FAQ
Honest answers to the questions people actually ask — offline, mobile, privacy, lock-in, limits, and what happens when things go wrong.
Straight answers, including the ones that aren't flattering. If your question isn't here, write to us.
Does knowdust work offline?
Partly, and here's exactly how. knowdust is a web app, so opening it fresh needs a connection. But if your connection drops while you're writing, you don't lose anything: your writing is kept on your device and knowdust retries in the background every few seconds until the save goes through — you'll see the status note by the title say so. Pages you've already loaded are also cached, so brief drops mostly go unnoticed.
What it is not: a full offline app you can open on a plane with no connection at all. If that's essential for you, we'd rather you know before you commit.
Is there a mobile app?
No native app yet. The honest answer: the website works on your phone — log in from any mobile browser and write; it's responsive and everything works. It's a good mobile website, not an app-store app. Native apps are on the "possible later" list, not a promise.
Where are my notes stored? Who can read them?
On Hetzner servers in the European Union, as plain-text files with their version history. They're private to your account — knowdust has no sharing or public notes, so nothing you write is visible to anyone else. The privacy policy covers what we collect (little) and what we never do with your data (sell it, or train AI on it).
Am I locked in?
No, and this is the question we most want to be held to. Export gives you every note as ordinary markdown files, in one click, free, on every plan, in every account state — over the cap, after a refund, mid-deletion. Markdown files open in anything. The exit is always unlocked; we'd rather keep you by being good.
What happens if I hit the storage cap?
Saving pauses until you're under the cap again — your notes stay readable and export keeps working. Delete what you don't need, or move to Plus for 10 GB. (For scale: 200 MB is a very large amount of plain text — most people writing daily won't approach it for years.)
I deleted a paragraph last week. Is it gone?
Almost certainly not — this is the product working as intended. Open version history and click back to a version from before the deletion. On the free plan you can browse the last 7 days; on Plus, everything. Restoring brings the text back without losing anything written since.
I deleted a whole note. Can I get it back?
Deleting a note removes it from your notebook, and there's no trash can to fish it out of today — that's the honest answer. Version history protects the text inside notes; deleting the note itself is the one edit it doesn't cover. When a note might matter later, export it before deleting.
Do I need to understand Git?
No. Git runs invisibly on our servers to keep your versions — you'll never see a commit, a branch, or a terminal. If you do know Git, the mental model is: one repository per account, one commit per save, and "restore" is a new commit, never a reset.
Can I share a note or write with someone else?
Not yet. knowdust is single-player today: no sharing, no collaboration. It's on the roadmap as a possibility, but we only document what exists — a page here about a feature is a promise that it works.
What does Plus actually change?
Two things: version history goes from the last 7 days to everything, forever, and storage goes from 200 MB to 10 GB. The writing experience is identical — the free plan is not a crippled demo. Details and prices: Plans and billing.
Something on this page wrong or unclear? Tell us — it'll be fixed.