Version history and automatic backups

Varlig keeps earlier versions of every note you edit, and makes dated copies of your whole library while it’s open. Between them you can undo a bad afternoon, get a paragraph back from last week, or move everything to another disk.

This page covers saving, browsing and restoring a version, what automatic backups do and where they go, and how restoring a backup works.

Saving

A note in your library saves itself as you type. Its header stays quiet while that works, and speaks up only when there’s something to say:

File › Save (⌘S) writes anything still waiting, or that failed, straight away and confirms it; Try Again does the same. An alert explains the first failure once, not after every keystroke. The status is about the library on this Mac only.

Browse earlier versions

Choose Note › Version History…, or Version History… from the … menu in the note’s toolbar. The panel lists Current version at the top and Earlier versions underneath, each with its date, title and word count. Select one to read it on the right; the text is read-only, and you can select and copy any part of it.

Varlig saves a version at most once a minute while you edit, and keeps up to 30 versions for each note. Saves that only change organisation, such as pinning or archiving a note, add nothing to the list.

Restore a version

Select a version and click Restore This Version. Your current text is saved as a version first, so nothing is lost, and while the note is open Edit › Undo (⌘Z) reverses the restore in one step.

Restoring brings back the note’s text, its calculation settings and its attachments. Tags, pins and whether the note is archived stay as they are now.

Automatic backups

Varlig backs your library up on its own. Settings › Sync & Backup › Automatic backups holds the controls:

Each backup is a dated folder named like Varlig Backup 2026-09-22 141500.varligbackup, holding every note — including Trash and Archive — and a copy of every attachment. Protected notes stay encrypted inside it.

Backups run only while Varlig is open: the first check happens a couple of minutes after launch and then every ten minutes, so a Mac that never runs Varlig never gets one. Back Up Now makes one immediately, even with automatic backups switched off, and the pane shows when the last one succeeded or why it failed.

Rotation only removes backups from the series Varlig named itself, so a backup you saved by hand in the same folder is never deleted.

What a backup contains

A backup holds every note with its own settings, every attachment, your tag icons and pins, and your reminders.

It doesn’t hold app preferences — your theme, fonts, the protected-tag policy or the backup schedule itself — or your saved searches, reading lists, review state and scratchpad text. Set those up again on a new Mac.

Restore a backup

Choose File › Restore Backup… and pick a .varligbackup folder. Varlig shows you what it would do before anything changes: how many notes are new, how many changed since the backup and would come back as separate copies, how many are already in your library, and how many attachments it would restore.

Restoring adds notes; it never replaces or deletes the ones you have. A note that changed in both places comes back as a separate copy titled “Restored — …”. Before it starts, Varlig saves a copy of your current library in the Varlig Backups folder, and Show Safety Copy reveals it in Finder afterwards.

Tag icons and pins come back only into a library that has none yet.

Replace the library instead

Keep both copies is selected, and restoring straight through can never lose a note. The other choice, Replace this library with the backup, makes the library match the backup: notes the backup doesn’t have are removed, along with their version history, and a note that differs is overwritten rather than copied.

Varlig says what that costs before you confirm it — “12 notes in this library are not in the backup and will be removed” — and saves your library as it stands into the Varlig Backups folder first. If that safety copy can’t be written, nothing is replaced. Restoring it brings the removed notes back; their version history doesn’t come back, because a backup holds notes as they are, not their history.

Replacing is refused while a protected note would be removed or changed. Varlig can’t read a sealed note, so it can’t tell you what losing it would cost — restore with Keep both copies instead. Attachment files of removed notes stay in the library folder.

Attachment files nothing uses

A file can be left behind in the library when a note is deleted for good, or when a backup replaces the library. Settings › Storage › Unused attachment files › Review… finds them and shows what they take up.

Varlig only offers a file when nothing in the library can reach it — and it counts the notes in the Trash, every earlier version in each note’s history, and the notes a newer Varlig may have written fields into. Before deleting anything it saves a copy of the whole library in the Varlig Backups folder, and if that copy can’t be written, nothing is deleted.

It refuses the whole review when the answer can’t be known: if the library holds any protected note, because a sealed note keeps the list of files it uses inside content Varlig can’t read, and no file could then be shown to be unused. The same goes for a read-only library and one that didn’t open.

Check the library

File › Check Library… looks over your attachments and changes nothing while it looks. On iPhone and iPad, it’s in Settings › Check Library. It compares every note’s attachments with the files in the library, searches your automatic backups for any that are lost, and reports each problem for what it is, with the notes it affects:

Protected notes are counted, not opened, so their titles and attachments stay private: a problem in one is given as a number without naming the note.

When something can be fixed without guessing, Repair… offers to fix it. First it saves a copy of your whole library in your backups folder, and if that copy can’t be written, nothing changes. Then it puts back missing and empty files from a backup, reconnects links to files that are still there, and moves unused files to a Varlig Set Aside folder beside your backups. Nothing is deleted and no note’s text changes, and restoring the safety copy undoes the repair. Read-only notes and notes made with a newer Varlig are left as they are.

If the library won’t open

If something is wrong with the library file, Varlig doesn’t quietly start an empty one. It shows Varlig couldn’t open your library, tells you your notes have not been changed, and offers Try Again once you have fixed the cause, along with Show in Finder and Show Backups.

Open a Backup… opens a backup in place of the library that will not open. It says how many notes and attachments the backup holds before anything is written, and it never deletes the library that failed: that one is kept beside the new one under a name ending in Unreadable, exactly as it was, so it can still be repaired or read by hand.