Znote 4.2.1 — Vaults & Obsidian compatibility 🔮
Your notes are now plain Markdown files in a vault — no more internal database.
- 🗄️ Vaults: a vault = a folder of .md files. Multiple vaults, one window each, with a vault switcher. Existing notes are migrated automatically (legacy data kept as backup).
- 🔮 Obsidian compatible: open your Obsidian vault directly — [[wikilinks]], ![[Note]] transclusion, ![[image]] embeds, callouts, shared attachments folder. Znote never rewrites your content.
- ✏️ Inline note title: a dedicated title field renames the file; the first line is just content now. Toggleable per vault, synced with Obsidian's setting.
- ⚡ Fast on large vaults: typing stays smooth with hundreds of notes.
- 🖱️ Native menus: right-click menus everywhere are now real OS menus — including the editor's, with AI actions built in.
- 📤 Export options: pick title, orientation, scale and destination before exporting to PDF/HTML.
- 🔎 ⌘F in-note search and ⌘K highlight.
- 🎙️ Audio reworked: recordings embed inline with a native player and one-click transcription.
- ✍️ Editor & AI: collapsible sections, @ note mentions in AI prompts, selection kept & highlighted while you prompt.
- 🎨 UI refresh: all-files view, quick-search palette, tree, dialogs, slim scrollbars — plus a new app icon and a rebuilt 8-bit Retro theme.
- 💥 Removed: tags, note history, the Attached-files panel — see full changelog below.
Full details ⬇️
Znote 4.2.1 — Vaults, plain Markdown storage & Obsidian compatibility
This is the biggest release since Znote 4.0. Your notes are no longer stored in an internal
database: a vault is now just a folder of Markdown files on your disk — readable,
syncable, and fully compatible with Obsidian.
🗄️ Vaults — your notes are plain .md files
- A vault = a folder of Markdown files. The folder tree is your note tree. No more
internal SQLite database — what you see on disk is what you get in the app.
- Multiple vaults, multiple windows. Each vault opens in its own window. Switch or open
vaults from the new vault switcher at the bottom of the sidebar (Obsidian-style), with
a "Show in explorer" shortcut on every vault.
- Open any Markdown folder as a vault — point Znote at an existing folder of .md files
and start working.
- Automatic migration. On first launch, your existing notes, folders, uploads and trash
are migrated to ~/Documents/Znote. Your previous data is kept untouched as a backup.
- Live filesystem sync. Edit a note in another app (or let your sync service update it):
Znote picks up external changes automatically. Conflicts on a note you're editing are
detected and surfaced instead of overwritten.
- Vault-based backup: back up or restore a vault as a simple zip of the folder. The
Backup settings now show your vault and app folders with one-click "Show in explorer".
🔗 Linked files & folders
Work with files that live outside your vault without moving them.
- "Link external folder…" mounts any folder into the tree (previously "Open Real Folder");
hover a linked folder or file to see its real path in a tooltip.
- A dedicated "Linked files" group in the tree gathers individually linked files —
no more mixing with your vault notes at the root. The file icon now marks only files
that live outside the vault.
- "Show in explorer" on linked files and folders reveals them in Finder / Explorer.
- Safe drag & drop: dropping a linked file into a vault folder now asks for
confirmation before physically moving the file into the vault.
🔮 Obsidian compatibility
You can now open an Obsidian vault directly in Znote — and go back to Obsidian anytime.
Znote never rewrites your content.
- [[Wikilinks]] rendered and clickable, with [[ autocompletion, |aliases,
frontmatter aliases and #heading navigation.
- ![[Note]] transclusion — embed a note inside another.
- ![[image.png]] embeds, resolved anywhere in the vault, Obsidian-style.
- Callouts (> [!note], > [!warning], …), %%comments%% and ^block-anchors.
- Attachments follow Obsidian's rules: pasted images go to your configured attachment
folder (attachments/ by default), linked with relative ![[name]] — no more absolute
paths. The media folder is kept out of the note tree.
- Inline note title (Obsidian parity): notes have a dedicated title field at the top
of the editor that renames the file. The first line of your content is just content — it
will never rename your note again. A new "Inline title" setting (per vault) lets you
hide it; a small editable tab title bar takes over, and the option follows
.obsidian/app.json in Obsidian vaults.
- Exports (PDF/HTML/…) resolve wikilinks and embeds properly.
⚡ Performance
- Typing is fast no matter the vault size. On an 800-note vault, keystroke cost went
from ~220 ms to ~5 ms, and the periodic UI freezes while typing are gone — the sidebar,
tabs and lists no longer re-render on every save.
🖱️ Native menus & dialogs
- Every context menu is now a real OS menu: note & folder actions in the tree, Share,
the editor layout switch, sort menus — and the editor's right-click menu, with
Format / Paragraph / Insert / Tools and the ✨ AI actions as native submenus (native
cut/copy/paste finally pastes images too).
- "Move to folder…" palette: moving a note now opens a small searchable picker with
keyboard navigation instead of a giant folder menu.
- Export options dialog: exporting to PDF/HTML first asks whether to include the file
name as title — plus landscape and downscale options for PDF — then lets you choose the
destination file instead of dropping a print.pdf in a temp folder.
🎙️ Audio, reworked
- Recordings are saved as regular files in your attachments folder and embedded inline wit
a native audio player right in the note (![[recording.webm]]).
- One-click transcription from the player — the transcript is inserted just below the
recording. Transcription is more robust on Windows, with clearer errors and a fallback
when no OpenAI key is configured.
- The separate "Attached files" panel and floating audio player are gone: everything lives
in the note.
✍️ Editor & AI
- ⌘F opens an in-note search panel (with replace).
- ⌘K toggles ==highlight== on the selection.
- Insert → Collapsible in the right-click menu inserts a foldable
section. - @ note mentions in AI prompts: reference any note in the AI overlay or in ```ai blocks — its content is inlined into the prompt, and mentions render as clickable links. - Your selection survives the AI overlay: it stays visible (highlighted) while you type your prompt, and the answer is inserted on a fresh line below the selection — or at the very end of the note when nothing is selected. - AI prompt history is now per-vault.
🎨 UI refresh
- "All files" view redesigned: clean centered list with search, sort, dates and
hover actions.
- Quick search (⌘Y) restyled as a command palette, with highlighted matches, snippets
and a Recent section.
- Tree view polish: hover feedback, rounded selection pill, indent guides.
- Restyled dialogs: note list, NPM packages & scripts, plugins, shortcut functions.
- Slim rounded scrollbars everywhere — no more bulky native scrollbars on Windows.
- New app icon: matches the new macOS rounded-corner mask (corners are no longer
truncated) and is sharper on Windows.
- Retro theme rebuilt for the new editor as a proper 8-bit, terminal-green arcade look
(the Konami code still works 😉).
✨ Polish
- Duplicating a note keeps its name: copy/paste in the tree (menu or ⌘C/⌘V) and
"Duplicate" name the copy after the original file ("Note 1", "Note 2", …) instead of its
first line — and never rewrite its content.
- Templates & starter notes no longer duplicate their title: the leading heading is
dropped since the inline title already shows it (the migration does the same for your
existing notes).
- Clearer menus: "New note" and "Open file" in the File menu and toolbar.
💥 Breaking changes & removals
- Tags are gone. With real folders, wikilinks and search, tags had become redundant.
- Note history is gone — your files now live on disk, where your own backup/sync tools
(Time Machine, git, iCloud…) do this job better.
- The "Attached files" view and the floating audio player were removed (replaced by inline
embeds, see above).
- Notes are no longer renamed from their first line — use the inline title.
- The old preview/split layout modes were removed: the editor is live-preview, with a
Source mode toggle.
- "Export folder" (tree) and the "Speakers" desktop-audio recording option were removed.
🛠️ Under the hood
- Massive internal refactor: the app was decomposed into focused hooks and services, ~200
dead imports/dependencies removed, and the whole storage layer rewritten around the vault.
- Settings are now synced across vault windows on change (theme, AI settings, …) instead of
last-window-wins.
Upgrade note: the migration runs once, automatically. Your legacy data (database and
uploads) is left in place as a backup and can be removed later from the Backup settings.
