Sync your notes — Scaffold

Scaffold has no sync service. Keep devices in step with the folder-sync tool you already trust, and avoid the common pitfalls.

Scaffold has no sync server and no account. Your vault is a folder, so any tool that keeps a folder identical across devices will sync it. This is deliberate: there is nothing for Scaffold to hold on to, charge for, or lose. (Optional sync between your devices is coming in a later update; it is not in the current version.)

Choose a tool

Approach	Works well for	Notes
A cloud-synced folder (OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, Nextcloud)	Windows and other PCs	Put the vault inside the synced folder.
Syncthing	Windows PCs, no cloud	Peer to peer. Sync the vault folder between your devices.
Git	People who like history	Commit and pull on a schedule; fine for text notes.
A USB drive or network share	Occasional transfer	Copy the folder; it is complete on its own.

Pick one. Running two sync tools over the same folder is the usual way to create duplicate files.

What to sync

Sync the whole vault folder. A few things inside .scaffold are caches you can leave out to avoid needless conflicts:

.scaffold/index-cache.json is rebuilt automatically on each device.
.scaffold/trash/ and .scaffold/snapshots/ are per-device history. Syncing them is optional.

Leave .scaffold/config.json, themes/ and snippets/ in sync if you want the same settings everywhere.

Editing on two devices

Scaffold checks whether a file changed on disk since it opened it. If you edit a note while your sync tool brings in a different version of it, Scaffold never overwrites either one: it keeps both and tells you, so you can compare them and merge by hand. Textual conflicts in plain files are easy to resolve; that is another benefit of Markdown.

Habits that avoid conflicts:

Let the sync tool finish before you open Scaffold on another device.
Close the note on one device before you edit it on another.
Do not run the same vault from two sync tools at once.

Android

On Android, Scaffold’s vaults live in the app’s own storage for now, and opening a folder from the device is not supported yet. That means a sync app such as Syncthing cannot reach them. To move notes between a phone and a PC, use a backup: export it in Settings, Backup and restore, and restore it on the other device. See Android.

Backups are separate from sync

Sync copies your mistakes too. Keep an occasional backup as well: Scaffold can write a zip of the vault, and Vaults explains the restore options.