Storage & sync

Graphium keeps your notes in storage that you own — a browser database or plain files on your disk. There is no Graphium cloud and no account. This page explains where your data lives on each platform, how to move it, how archive and trash protect your links, how team sharing works, and how to back everything up.

Where your data lives

Platform	Where notes are stored	Reach
Browser version	That browser's local database (IndexedDB)	Only that browser on that device
Desktop app	Plain files in a Graphium folder inside your Documents folder (~/Documents/Graphium/ on macOS)	Only that machine — or any machine, if you point it at a synced folder

Browser version

Notes live in the browser's own IndexedDB storage. Nothing leaves your machine, but the storage belongs to that one browser profile.

Clearing site data erases your notes

If you clear this site's data in your browser (or use a private window), the notes stored there are gone. If you work in the browser version, download a backup regularly — see Backing up below.

Desktop app

The desktop app writes ordinary files you can see in your file manager. Inside the Graphium folder you'll find subfolders for notes (one JSON file per note), media, wiki (Knowledge pages), skills, and appdata. Because they are plain files, any backup or sync tool can handle them.

Changing the storage folder Added in v0.3.10 (2026-04-25)

On the desktop app you can move the whole data folder: open Settings → Storage → Local save location and press Change…. The current and default paths are shown, and Reset to default takes you back to the Documents folder.

Two things to know before you switch:

• Existing notes are not moved automatically. Copy the contents of the old folder into the new one before you continue working.
• Restart Graphium after changing the location so it takes effect everywhere.

Sync without a cloud account

The settings hint says it best: point the save location at a Dropbox-, Google Drive-, or OneDrive-synced folder and your notes follow you across machines — no OAuth, no extra service. Graphium itself never talks to the cloud; the sync client does.

Your author identity

Notes record who wrote them. Open Settings → Storage → Your identity and fill in Display name and Email, then press Save identity. This identity is stamped on shared notes and on PROV provenance entries (the record of who edited what — see Labels & provenance). It is self-asserted: there is no login or verification behind it.

An identity is required before you can share notes with a team (below).

The note list index

The note list is built from a lightweight index over your note files. Graphium keeps it up to date as you work, and if it is ever missing or outdated it is rebuilt automatically the next time the app loads. Your note files themselves are always the source of truth — a stale or broken list fixes itself on relaunch, and archive/trash flags survive the rebuild.

Archive and trash

Deleting a note outright would break every link and citation pointing at it. Graphium therefore uses soft deletion in two flavors:

Action	What happens	Links keep working?
Archive	The note is hidden from the list but stays fully readable	Yes — references and citations still resolve
Move to trash	The note is retired; it opens read-only with a restore banner	No — links to it are flagged as broken

Both live in the note's ⋯ menu: Archive and Move to trash. If other notes link to the one you're trashing, Graphium warns you how many links will break before it proceeds.

To bring something back, open Trash & Archive at the bottom of the sidebar. The view has a Trash tab (with Restore and Delete permanently) and an Archive tab (with Restore from archive and Send to trash). A trashed or archived note opened directly also offers Restore from trash / Restore from archive in its ⋯ menu.

Delete permanently is the only destructive step: on the desktop app the file is moved to your operating system's trash; in the browser version it is deleted immediately and cannot be undone.

Media has the same protection: deleting a file from the material library that notes or saved versions still reference offers Archive (recommended) instead, which hides it while keeping those references working.

Sharing notes with your team Added in v0.6.0 (2026-05-05)

Sharing publishes a copy of a note into a folder your whole team can reach — a lab NAS, a Dropbox-synced folder, any shared drive. It is desktop-only for now; the browser version cannot read or write local folders.

Set up the shared folders

In Settings → Storage → Shared storage:

1. Pick a Shared folder — the team-visible location where published notes go.
2. Optionally pick a Blob folder (large binaries) — where media bytes are stored. Notes with embedded images, PDFs, or other media need it; URL bookmarks don't.
3. Press Test connection to run a full round trip (write → read → verify → delete) against the folder.

You must save your identity first — shared entries carry their author's name and email.

Publish and unpublish

Open a note's ⋯ menu and choose Share with team. A Shared badge appears on the note, and teammates see it in their shared library. When you share a note containing media, the files are copied into the blob folder automatically — you never attach them by hand.

The shared copy is a snapshot. To update it, edit your local note and choose Update shared copy from the same menu. To withdraw it, use Unshare in the shared library; Graphium warns that other members may have already viewed, cached, or forked it, so it cannot be fully erased.

Share knowledge pages too Added in v0.44.0 (2026-08-25)

Knowledge pages — summaries, claims, and insights — share the same way. Open a page's ⋯ menu, choose Share with team, and it appears under Knowledge in the shared library, next to the shared notes. Update shared copy and Unshare work as they do for notes.

Forking one brings it into your knowledge rather than your notes, so it sits with your own claims and insights and joins your searches and graphs. Its lineage does not come along: a shared page's "derived from" links point at notes, chats, and claims in the author's library, and those ids mean nothing in yours. The fork starts with that lineage cleared and records where it came from instead, so nothing is left dangling or pointing at the wrong page. The text, the semantic type, and any sections edited by hand arrive intact. World-check results and search embeddings are rebuilt on your side rather than carried over.

Share several at once Added in v0.44.0 (2026-08-25)

Select notes with the checkboxes in the notes list, or knowledge pages in a Knowledge list, and a Share button with the count on it joins the other bulk actions. Sharing runs one item at a time and ends with a summary: how many were newly shared, how many updated entries you had shared before, and which ones failed and why. One failure does not stop the rest, and you can cancel partway — whatever was already shared stays shared.

The button appears in the desktop app once a shared folder and an identity are set. What travels is the saved version of each item, so save the note you are editing before you share it.

Browse and fork

Once a shared folder is configured, a Library section with a Shared entry appears in the sidebar. It lists what everyone on the team has shared — notes, knowledge pages, references, and data files — on a tab each. Entries from others are read-only — press Fork to copy one into your own storage, where you can edit it freely. Any media it carries is materialized into your local library automatically, and the fork records where it came from.

Cite a shared entry in your notes Added in v0.31.0 (2026-08-12)

Type / in any note and choose Cite shared entry to insert a citation card pointing at a shared note, reference, or data file. The card shows the entry's title, author, date, and a verification badge. It stays in your note as a reference — the content itself lives in the shared folder, and your note keeps only a lightweight snapshot for display, so the card still renders when the shared folder is unreachable.

The badge tells you the state of the shared side:

• Verified — the shared content matches its recorded fingerprint (hash).
• Content differs — the shared files no longer match the fingerprint; something modified them outside Graphium.
• Cached copy — the shared folder is unreachable (for example, the NAS is not mounted), so the card renders from its snapshot.
• Not found — the entry was removed or unshared.

When the author updates the entry in place, your card follows automatically. When they publish a major revision, the card keeps pointing at the version you cited and shows A newer version is available instead — your past analysis never changes underneath you. Click the arrow on the card to open the entry in the shared library. Citations are also recorded in the note's provenance, so an exported evidence bundle shows which shared entries your note used.

Copy a citation link from the library Added in v0.44.0 (2026-08-25)

You can also start from the other end. In Library → Shared, press Copy citation link on an entry — on its card or in its detail panel — and paste the link into any note. It becomes the same citation card, with the same badges and the same behaviour.

Pasting is what makes this worth having: the library takes over the screen, so while you are browsing it you cannot see the note you are aiming at. Copying the link lets you find the entry first and decide where it lands afterwards. The link is plain text, so it can travel in a chat message as well; a teammate on the same shared folder gets the same card by pasting it into a note of their own.

Exports

Everything can leave Graphium in open formats, per note or in bulk.

Per note, the ⋯ menu offers:

Menu item	Output
Print / PDF	The rendered note, including its provenance graph. Your system's print dialog opens, so you can preview the pages and then save them as a PDF — the text stays selectable and searchable
Markdown	A portable .md file
PROV-JSON-LD	The note's provenance graph in W3C PROV format

Markdown is lossy by design: what a block means survives, how it looks does not. A formula exports as its LaTeX source, a calculation as its lines with the values they produced, and a chart as its caption and what it plots. The figure itself cannot travel, but the table behind it exports as an ordinary Markdown table.

Export everything Added in v0.16.10 (2026-07-03)

Settings → Storage → Export & backup has two bulk buttons:

• Export all notes (Markdown) — a ZIP of every note as Markdown, for reading anywhere.
• Download backup (JSON) — a ZIP of the raw data (.graphium.json) for every note, Knowledge page, and skill document, including archived and trashed ones. This is the lossless option.

Media files (images, PDFs) are not included in either ZIP — back those up separately as described below.

Backing up

• Browser version: press Download backup (JSON) regularly. It is your only safety net against cleared site data, and re-download it after any big writing session.
• Desktop app: your data is plain files in the Graphium folder (~/Documents/Graphium/ unless you moved it). Any backup tool that copies that folder — including its media subfolder — captures everything. Pointing the save location at a synced folder gives you continuous off-machine copies for free.

A periodic Download backup (JSON) is cheap insurance on every platform — it captures notes, Knowledge, and skills in one file, independent of where the live data sits.