There is no save button
Saving is not a thing you do. It is a thing you are told about — and it is reversible in several different directions.
Papyra writes a note 1.5 seconds after you stop typing. There is no save button to forget, and no unsaved-changes dialog to dismiss on the way out. What there is instead is a label above the note that says exactly where your words are:
- Saving… — the write is in flight
- Saved to local disk — it is on the server, in the file
- Saved on this device — will sync — the server was unreachable, so it is queued here and will upload itself
That third state is the honest one. Most apps show a spinner and hope. Papyra tells you the write did not land, and then makes sure it eventually does.
The caret is sacred
A note open in your editor can change underneath you: another device syncs, a collaborator edits a shared note, a file lands in the folder. Papyra will not re-hydrate the editor while you are typing in it. Remote updates are buffered and applied when they cannot cost you a cursor position or a half-typed sentence. Losing your place mid-thought is a real cost, and it is treated as one.
Every version you overwrite is kept
Papyra snapshots the previous revision before each write. Two tools in the note toolbar use those snapshots:
File recovery lists a note’s earlier revisions and shows a line-by-line diff against what is there now, so you can see precisely what changed before restoring anything. The restore is itself snapshotted first — so undoing a restore is one more click, not a disaster.
Time machine is a slider. Drag it and the note scrubs backwards through its own history. It is the right tool when the note still exists and is fine, but yesterday’s wording was better.
This is separate from Trash. Trash is for notes you deleted; snapshots are for text you overwrote.
When two versions disagree
If an external edit collides with one of Papyra’s — the classic case is two devices syncing the same note offline — Papyra does not silently pick a winner and does not clobber. It detects the collision, keeps both, and shows you a split-pane resolver: their version, your version, and the choice.
The same care applies to the offline queue. When a queued edit replays over a server revision that moved on in the meantime, your edit wins — but the previous revision was snapshotted before the write, so the overwritten text is still recoverable, and Papyra tells you which notes that happened to rather than letting you find out later.
Deleting is slow on purpose
A deleted note goes to Trash and stays for a period you set — 30 days by default, or forever, or immediately if you prefer. Until then you can put it back. After that it is gone for good, and Papyra will not pretend otherwise.