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FUTO Notes

FUTO Notes file format (plain markdown files and folders)

Every note in FUTO Notes is one plain markdown file, and the file’s name is the note’s title. Folders in the app are real directories, images are ordinary image files, and there is no database: the notes folder is the whole library. Any text editor can read and edit it.

To find the folder, see where FUTO Notes stores your notes.

One markdown file per note

A note titled Grocery list is the file Grocery list.md. The title is used as the filename exactly as you type it, with no lowercasing and no dashes for spaces. Renaming the note renames the file.

Files are UTF-8 text. The note body is the whole file: there is no hidden header, ID, or metadata block that FUTO Notes adds.

Titles follow rules that keep the file usable on every operating system:

  • Up to 200 characters.
  • None of these characters: < > : " / \ | ? *.
  • Can’t start or end with a dot.
  • Windows reserved names such as CON, NUL, or COM1 get an underscore added (CON_).

If a new or renamed note would take a name that’s already used in the same folder, ignoring case, FUTO Notes adds a suffix: Title-2, then Title-3, and so on. It never overwrites an existing file.

Folders

A folder in the app is a directory inside the notes folder, and a note in it is a .md file in that directory. Folders you create in a file manager appear in the app, including empty ones. FUTO Notes reads notes up to 10 folders deep. See folders and tags.

Images

When you add an image in the app, FUTO Notes copies it into the top level of the notes folder under a generated name, such as image-1755176705123-3fa9c1d2e4b7.png on desktop or image-20260814-130425.png on iOS and Android, and writes a standard markdown image link into the note:

![](image-1755176705123-3fa9c1d2e4b7.png)

FUTO Notes looks for images at the top level of the notes folder, so a link to an image in a subfolder, such as ![](attachments/photo.png), doesn’t display on desktop or iOS. Supported formats are JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP, SVG, BMP, ICO, AVIF, and HEIC. See images in markdown.

Tags and links are part of the text

Tags are #words in the note’s text, and links between notes are [[wikilinks]]. Neither is stored anywhere else, so they survive in any other editor. On desktop, the tag bar reads and writes a line of tags at the top of the note. See folders and tags and wikilinks.

Front matter

FUTO Notes doesn’t give YAML front matter any special treatment. A block like this stays in the file exactly as you wrote it:

---
title: Trip plan
tags: [travel, 2026]
---

In the editor it is ordinary text you can edit. Because markdown reads the --- lines as a divider and a heading underline, the block may display like a horizontal rule followed by a heading. Tags listed in front matter are not FUTO Notes tags; only #tag in the text counts.

Files FUTO Notes ignores

FUTO Notes lists a file as a note only if it ends in lowercase .md. It doesn’t show anything else in the folder, and apart from the one-time .txt conversion below, it doesn’t change it either. That includes:

  • Other file types, such as PDFs, .canvas files, or .markdown and .MD files. Images are the exception: they aren’t listed as notes, but sync carries them along with your notes.
  • Anything whose name starts with a dot, and everything inside a folder whose name starts with a dot, such as .git/, .obsidian/, or .trash/.
  • Symbolic links, to files or to folders.
  • Files whose names contain < > : " | ? *, which Windows can’t store.
  • Notes more than 10 folders deep.

The app’s own hidden files, such as .app-state.json and .crashlogs/, live in the notes folder under dot names for the same reason.

Files that change when you first open a folder

The first time FUTO Notes opens a folder, it does two things you should know about:

  • .txt files at the top level are renamed to .md. Every .txt file directly in the folder, not in subfolders, becomes a note. If name.md already exists, the file becomes name (imported).md instead. This happens once per folder, and a .txt-migration-done marker records it.
  • A Welcome note is added if the folder has no notes.

Editing notes in another app

You can edit, add, rename, and delete .md files with any other app while FUTO Notes is closed, and the app picks up the changes the next time it starts.

On desktop, FUTO Notes also watches the folder while it runs, so changes from another editor, a file manager, or git show up right away, including in the note you have open. If you have unsaved typing in a note that changed on disk, FUTO Notes doesn’t overwrite the other change: your version is saved as a separate conflict copy next to it.

The iOS and Android apps don’t watch the folder while they run. Restart the app to see changes another app made.

Links are only rewritten when you rename a note inside FUTO Notes. If you rename a file somewhere else, wikilinks to it break until you fix them.

Conflict copies

When two versions of a note can’t be combined, FUTO Notes keeps both. The second one is saved as a sibling file with the date in its name, such as Grocery list (conflict 2026-07-21).md. It is an ordinary note: read it, merge what you want by hand, and delete it. See sync conflicts.

Deleting notes

On desktop, deleting a note moves its file to the system trash when one is available, and the confirmation says when a delete will be permanent instead. On iOS and Android, deleted notes are removed from the folder right away.

Back up your notes

FUTO Notes has no built-in backup or export, because it doesn’t need one: back up the notes folder and you have everything. Sync to your own server is not a backup either, since a deletion syncs like any other change.

Any tool that copies a folder works:

  • Copy the folder to another drive, or zip it. Quit the app first so nothing is mid-write.
  • Your usual backup software, such as Time Machine, File History, or restic, pointed at the notes folder.
  • git. Run git init inside the notes folder and commit whenever you like. FUTO Notes ignores the .git folder.
  • Syncthing or another file-sync tool, to keep a copy on another machine.

On Android, only Device storage is reachable by other apps. Notes in App storage can only be backed up by syncing them or by switching to Device storage first. On iOS, copy the futo-notes folder out with the Files app.

To restore, quit the app, copy the files back into the notes folder, and start the app again.

A copy of the folder does not include your sync password, which stays in the system keyring on each device. It does include the hidden files. On desktop, .app-state.json holds your sync server’s address and the device’s sign-in token for it, so leave the dot-files out of anything you publish. For a git repository you plan to push somewhere public, a .gitignore like this keeps them out:

.*
!.gitignore

Warning: Settings → Full reset deletes every file in the notes folder, including files FUTO Notes doesn’t show, such as a .git folder or other documents. It does not use the trash. Keep your backup somewhere else.

Note: don’t point two sync systems at the same folder. FUTO Notes keeps its sync bookkeeping (.e2ee-state.json) inside the notes folder, so if you use FUTO Notes sync, use a file-sync tool only to copy the folder to a machine that doesn’t also run FUTO Notes sync on it.

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