Your First Vault

A vault is a folder on your disk. Every document, whiteboard, and asset in it is a plain file you can back up, sync, or version however you like.

Create a vault

1. Launch DocGraph. On the welcome screen, choose Open vault (⌘O) to use a folder you already have, or New vault to name a new folder, which DocGraph creates and opens. If you’d rather explore before committing to your own notes, Try the demo opens a sample vault pre-filled with content — it’s written to ~/Documents/DocGraph Welcome/ as real files that are yours to keep, edit or delete, and an existing copy is never overwritten.
2. DocGraph indexes the folder and shows your file tree in the sidebar.

Pick the folder that holds your notes

A vault should be a notes folder, not a whole drive. DocGraph refuses folders that would make it scan every file on your Mac — your home folder, /, /Users, /Volumes, ~/Library, and its own ~/.docgraph data folder — and tells you why. Folders in iCloud Drive, ~/Documents, ~/Desktop and ~/Downloads are fine, and so is a whole external disk if you pick it yourself.

If a folder is very large, DocGraph stops scanning after about 50,000 items (or 10 seconds) so the app stays usable, and the sidebar says so. Choose Keep scanning to index all of it — DocGraph remembers that choice for this vault — or Choose another vault….

If DocGraph won’t open

DocGraph reopens your last vault when it starts. If that vault is the problem, hold ⌥ Option while DocGraph launches (keep holding until the window appears): it skips the last vault and shows the welcome screen, where you can pick another. If loading ever takes more than a few seconds, the loading screen also offers Open a different vault…. The welcome screen also lists your five most recent vaults under Recent, one click each.

If the sidebar says macOS won’t let DocGraph read the folder

When the folder is somewhere macOS protects and hasn’t allowed DocGraph to read, the sidebar shows an alert instead of your files: macOS isn’t letting DocGraph read this folder. Click Open Privacy Settings, allow DocGraph under Privacy & Security → Files and Folders (or Full Disk Access), then reopen the vault. Choose another vault… is there too. On other systems the message says DocGraph doesn’t have permission and asks you to check the folder’s permissions.

Open a note from Finder

You don’t have to start from the app. DocGraph is listed under Finder’s Open With for .html, .md and whiteboard files, and double-clicking one opens it here. A file inside your open vault opens as a tab; one outside it asks Open this file? before switching vaults. To make a double-click open DocGraph by default, use Settings → General → Vault → File types → Make DocGraph the default. HTML files are the exception: macOS ties them to your web browser, so DocGraph doesn’t claim them and the row says so. Use Open With for those. Details are in Finding Your Way Around.

Create your first document

• Right-click a folder in the sidebar and choose New HTML file…, New Markdown file…, or New Whiteboard…, or
• Click + in the title bar or press ⌘N for a new HTML page, or
• Use the command palette (⌘K) and choose New HTML file or New Markdown file.

Documents open in the main pane. Click anywhere in the text and start typing — everything autosaves as you go, so there’s no save button to remember. (The raw source editor does track unsaved changes, and shows a dot on the tab until they’re written.)

Organize with folders

Use the sidebar to create folders, drag files between them, and rename things. Because a vault is just a folder, anything you do in Finder or your file manager is reflected in DocGraph too.

Next

Learn what the editor can do in Editing Documents.