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, events, projects and files they point at sync through their own channels, so a card on device B resolves to the same item.

A board with project or file cards still opens on a device running an older release of memrynote. That release shows those cards as plain boxes, keeps them on the board when you edit it there, and they come back as live cards once the device is updated.

Opening a board is not an edit. Switching to a canvas tab and back leaves its modified date alone and pushes nothing to your other devices — only a change you actually make to the drawing does.

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.

Moving an image out of the board needs sync. While you are signed out, or while sync is not running, the image simply stays inside the board: the canvas still saves and you keep drawing, and memrynote moves the image out on a later save, once sync is available again. Boards edited that way are larger than usual in the meantime, so they can reach the size limit below sooner.

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.

The warning appears once, when the board crosses the limit — not again on every edit while you keep working, and not again each time you switch to another tab and come back. It comes back when there is something new to say: after a save that synced is followed by one that is too large again, or the next time you start memrynote and the board is still too large.

Known limitations

• Real-time co-editing of one canvas is not supported (see conflict copies).
• Arrows between cards appear in backlinks and the graph only inside memrynote. They are not written into your notes as wiki links, so other apps that open your vault do not see them. See Connecting cards.
• There is no drag-in from the Tasks or Calendar pages — use Add card, as described in Cards & Links.
• 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.