History & trash

Mahfouz keeps no separate history of its own: history is git history.

• History (the bottom of the sidebar’s Details section; toolbar ⋯ → Revisions, Cmd/CtrlAltR, or Open in sidebar on the save status’s card) lists every commit that touched the current note (subject, relative time, short SHA). Click one to open that revision read-only in a new tab, with a banner offering Restore (writes a new commit restoring that content; history is always append-only, never rewritten). Auto-saves fold into one Edited · N saves row per stretch of editing: consecutive auto-saves by the same person, no more than 30 minutes apart. Click the row to list its saves, then click a save to open it. A lone auto-save shows as Edited. Named commits (yours, the agent’s, renames) always keep their own row. Since 0.12.0
• Trash (the account menu’s Trash, or ModAltX Since 0.14.0) is a flat, cross-vault list of every note deleted via git, newest first, each with a Restore button and a click-to-preview.
• Every note edit auto-commits within about 30 seconds of your last keystroke, as Auto-save: “Meeting notes”. Any edits made outside Mahfouz (a text editor, another git client) are auto-committed as External edits: “Reading list” as soon as Mahfouz notices them, so nothing you do to the vault folder is ever silently lost. Saving with Cmd/CtrlS commits at once, as Manual save: “Meeting notes”. Each message names up to three of the changed notes, then “and N more”. When a commit touches several files, its description lists them all. Note titles show up in the vault’s git history, which everyone with access to the repository can read.

Commit notes Since 0.12.0

To choose what goes into a commit yourself, open Commit notes…: Cmd/CtrlAltG (on the web too), the command palette, the vault header’s right-click menu, File → Commit Notes… on desktop, or Commit… in the right-sidebar Attributes panel of a note with uncommitted changes (which opens the dialog with that note checked). The bottom bar’s save status card has the same Commit… Since 0.15.0.

• The dialog lists every note in the vault with uncommitted changes, with its path. New and deleted notes carry a new or deleted badge.
• Each note but a deleted one has its Auto-commit switch Since 0.15.0, off for a disk-only note (below). Turning it off or on there is the same as anywhere else, and doesn’t check or uncheck the note.
• Check the notes to commit (Select all checks every one), then edit the message if you like. It’s generated from your pick (Commit: <title> for one note, Commit <N> notes for several) until you change it.
• Commit N notes commits exactly those notes, plus the images they link to, in one commit. Nothing else goes in.
• Auto-commit waits while the dialog is open. Other changes commit as usual once you close it, and the dialog says how many there are.

Auto-commit and disk-only notes

By default every note auto-commits, as above. If you’d rather keep a note’s work-in-progress out of history, turn its auto-commit off. The note is then disk only: it still saves to disk as you type, but Mahfouz never commits it on its own, so it isn’t pushed or shared until you say so.

• Turn it off or on with the Auto-commit switch in the right-sidebar Attributes panel, on the bottom bar’s save status card or in Commit notes Since 0.15.0, or right-click the note and pick Turn off auto-commit / Turn on auto-commit. The action Toggle auto-commit for note can be bound to a key in Settings → Shortcuts; it has no default key.
• How to tell: a disk-only note shows a drive glyph in the sidebar (filled while it has uncommitted changes), and the bottom bar’s save icon is a floppy disk that reads Saved · not in history when you point at it.
• Commit… / Discard changes: when a disk-only note has uncommitted changes, the Attributes panel shows both buttons. Commit… opens Commit notes with the note checked; the commit is a normal one. Discard changes asks first, then returns the note to its last committed version (or deletes it if it was never committed). This can’t be undone.
• New child notes created under a disk-only note start disk-only too.
• Blocked pulls: if someone else changes a disk-only note you’ve also edited, the pull would overwrite your uncommitted work, so it’s blocked. A notification names the note(s) and offers Commit… (Commit notes, with those notes checked), Discard and Open note. Pulling for the whole vault stays blocked until you resolve it.
• Use remote (overwrites local) (see Git sync) warns first and names any disk-only notes whose uncommitted edits it would destroy. Those edits aren’t in history, so they can’t be recovered.
• Restoring a revision of a disk-only note that has uncommitted changes asks first, since the restore replaces them. The restored version is committed.

Limits worth knowing:

• Deleting a disk-only note still commits the deletion, and restoring it from Trash brings back its last committed version, not the uncommitted edits.
• Attachments (in files/) that a disk-only note links to are still auto-committed, even while the note itself isn’t.
• Moving the child notes of a disk-only parent can leave history inconsistent (the children committed in their new place, the parent not) until you commit the parent.
• The setting is stored per note, on this computer only: in the vault’s local git folder, never committed or pushed. Collaborators and your other machines are unaffected and keep auto-committing that note. It survives removing and re-adding the vault and Rebuild index Since 0.19.0; a fresh clone of the vault starts with every note auto-committing.