyboard glyphs printed on those buttons are hardcoded macOS symbols, so a Windows or Linux machine still sees ⌘P, ⌘⇧F, and ⌘⇧P even though Ctrl is the key you press. The dashboard’s Search vault button also differs from the identically named palette command: the button opens the sidebar search pane, and the command opens the full search page.
The right sidebar
The right sidebar is hidden when no vault is open and collapsed by default otherwise. It holds a Calendar pane, a Tasks pane and a Notifications pane, plus an Open history action that is disabled unless the active tab is a .md note.
One behavior to know before you click around: every cell in the calendar creates that day’s daily note when clicked, including the greyed-out days that belong to the previous or next month. Daily notes, task tracking, and templates are covered in Daily notes, tasks, and templates.
On your phone
The Android app is on Google Play, or as a direct .apk from the download page. iOS is planned.
To bring a synced vault onto the phone, tap Sign in, enter the 6-digit code Jotura emails you, and pick the vault from the list of your vaults in Jotura Sync. Enter the vault’s sync password and the phone downloads your notes, then keeps them in step with your other devices. You can also start with a local vault on the phone that never syncs.
The phone also reads the EPUB, PDF and CBZ books in your vault, and passages you highlight are saved to a Markdown note for each book. See Books and highlights.
Where to go next
- The editor covers WYSIWYG editing, markdown input rules, the slash menu, tables, and source mode.
- Keyboard shortcuts is the complete chord reference.
- Search explains the two search surfaces and the keyword, semantic, and smart modes.
- Sync and sharing covers the encrypted sync setup, the recovery phrase, and sharing notes with other people.
- Settings reference documents every setting and its default.
- Troubleshooting is where to look when something behaves unexpectedly.
- Install and setup starts the CLI documentation, if you want to drive the same vault from a terminal.