Cloud folders.

Keep your vault in iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive, and it's on every Mac that folder syncs to. The cloud drive moves the files; Paperkites reads and writes them where they are. Cloud folders are part of Pro.

Nothing goes through Paperkites' servers. Your notes stay plain markdown files in that folder.

Which folders count

A vault is in a cloud folder when it's inside one of these, or behind a link that points into one:

A folder you sync another way, such as with git, is an ordinary folder, and free. See Your files.

Setting it up

1. On the first Mac, make a folder for your notes in the cloud drive, or copy your vault folder into it in Finder.
2. In Paperkites, run :vault followed by that folder. Nothing is copied or moved; Paperkites reads the folder where it is.
3. On each other Mac, sign in to the same account so Pro is on (see Your Macs). Once the cloud drive has brought the folder down, run :vault with the same folder.

:vault ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Notes
:vault ~/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox/Notes

On a Mac that's opening Paperkites for the first time, the welcome screen works too: choose Open a folder and pick the folder.

A big vault, or one the cloud drive is still downloading, opens in the background. The pill says opening your notes…, and the page works while the notes come in.

How Paperkites keeps it safe

• The same ids on every Mac. Each note has an id in its front matter. A note without one gets an id worked out from the file itself, not picked at random, so every Mac that opens the folder writes the same one. Two Macs never fight over a note's id.
• Conflict copies are kept. When two Macs change one note at once, the cloud drive may keep both versions, as a second file such as Note 2.md or Note (conflicted copy).md. Paperkites shows both as separate notes, so nothing is lost. The copy gets its own id, and a copy_of: line that says which note it came from. Read both, keep what you want, and delete the other.
• Edits from elsewhere show up live. Paperkites watches the folder while it runs, so a note changed on another Mac appears within a moment of the cloud drive bringing it down. If that note is open with unsaved edits, Paperkites asks you to choose: :reload takes the file's version, :w writes yours over it.

What doesn't travel

Your settings are kept on each Mac, in the app's data folder, outside the vault. Themes live in ~/.kites/themes/. Copy that folder yourself if you want the same themes on every Mac.

Without Pro

Without Pro, a vault in a cloud folder opens read-only. You can read it, search it and follow its links, but nothing in it can be changed and nothing new is made there. The status pill says why:

Read-only · this vault is in a cloud folder, and editing one is part of Pro: :account trial

• A new vault can't be made in a cloud folder without Pro. The welcome screen says That folder needs Pro. Pick another folder.
• If Pro ends, because a trial ends without buying or Pro is refunded, a vault already in a cloud folder stays open, read-only. The pill says Read-only · this vault is in a cloud folder; buy Pro to edit it again: :account buy.
• Your files aren't touched. They stay in the folder, and the cloud drive keeps syncing them.
• With Pro, the same vault is editable again at once.

To keep writing without Pro, copy the vault folder out of the cloud drive in Finder, and point Paperkites at the copy with :vault.