Notebooks is a writing app, text and markdown editor, your personal Wiki and Zettelkasten, a file organizer, task manager, PDF and eBook creator and more.
Synchronize Notebooks with Dropbox
Synchronize with Dropbox
Dropbox is an internet based file hosting and sharing service which allows users to store files and folders on the Internet. What is special about Dropbox is its ability to synchronize documents across multiple computers and devices, and it does so in a very clever way: when you add or change a document in the “Dropbox” folder on your computer, the changes immediately synchronize with the server on the Internet. Similarly, when changes happen on the server, they immediately synchronize to your computer. This happens almost instantly, within just a couple of moments.
Once set up, Dropbox sync can take place in the background and hardly requires your attention any more.
Setting up Dropbox synchronization in Notebooks takes just a few moments:
In Notebooks’ Settings > Sync > Dropbox turn on Dropbox Sync
Open Dropbox Settings and log in to Dropbox; you may be temporarily transferred to the Dropbox application if you have that installed. This is for safety reasons and to make sure that Notebooks never gets your username and password.
By default, Notebooks uses the folder Notebooks at the top level of your Dropbox to store its books and documents, but you can select any other folder on Dropbox as well.
With these few steps you are ready to start syncing. For automatic sync, please read on.
Manual Synchronization
After activating Dropbox sync, the action menu of each book shows a new option Sync – Dropbox. Select it to sync the contents of the current book – its documents and all of its sub books – with the corresponding folder on Dropbox (by default, it is the folder Notebooks at the root level of your Dropbox account).
If you have the Dropbox applicationinstalled on your computer, the files uploaded by Notebooks will appear in your local Dropbox folder a few seconds later. You can make additions and changes to the documents in your computer’s Dropbox folder, and these modifications will be synced to Dropbox and on to Notebooks on your other devices.
Manual synchronization is deep and syncs the current book and all of its sub books.
Automatic Synchronization with Delta Sync
To make synchronization more comfortable, Notebooks can automatically connect to Dropbox at regular intervals, detect changes and initiate a sync when necessary. We call this sync method delta sync. Automatic synchronization is made active by turning on the corresponding switch in Notebooks’ settings.
To initialize delta sync, perform a manual sync from Notebooks’ top level first. When finished, delta sync is set up.
Background Refresh
While you are working in another app or not using the device at all, iOS wakes up Notebooks at irregular intervals, allows it to perform a delta sync and import any changes you may have made on other devices in the meantime. So as you are working in Notebooks on your Mac, for example, Notebooks on your iPad silently imports your changes and updates its contents. When you then open Notebooks on your iPad, your changes are already there.
It is important to know that iOS controls when and how often it wakes up Notebooks, and it does so based on your usage pattern. So the more often you use Notebooks, the more often it is allowed to refresh in the background.
If you want to ensure that Notebooks is in sync because you are about to leave for a meeting, for example, just open Notebooks with auto sync enabled and it will immediately perform a delta sync (provided you have online access). A few moments later its contents is up to date and you can leave.
Activate Background Refresh
To take advantage of background refresh, please make sure that
Automatic Synchronization is turned in in Notebooks’ settings
Background App Refresh is enabled for your device and for Notebooks in iOS settings.
Trigger Delta Sync Manually
If you prefer to stay in control and decide when Notebooks should sync your documents, you can turn off automatic sync and use the pull-to-sync gesture in any book to trigger a delta sync. Delta sync needs to be initialized, though.
Dropbox' recent upgrade introduced a few fundamental changes regarding its storage location. Most importantly, Dropbox no longer stores its documents in Home/Dropbox - or which ever folder you chose -, but instead needs to use Home/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox. For convenience, you reach this folder as Dropbox from the Finder sidebar's Locations section.
This change has some influence on Notebooks, too. Here are a few tips and hints.
You might want to Quit Notebooks before allowing Dropbox to move its documents.
If possible, try not to open and use Notebooks on this Mac while Dropbox moves its documents to the new location.
When you then reopen Notebooks, you need to select a new "Notebooks Home". This is because the previously selected location Dropbox/Notebooks no longer exists. To select the new Home, just click on Dropbox in the sidebar and choose Notebooks. (If you have been using a different folder than "Notebooks", select that instead).
Notebooks opens and displays your documents as usual, but it might not display the correct number of Due Tasks, Favorites and Contexts. Moreover, search may not yield any results. This is because macOS Spotlight, which Notebooks uses for all these tasks, needs to reindex the documents.
Trigger a Spotlight reindex of the volume which holds your Dropbox documents.
Open System Settings > Siri & Spotlight > Spotlight Privacy (on macOS 12 and earlier, open System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy)
Add the whole volume containing your Dropbox documents (that is "Macintosh HD", for example, not just the user's Home directory) to the Privacy list.
Wait a few seconds.
Remove the volume from the Privacy list again.
Spotlight starts reindexing the volume, which may take a while. To determine if Spotlight is still indexing, use cmd-space to open Spotlight and type a few characters; now wait about a second and you should see a progress bar indicating the progress.
When done, open Notebooks, right-click the smart book Contexts and select Refresh Contexts to update their contents and correct the numbers displayed.
Now Notebooks can use the new Dropbox location as before.
A few months ago, Dropbox introduced a device limit for their free accounts. Users may only link up to three devices with their Dropbox account at any time. At first glance one might think that Notebooks users are now limited syncing their documents to three devices, but fortunately, this is not the case.
The device limit is restricted to the Dropbox app. Third party apps which implement their own sync interface do not count, and Notebooks on iOS is one of these other apps.
So that means you can use and sync Notebooks on up to three Macs or PCs (they need Dropbox' app for automatic sync), but you can use Notebooks on as many iPads, iPhones and iPods as you want.
Can I Turn Off “Sync System Files”? – I do not mind my files looking different on all devices
Notebooks' system files (plist files) ensure that all books and documents appear identical on all devices. The files include metadata like selected font and document style, color label, custom sort order, assigned tags and much more. Notebooks never shows them, but when synced to your computer these files show up in Finder or in Windows Explorer.
If you don't want to see these files on your hard drive, and if you do not mind that your books and documents may look different on each device, you can turn off "Sync System Files" in Notebooks' sync settings, and Notebooks will no longer export them. - A few essential files like those for Notebooks' task lists will be exported anyway.
Exclude Selected Books from Synchronization (iOS, Dropbox)
Notebooks allows you to selectively disable Dropbox sync for books or individual documents. You exclude an item from sync by turning off the Sync Dropbox switch in its info.
A possible scenario is when you have a huge collection of documents on Dropbox which you do not want to have in Notebooks on your iPad or iPhone. The best way to achieve that is this:
Disable automatic Dropbox sync in Notebooks.
Create a book in the location and with the title of the Dropbox folder you do not want to sync.
Open the book's info and turn off Sync Dropbox.
Now you can enable Dropbox sync again.
From now on, manual and automatic Dropbox sync will ignore this book and its contents.
If you want to use Notebooks on an iPad, and iPhone and maybe a Mac or a PC as well, it is important to know how synchronize your documents between those devices so you can access them everywhere. Notebooks offers multiple options which are summarized in a dedicated blog entry.
As mentioned in several sections, there is a set of characters that should be avoided in the titles of documents, especially when syncing with Dropbox. While iOS and macOS handle all these characters well, they will cause problems once synced to a Windows computer.
The characters incompatible with Windows are < > : ” / \ | ? *
If you are looking for a way to share some of your Notebooks documents with other users, you can achieve that with a shared Dropbox folder and Dropbox sync. Here is what can you do:
Create and share a Dropbox folder which currently is not in Notebooks' hierarchy (Dropbox does not allow that).
Then on your computer, create a symbolic link from that shared folder into a folder within Notebooks' hierarchy. The simplest option to create a symbolic link is from the Terminal app, using the command like ln -s /path/to/original/ /path/to/link The shared folder now appears in two locations.
To Notebooks, this linked folder looks like a regular folder, so it syncs it like a regular folder, in both directions as usual. All changes you make in Notebooks appear in the original shared folder on Dropbox, too, and are available for all invited users.
Important: On a Mac, please make sure that the shared folder is not on iCloud Drive, because that does not play well with Dropbox.
Notebooks can automatically synchronize with Dropbox, which hugely improves user experience. Here is some background information and a few tips.
When made active, Notebooks auto sync (we call it delta sync) regularly checks Dropbox for changes and imports them.
This delta sync looks at the whole Notebooks hierarchy on Dropbox, not just he current book. So even if a change was detected in some nested book, it is synced.
To initialize delta sync, perform a manual sync from Notebooks' top level (pull down the list of books and documents until a progress indicator appears; release the list, and allow Notebooks to perform a full sync).
Automatic sync takes place when you open Notebooks and when you close it, but also every 60 seconds while you are using it.
If your device supports background refresh and you have enabled it for Notebooks, auto sync takes place even while your device is sleeping or you are using another app.
When auto sync is not active, you can use the "pull to sync" gesture (pull down the list of books and documents) to trigger a delta sync.
Changes you make in Notebooks are exported immediately or during the next delta sync.
Delta sync tries to not interfere with your work. You can continue creating or editing documents while the sync is taking place, except when you are trying to edit a document that Notebooks is about to sync.
When you turn off autos sync or don't have an internet connection, Notebooks remembers what you do change and syncs these documents during the next delta sync.
Protected items are exported only when Notebooks is unlocked, but they are imported even when Notebooks is locked.
You can selectively disable synchronization for specific books or documents. These items will never be synced.
If Notebooks reports a timeout during sync, just retry.
