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Settings

Most of VNote's behavior can be adjusted, either through the Settings dialog or by editing configuration files directly. This page explains how VNote's configuration is layered, where the files live, and how to make VNote portable.

The Settings dialog

Open Settings from the toolbar or menu to change common options — appearance and theme, editor behavior, Vi mode, read/render options, image host, and more. For anything not exposed in the dialog, you can edit the configuration files described below.

Layers of configuration

VNote's configuration is layered, applied in order:

  • Default configuration — the application's built-in defaults. These live inside the program itself; there is no annotated file on disk to copy from. To customize a value, set it in your user configuration file, where it overrides the default.
  • User configuration — your overrides in the main vnotex.json file, in the user configuration folder. Anything here takes precedence over the defaults.
  • Session configuration — session state such as the notebook list and the main window's geometry. This is the session.json file. VNote writes it continuously while running and flushes it on close, so close VNote before editing it by hand.

What's in the configuration folder

The configuration folder contains several folders and the main file:

.
├── dicts               (dictionaries for spellcheck)
├── syntax-highlighting (Kate syntax-highlighting files for the text editor)
├── tasks               (task definitions; see Tasks)
├── themes              (VNote themes)
├── web                 (resources used by read mode)
└── vnotex.json         (main configuration file)

To customize the fields in vnotex.json, add or edit the keys you need — VNote merges your file over its built-in defaults. Related per-feature folders you will see referenced elsewhere include tasks (see Tasks) and templates (see Templates).

Make VNote portable

You can bundle the configuration next to the executable so the whole setup travels together — for example on a USB drive:

  1. Close VNote first.
  2. Create a folder named config next to the executable (such as vnote.exe).
  3. Inside it, VNote uses two subfolders: app (application settings, including vnotex.json) and local (session and cache, including session.json). VNote creates them on first run.

When a config folder exists next to the executable at startup, VNote reads and writes configuration there instead of the system-wide location.

  • Themes & Styles — change the look of the interface, editor, and read mode.
  • Keyboard Shortcuts — remap actions, including United Entry.
  • If VNote crashes after a version update, deleting vnotex.json from the user configuration folder is a common fix — see the FAQ.