First Run & Vault Setup

What happens the first time you open memrynote: choosing a vault location, setting a passphrase, and saving the recovery phrase.

The whole flow takes about two minutes. The most important step is saving the recovery phrase — read on for why.

Welcome Overlay

A short overlay appears the very first time. It explains the local-first model: your data lives on your device first, and sync (if you turn it on) is end-to-end encrypted.

Click Get started.

Choosing a Vault Location

The vault is a folder memrynote owns on disk. It holds your encrypted SQLite databases, attachments, and CRDT state.

You're asked where to put the vault. Defaults:

Platform	Default path
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/Memrynote/Vault/
Windows	%APPDATA%/Memrynote/Vault/
Linux	~/.config/Memrynote/vault/

Pick a different path if you want to:

• Sync the vault itself with iCloud / Dropbox (not recommended — sync conflicts with memrynote's own sync; use memrynote sync instead)
• Place it on a specific drive
• Keep it in a folder you back up separately

You can move the vault later from Settings → Vault.

Setting a Passphrase

Your passphrase encrypts the vault's wrapping key locally and is required at every sign-in.

Pick something:

• Long (passphrases > passwords; consider four random words)
• Memorable to you
• Not used anywhere else

memrynote hashes the passphrase with Argon2id + a per-vault salt to derive the wrapping key. The passphrase itself never leaves your device.

You'll be asked to confirm by re-entering it.

Recovery Phrase

This is the most important step.

memrynote generates a list of words derived from the same vault entropy. The phrase is the only way to decrypt your data if you:

• Forget your passphrase
• Lose every device that has the vault key sealed for it

Save it somewhere durable:

• A password manager (recommended)
• Written down in a safe place
• Printed and stored physically

Do not screenshot it on a synced phone, email it, or paste it in a notes app.

After showing the phrase, memrynote asks you to re-enter a few specific words to confirm you've saved it. This step exists to prevent accidental loss.

If you close Settings during this confirmation step, signup stays incomplete. Reopen Settings → Account to resume recovery confirmation before sync starts.

Email & OTP (Optional, for Sync)

If you want sync, memrynote asks for an email and verifies it with a six-digit one-time code.

You can skip sync entirely — choose Continue without sync to stay fully local. You can enable sync later from Settings → Account.

What Gets Created

After setup completes, your vault directory looks like this:

<vault>/
├─ data.db              # primary SQLite database
├─ data.db-wal
├─ index.db             # search / graph / embedding index
├─ index.db-wal
├─ attachments/         # file payloads
├─ leveldb/             # y-leveldb store for Yjs CRDT state
└─ vault.json           # public metadata (version, salt — not the key)

All the heavy data is encrypted at rest with the vault key. The salt and version metadata are not sensitive.

Onboarding Tour

After setup, memrynote shows a brief in-app tour pointing out the sidebar, tabs, and search. Click through or skip — you can revisit it via the keyboard shortcuts dialog.

Next Steps

• Take a Tour of memrynote
• Open the User Guide and start with Notes
• If you set up sync, link another device