Canvas Sync & Limits

How canvases sync

With sync enabled, canvases sync across your devices end-to-end encrypted, like your notes. The server stores only ciphertext and never sees your board.

Cards sync as references. The notes, tasks, and events they point at sync through their own channels, so a card on device B resolves to the same item.

Folders sync too, including their icons and including folders with nothing in them, so the structure you build on one device is the structure you find on the next. See Organizing Canvases. Folder support arrived with a server update — if a device is running an older release of memrynote, canvases still reach it, but they arrive at the top level until it is updated.

Conflict copies

Canvases are not real-time collaborative documents. If the same canvas is edited on two devices before they sync, memrynote keeps one version as the canvas and saves the other as a conflict copy — a second canvas in your sidebar.

Nothing is discarded. You open both and merge them by hand.

This is why editing one board simultaneously on two devices is best avoided; editing different boards, or the same board at different times, is fine.

Images and other assets

Images pasted or dropped onto a canvas are stored as attachments rather than inside the board itself, so boards stay small and an identical image used twice is stored once. Deleting the image, or the canvas, releases the stored copy.

The shape library

Your shape library is a single library.excalidrawlib file in your vault's canvases/ folder, alongside your boards, and is shared by every canvas. It does not yet sync between devices: a kit you install on one computer stays on that computer, and you install it again on the next one. Installing different kits on two devices is safe — neither replaces the other.

Size limit

A canvas has a maximum synced size (the raw drawing data, not counting externalized images). A board that grows past it is still saved on your device, but stops syncing until it gets smaller, and memrynote tells you so rather than failing silently. Splitting a very large board into several canvases is the usual fix.

Known limitations

• Real-time co-editing of one canvas is not supported (see conflict copies).
• Canvas arrows do not create backlinks between notes.
• There is no drag-in from the Tasks or Calendar pages — use Add card, as described in Cards & Links.
• Filed PDFs, images, and other binaries don't show up as note results in the Add card picker — only markdown notes are searchable there.
• Palm rejection and pen pressure depend on your hardware and OS.
• The drawing toolbar's language comes from the underlying canvas engine and may differ from memrynote's interface language.
• The Canvas toggle is per device — turning it off on one device does not turn it off on another.
• The shape library is stored per vault but does not sync between devices yet.
• Publishing a shape kit to the public Excalidraw library from inside memrynote is not supported; the panel's Publish action does not work here.