Explorer
The Explorer browses folders of your machine: images, films, sounds and documents. For each folder it shows what memory does with it. It also plays music, opens notes and PDFs inside the app, and decides which folders enter memory.
Opening it
Explorer sits on the menu bar of a fresh install. The window has two tabs: Files and Images. The Images tab is the gallery.
Places
The left column lists your Places. A place is a folder the Explorer may read. The folders your vaults already watch are places from the start. Add a folder adds another one, and Remove from places takes it off.
The places fall into three groups, by what memory does with them: In memory, Not in memory and Never in memory. The app works out the group each time. A group folds on its title, and the fold is remembered.
The Explorer refuses some folders as places:
- A whole drive.
- Your home folder itself, because it holds private keys. Pick one of its folders instead.
- The app's own data folder.
- A folder that holds secrets, such as keys or credentials.
Browsing a folder
A folder loads in pages of 120 files. The toolbar sets three things, and the window remembers them:
- Layout: Mosaic, Grid, List or Timeline.
- Size: Small, Medium or Large.
- Sort: Name, Date, Size or Type.
Kind chips filter the folder: All, Images, Videos, Sounds, Documents and Other. In the timeline, a rail of Years runs down the right edge. A click on a year loads pages until that year arrives.
The search field searches file names across the whole folder, loaded or not. When the folder is in memory, a second list appears under the name matches: Found by what they show. It holds the pictures the image engine matched by their content. The two lists stay apart, because the second is a ranking by likeness. See Theia.
The preview column
A click on a file shows it in the right column, with its size and date. A
picture adds its dimensions, and a clip its duration. A value nobody
measured shows as —.
The column offers:
- Full view, where a click anywhere closes it.
- Open in its app, and a button per installed program that can open the file, such as Obsidian or VS Code.
- Show in the folder.
- Send to chat, for images. Several chosen images go in one press.
- Transcribe, for a sound or a film. The file goes to the Recorder, which transcribes it on its own queue.
Music
A click on a sound plays it, then the rest of its folder. The music bar has play, pause, next, previous, shuffle, repeat and volume. The keyboard's media keys drive it. The music keeps playing when you open another folder.
A track that cannot be played is named with its reason, and the next one plays. The bar shows how many times you listened to a track. A listen counts after half the track, or after a few minutes on a long one.
Notes and PDFs inside
Open here opens a Markdown note in a panel beside the files, with the Notes editor. It saves a moment after the last keystroke, at once on Ctrl+S, and before the panel closes. The YAML header of the file is kept byte for byte.
If another program changed the file since you opened it, saving stops. The panel reads Changed on disk and offers Reload the disk version or Keep my version.
A .txt, .csv or .log file opens in a plain text area. A PDF is drawn
page by page, as you scroll to it. A note can also open in a window of its
own on the board.
The Explorer edits Markdown files up to 2 MB, in UTF-8.
Memory
The memory card under the toolbar says what memory does with the open folder. It names the vault that watches it.
Memorize this folder attaches the folder to a vault. Pick an existing vault or create a New vault. The card says up front that memory reads documents and images, and leaves videos and sounds out. Images enter memory only when image memory is on in Settings.
The card refuses to memorize a folder that overlaps a watched folder. Two watches over the same files would read every file twice.
Never memorize keeps the folder out of memory from then on. What was already memorized from it stays. Allow memory again reverses it.
Files opened from the system
The installer offers Mnemosyne OS as a program for .md, .markdown and
.pdf files. A file opened this way shows in its own window and stays out of
memory. Memorize copies it into the watched folder of a vault you pick.
The original stays where it is, and later edits to it are not copied.
From afar
Zoom the canvas out and the Explorer shows the folder's name, what memory does with it, and what it holds.
- A folder of sounds becomes a playlist. While music plays, the player fills the window.
- A folder of pictures and films becomes a contact sheet. A film plays in place, and the next one follows.
- A folder of notes or documents becomes a wall of cards. A click opens the note in a window of its own.
A note opened in the Explorer shows the properties of its YAML header above the text, read-only.