Getting Started

Last updated: 2026-09-30

This page takes you from installation to your first real work: opening or creating a vault, learning the interface, and understanding the three editor modes.

Arch Linux community package: plainva in the AUR is maintained independently. Review its PKGBUILD before building; Plainva does not verify these community builds. The application’s licence remains AGPL-3.0-only.

System requirements

Plainva draws its window with the system’s web engine, so the engine — not the processor — sets the floor:

• Windows 10 or newer with the WebView2 runtime (Windows 11 ships it; on 10 the installer adds it)
• macOS 13.3 (Ventura) or newer, Apple Silicon or Intel
• Linux with WebKitGTK 2.40 or newer (check with pkg-config --modversion webkit2gtk-4.1)

The engine bar is Safari 16.4, and on macOS the system version decides it: an app draws its window with the system WebView, which arrives with macOS updates rather than with Safari. On a Mac that Apple no longer updates, Safari can therefore be far newer than the engine every other app gets — Monterey stops at Safari 15.6.1 however current its Safari is. Ventura reached 16.4 at 13.3, which is where the floor sits; installing a newer Safari does not move it.

On a system below that line Plainva says so at startup instead of opening a blank window.

Linux: which file to pick. On Fedora, openSUSE and other RPM-based distributions install the .rpm, on Debian and Ubuntu the .deb — both use the WebKitGTK, Mesa and Wayland libraries of your system. The .AppImage is the fallback for distributions without a package: it carries its own copies of some libraries, and on a very new system (Mesa 25 or newer) those can clash with the host’s graphics stack. AppImages built after 0.8.0 work around that at start-up; if a window still stays blank, start it from a terminal and read the message — EGL_BAD_PARAMETER points to exactly this, and the .rpm or .deb is the way past it. A blank window on an NVIDIA card is a different matter: try WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER=1 ./Plainva*.AppImage (a WebKitGTK setting, see Tauri’s notes on Linux graphics).

What is a vault?

A vault is an ordinary folder on your computer that holds your Markdown notes. Plainva adds a hidden .plainva/ subfolder for the search index and settings — your notes themselves remain untouched .md files. You can have several vaults (e.g. “Personal” and “Work”) and switch between them.

Opening or creating a vault

On the very first launch — before you have ever opened a vault — Plainva shows a short welcome, once. It says in three lines what Plainva is built on, shows a small preview of the interface next to it, and offers the three ways in right away: Open Vault, New Vault and Import from another app. Later skips it and leaves you on the ordinary welcome screen; it does not come back — unless you ask for it again under Settings → Startup & behavior → Welcome screen.

After an update the same spot shows what changed: the biggest change of that release with a headline of its own, the rest as one line each. It appears once per version — you can call it up again anytime under Settings → Startup & behavior → Show release highlights again.

On launch, the welcome screen greets you:

• Open Vault — Plainva first asks “Where is your vault?”: Local folder opens an existing folder of Markdown files on this computer (Obsidian vaults work out of the box); Online vault syncs an existing vault from the cloud into a local folder — the same three steps for every provider (Connect, choose the folder in the cloud, choose the local folder; see Sync Setup).
• New Vault — the first question is “Where should your vault live?” (On this computer or With an online service), then you pick the starter structure: empty or from a prepared folder structure; both are adjustable anytime. The Empty vault contains just an index.md overview. Available templates: the Plainva Tour, PARA, Zettelkasten, ACE (Linking Your Thinking), Johnny.Decimal, GTD, Journal and Project — each creates folders, a welcome note with a quick guide and automatically maintained index.md overviews in the OKF format (folder and file names follow the app language). The Plainva Tour is the recommended place to start: it fills ten folders and seven databases with examples, so you see every view in action once — pinboard, calendar, gallery, board, graph, timeline, table and the tree view with sub-items — plus note templates, folder rules and a Markdown cheat sheet. Nothing in it is precious: delete what you do not need and rename the rest. The Journal template additionally wires up the vault’s daily-notes settings. The Plainva Tour, PARA, GTD, Zettelkasten, Journal and Project templates also ship ready-linked databases with matching note templates — for example projects with a status board and an area link, or tasks that point to their project. The Project template shows the project tooling in action: four connected databases, a column that counts a project’s open tasks, a footer that sums the planned effort, dependencies between tasks, and milestones that appear as a diamond on the timeline. On the online path the connection follows the template: pick the provider, connect, choose the folder in the cloud or create a fresh one via New folder, pick the local folder — the chosen structure is created in the local folder and uploaded to the cloud by the first sync.

Recent Vaults lists everything you have opened before. Remove from list removes an entry from Plainva only — the files stay on disk. Enable Automatically open the last vault on start to skip the welcome screen in the future. When removing, Plainva asks whether to additionally forget all of the vault’s app data (search index, settings, window layout, credentials for sync, calendar and mailboxes; automatic ZIP backups only via the extra checkbox) — your vault folder always stays untouched.

Plainva Tour · Overview

Start with the first small exercise, or open a database below and explore. The first five stops introduce everyday work; the rest are optional. Allow roughly 10–15 minutes for a first look and take as much time as you like to try things. All examples are fictional and yours to change.

Open: Tour/01 Write and link.md

1. Write and link
2. Turn a note into a task
3. Plan a project
4. Find and organize
5. Plan a day
6. Review a note
7. Compare versions and keep files
8. Explore what helps you
9. Accounts, devices and import
10. Sharing and automation

The synthetic package contains exactly two notes tagged tour-import and no deleted notes. The report should show two imported notes; the existing tour files remain separate. Delete only that new subfolder if you want to undo the exercise.

Encrypted workspaces and their sharing flows are experimental and require real identities, keys and a connected service. Use separate demo data to explore roles, invitations and publications. Automation and scripts require deliberate setup and permissions; the template never starts a script, contacts a service, creates credentials or pretends to grant access. Choose one small workflow from the handbook when you need it.

Tour data version: 2026-09-11. Dates belong to the day this vault was created. Template updates apply only to future new vaults; this vault is never updated or supplemented from a template.

Choose a new, empty local folder and, for online creation, an empty cloud folder. Existing vaults are opened without applying a template. Removing files or switching devices never makes an existing vault eligible for a template update.

The interface

• Left sidebar — three views: Files (the file tree), Tags (all #tags in the vault) and Databases (every .base in the vault, grouped by folder — click one to open it); Recently opened and Bookmarks are sections above the view switch, so they stay visible in all three views. At the very top sits the search field with a + beside it for New Note, New Folder, New Base and Daily Note. The search placeholder says what is being searched, and the tabs carry their names as long as the panel is wide enough — as it narrows, first only the active tab keeps its name, then the icons speak alone. At the bottom: the vault switcher, Open Daily Note and Settings. The double-chevron button next to the three views collapses or expands all folders at once, and Reveal in file tree in the editor’s ⋮ menu jumps straight to the open note in the tree. In the Files view, a header shows the current vault’s name and icon.
• Sort — the button next to the search field orders the file tree by Title, Last modified or Created; choosing the same key again reverses the direction. Subfolders and a folder’s index.md always stay in front; the choice is remembered on this device. While a search is active, the same button sorts the hits instead: Relevance, Last modified, Title or Path.
• Title bar — your open tabs. Tabs can be reordered by dragging and moved between editor panes.
• Editor area — where you read and write. Via the tab menu (Split right / Split down) or the shortcuts Ctrl+Alt+V / Ctrl+Alt+S you split the editor into two panes, e.g. a note next to a database.
• Further windows — a note in its own window shows the same context sidebar on the right (outline, graph, databases, backlinks, properties; the calendar stays with the main window), folded and unfolded from the title bar. The editor’s ⋮ menu does there what it does in the main window: Version history… and conflict resolution open in the note’s window, Reveal in file tree brings the window with the file tree forward with the file selected, and right-clicking a tab offers the same tab menu (without Open in new window — the tab already is in one).
• Right sidebar — four sections, reorderable by drag: Calendar (daily notes), Outline (headings of the active note), Backlinks (who links here) and Properties (the note’s frontmatter).
• Status bar — word/character count, sync status (Local/Online/Offline) and save status (Saving… / Saved).
• Empty lists — a list with nothing in it says what it expects and offers the first step: the file tree, the databases, the graph, the mail, the tasks.

The three editor modes

Switch modes at the top right of the editor:

Which mode notes open in is up to you: pick the Default view under Settings → App → Editor & notes (read, live or source). Switching the mode in the editor applies to that file for the current session.

You can also toggle between Readable width and Full width.

File tree basics

• Creating: right-click a folder → New Note Here, New folder or New database (.base). The big New button creates inside the currently selected folder (or the parent folder of a selected file).
• Selecting: click selects, Ctrl+click adds/removes individually, Shift+click selects a range, middle-click opens in a new tab.
• Context menu: includes Rename (updates links vault-wide), Duplicate, Open in split (right) / Open in split (bottom), Add bookmark, Copy Path, Show in File Manager, Delete.
• Move to… in the context menu moves a note, a folder or the whole multi-selection into a folder of your choice — the same path as drag & drop, just without the drag: open tabs, pinboard references and the index follow. Unsaved text in a note being moved or renamed is saved first; if that fails, nothing moves and Plainva says why, and your text stays open. If the move itself worked but a later step failed, the message says the item is at its new place and names what went wrong.
• The same actions in the sections above the tree: right-clicking an entry in Recently opened or Bookmarks opens the same menu — without the folder entries, and with Remove from list added (that drops the entry from the list, never the file). Renaming there runs through a prompt instead of an input field in the row. The calendar and task views can sit in Recently opened too; they can be opened and removed from the list, but not renamed or deleted — they are views, not files.
• Multi-selection: deleting asks once for all items, duplicating and moving by drag work on the whole selection. Deleted items go to the operating system’s trash.
• New notes automatically start with a # Heading derived from the file name.
• A folder’s own index.md (its overview) sorts to the top of that folder in the tree, above its subfolders and files — not alphabetically among the other notes.
• Read again: the circular arrow in the tree’s heading (or F5) reads the vault again — Plainva reconciles the index with the folder and, on online vaults, also fetches the cloud files. A short report then states what was new, changed, removed or skipped. For a single folder there is Read this folder again in the right-click menu.

Daily notes

The Daily Note button in the left action rail opens or creates today’s note. Configure the base folder, date format and an optional template under Settings → Vault → Content & structure (Choose folder… next to the field lets you pick the folder right inside the vault).

The date format uses the same tokens as Obsidian: YYYY year, MM month, DD day, dddd weekday name — YYYY-MM-DD dddd gives 2026-07-29 Wednesday. Text that should stay as it is belongs in square brackets: [Journal] YYYY-MM-DD. Month and weekday names are always English, so switching the app language never makes your existing daily notes unfindable.

The Calendar on the right is a day overview: clicking a date opens the calendar tab at that day; a right-click opens a menu that names the day at the top and offers Open calendar, Daily Note and that day’s events and due tasks. Days with a daily note carry a tiny sun glyph, days with events colored dots per calendar. The Today button returns to the current month; clicking the month label opens a quick month/year picker. There you can also enable Show week numbers to add an ISO week column — the setting is remembered.

The quickest way into today’s note is the journal: Ctrl+Shift+J takes one line, stamps the time and appends it under the Journal heading of today’s daily note — without opening the note. Open journal in the action rail shows the entries of all days as one stream. See Journal.

Settings

Settings (gear icon at the bottom of the leftmost action rail, or Ctrl+,) close via the X in the top right, Esc or a click outside the window. Changes are saved immediately and automatically — only cloud credentials are applied deliberately via Sign in in the Cloud accounts area (see Sync Setup). Settings come in two parts; every area in the left rail opens its own page, where the settings sit in named group cards:

• App — everything that applies app-wide, in five areas. Appearance: the Theme picker as preview cards — besides Petrol (the default) you get Nord, Solarized, Gruvbox, Catppuccin, Paper (E-Ink-like, maximally calm), Sepia (warm paper), Forest, Midnight (OLED black), High Contrast and Phosphor Green/Phosphor Amber (retro terminal with subtle scanlines); plus the Mode (Light/Dark/System Default; single-mode themes such as Midnight pin the mode, and the light/dark switch in the title bar pauses while they are active), Language, Week starts on, Density and Interface zoom, and the Fonts card with three slots — Interface, Content and Code — plus the Content font size; each slot offers Theme default, serif, sans-serif, monospace or Custom… (the Code slot monospace only), and behind the custom choice sits a list in which every face previews itself and says whether this device actually has it; a font that is not installed cannot be picked, and a free-text field stays below it for everything else. Fonts are kept per device. Editor & notes: Default view. Startup & behavior: open the last vault automatically, compatibility warnings. Updates: Plainva quietly checks for new versions on startup and shows a notice when one is found — click it to download and install the update straight away (it stays up until Plainva restarts). Opt out via Check for updates on startup. About & diagnostics: version details, the OS keychain status, Performance metrics, Export diagnostics… (no note content) and Report a problem. Keyboard shortcuts stay reachable any time via F1 or Show keyboard shortcuts in the bottom left.
• Vault — the selected vault sits as a small card in the rail (the active vault carries a dot); with several vaults, Switch below it opens a picker list. Below that, the per-vault areas: Cloud accounts is the one place for every cloud sign-in — Connect account… picks the provider (Microsoft, Google, Nextcloud, Dropbox, S3, WebDAV or an email mailbox) and the services (Files, Calendar & tasks, Email) that account should carry. The service areas Sync (see Sync Setup), Calendar (see Calendar & Tasks) and Email (see Email capture) only appear once a connected account carries that service. Always present: Content & structure (Daily notes, Templates (the Template Folder plus the folder → template and note type → template rules, which apply on the phone too), Daily notes (including their Template), the Inbox folder, the Attachments folder, Tasks, OKF (Open Knowledge Format) — see OKF — and Extended databases), Backup & version history and Maintenance (Rebuild index, restore deleted files, vault statistics).

Tabs

• Right-click a tab for its menu: Pin, Reload, Open in split (right), Copy path, Show in file manager, and the closing group.
• Pin holds a tab in place: it moves to the front of the strip, shows a pin instead of the close cross, and survives every Close others / Close to the left / Close to the right / Close all. To close it, Unpin first.
• Reload discards the view and reads the file from disk again — handy when another program changed it. If the tab has unsaved edits, Plainva refuses to reload rather than overwrite your work.
• Many tabs no longer scroll sideways: tabs shrink as more open, down to the point where the icon, a shortened title and the close button still fit. What does not fit then waits behind one button that shows how many (3 more tabs) — one click lists them. The active tab always stays in view, and Plainva never closes a tab on its own.

Several windows

Plainva does not have to stay in one window. Whatever you need right now can sit next to your work:

• Right-click a tab → Open in new window. The tab leaves this window and lives on in the new one; no copy stays behind.
• Right-click Graph, Tasks, Calendar or Email in the ribbon for the same choice. Click the entry again afterwards and Plainva brings that window forward instead of opening the view a second time.
• Command palette → Open communications window starts a window that is already split: mail on the left, calendar on the right.
• Command palette → Open a second window opens the whole shell again — sidebars, ribbon, tabs, status bar. That is the one for a second monitor.
• While composing a message, the pop-out icon lifts the composer into its own window — with everything you have already typed.

A popped-out window is a full Plainva: it carries tabs, can be split, and saves through the same chain as the main window. What it deliberately does not carry are the sidebars and the ribbon — it is meant to show one thing.

A second window does carry them — and it carries its own vault. It opens on the main window’s vault; the vault switcher at the bottom left moves it to another one without dragging the main window along. Settings, the import wizard and creating a vault stay with the main window — the buttons are there, and pressing one brings the main window forward and opens it there. Everything about your work is the same in both: editing, saving, searching, and the sync state in the status bar. Sidebar widths and what you collapsed belong to each window separately.

A piece of content is only ever open in ONE window. Open a note that is already showing somewhere else and that window comes forward. This is deliberate: two editors on the same file are the surest way to lose work. Composing is the exception — writing two messages at once is ordinary.

The pin in the window title keeps a window on top while you work in the other one.

On the next start, every vault that had a window comes back, and its auxiliary windows come back where they were. If you would rather they did not: Settings → Startup & behavior → Windows. An unsent message is never restored — what sits in a composer lives in memory, and a window claiming to have kept it would be worse than no window.

Several vaults at once

Two vaults side by side — work and private, project and archive — need two windows: one window shows exactly one vault. Open a second window (command palette → Open a second window) and switch its vault at the bottom left. From then on both run: their own search, their own sync, their own reminders.

• Each vault syncs for itself. The state in the status bar always belongs to the vault of the window you are in.
• The same account in both vaults is fine. Plainva renews the sign-in once and hands it to the other vault instead of letting the two invalidate each other.
• A vault inside another vault is refused. If the folder sits inside a vault that is already open — or the other way round — Plainva says so and why: both would watch and sync the same files.
• The same vault in two windows is allowed; the windows share it, and a note still only ever opens in one of them.
• The last look closes it. Once no window is looking at a vault any more, Plainva puts it away — whatever is being written is finished first.

Arranging bars & areas

The action rail on the far left, the tabs of the left sidebar, the sections above the file tree and the sections of the right sidebar all work the same way.

The action rail offers New Note, New Folder and New database (.base). All three create inside the selected folder in the file tree; with a file selected, in that file’s folder; with nothing selected, at the top level. The Daily Note does not follow that — it always belongs in the folder you named for it in the settings. If you do not need one of the three, hide it.

Right where they are: press and hold a button or a section heading and drag it to its new place — a plain click still just triggers it, and if you scroll while holding, you scroll (the drag is cancelled). Esc cancels a drag in progress. A right-click offers the same actions without holding: Move up, Hide and Customize bars….

In one place: under Settings → Vault → Bars & areas all five bars sit below each other — including the phone’s navigation bar, which you can therefore arrange on the big screen. Each is one list with a dividing line: everything above it is visible, everything below is hidden. Here you move entries with the drag handle — on this page a list is being arranged, which is exactly what a handle is for. Dragging to the top or bottom edge scrolls the page along, so an entry travels from the very bottom to the very top in one movement. Arrange bars …, the button with the sliders at the end of the action rail’s upper group, opens this page directly.

Two things deliberately cannot be hidden: Help and Settings at the bottom of the action rail, and the Files tab of the left sidebar. Everything else is yours to hide; hidden rail actions stay reachable from the command palette (Ctrl+P). Right-sidebar sections with nothing to show for the open note never appear in the first place.

The arrangement belongs to the vault and travels to your other devices through settings sync. A vault you have not adapted follows your default — set it with Save as default, and Reset to default returns an adapted vault to it.

Customizing the interface

• Toggle the sidebars via the two title-bar buttons or Ctrl+Alt+B (left) / Ctrl+Alt+R (right) — great for focused writing. Plainva remembers the state.
• Command palette: Ctrl+P opens Commands — type and hit Enter to run (new note, daily note, split, sidebars, Back up now, and more).
• Density: under Settings → App → Appearance, choose between Comfortable and Compact — compact tightens lists, menus and table rows; note content is unaffected.
• Colour tags: under Settings → App → Appearance, switch on Colour tags and every tag gets a colour that follows from its name — nested tags share the colour of their top-level tag — in notes, properties, databases and the tag list. Off by default; it applies to this device and stores nothing.
• Custom theme: the My theme card under Settings → App → Appearance selects the theme, and the pencil on it opens its page: mood (light/dark), a background from a bounded lightness range, any accent, corner radius (fonts are chosen on the Fonts card on the same page). Plainva derives the text colours so text never vanishes into the ground; an accent too pale is corrected to at least 3:1, and the editor says so. On the phone the same controls live in the Appearance screen. Light and dark moods keep their own colours; corners are shared. An existing saved mood is preserved. The counterpart starts as a proposal and is saved only with Adopt mood. With both moods, System follows the device. While the My theme page is open, the whole app shows the chosen mood, including a proposal not yet adopted; when you leave, whatever Mode says applies again, and the preview saves nothing. With only one mood in your design, Mode is fixed — adopt the other mood under My theme.
• Personal design sync: On the My theme page, explicitly enable Sync through this vault. Choose an unlocked vault on each device; settings sync must be active. Exactly one vault supplies your own design. Other members are not forced to use it. An existing received design is adopted; otherwise your local design is shared. Simultaneous changes retain both variants for you to choose. Turning sync off keeps your local design. Fonts and choosing another theme are not synced by this switch.
• Fonts: under Settings → App → Appearance, the Fonts card sets the Interface, Content and Code fonts (theme default, serif, sans-serif, monospace or the name of any installed font) and the Content font size (12–24 px) — the size scales the editor and reading view only; the interface stays as it is.
• Font list: under Custom… a list shows your system’s fonts, each row set in its own face; a font that is not installed says so and cannot be picked. The name field below takes any other installed family.
• Interface zoom: scales the WHOLE interface between 80 % and 150 % — under Settings → App → Appearance or via Ctrl+Plus/Ctrl+Minus (Ctrl+0 resets).
• Native-free dialogs: confirmations appear as Plainva dialogs styled by your theme (destructive actions get a red button), short notices as subtle toasts in the bottom right — no more system popups.

The graph

Via Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+G (or the Graph section in the right sidebar) you see your vault as a map: folders as bubbles, notes as nodes, relations as labeled edges — including a cleanup mode and time travel. Details: Graph.

Remembering the right sidebar

Sections with nothing to show for the open note — Outline, Backlinks, Properties, Databases — do not appear at all, rather than sitting there greyed out. The whole right sidebar remembers one global preference for notes; full-surface views without note context close it only temporarily.

When you drag the panel narrow it changes in three steps, so nothing breaks:

• 280 px and up — as usual.
• 232–280 px — properties put the name above the value instead of beside it, long values wrap, the sections tighten up.
• below 232 px — the calendar shows one week instead of the month (seven days, week number below right); a month grid would have 14-pixel cells here and stop being a calendar. The graph gets shorter, and backlinks show the file name without the path line.

The right panel cannot go below 200 px — no section is usable under that. The left one still goes down to 150 px, because file names simply truncate.

See also

• Notes & Markdown — everything about writing
• Keyboard Shortcuts
• FAQ & Troubleshooting

Returning a tab

In a separate or second full window, right-click a tab and choose Return to main window. Plainva carries its current text, selection, view, scroll position, history and pin state over. The source tab closes only after receipt is confirmed. If the main window cannot confirm, the tab and its draft stay available. Bookmark changes appear in every window.

Folder bookmarks

Add a bookmark from a file or folder context menu. Folder bookmarks have a folder icon: mobile opens the folder, while desktop expands it in the file tree. Renaming and moving items in Plainva also updates bookmarks for nested folders and their files. Missing targets stay visible with a label; remove those bookmarks explicitly.

When a vault opens, Plainva automatically imports file and folder bookmarks from Obsidian, including groups. Type and path prevent duplicates. The Obsidian file stays unchanged. Settings profiles carry folder bookmarks separately from files; an older profile without a folder field keeps existing folder bookmarks.

A to-do list over your notes

The Tasks view turns the checkboxes in your notes and the entries of your task database into one to-do list: Today with what is overdue on top, Upcoming, Inbox and Done. A capture field understands a whole sentence — Call the dentist tomorrow 9:30 !! — and shows what it understood before it saves anything.