Skip to content
Handbook
EN DE
Open markbird

← Handbook

Account & sync

Accounts are optional

markbird works completely without an account, and that is the default. You need one only for:

  • your documents on more than one device
  • editable share links and real-time collaboration

Signing in

Sign in with Google, GitHub, or an email magic link. When you sign in, the documents already in your browser are adopted into your account rather than discarded.

How sync behaves

Sync is last-write-wins across devices: the most recent save wins. Each device remembers what it last agreed with the server for every document, so a document that merely came back from the server is not mistaken for something you changed, and you are only told about a conflict when both sides really did change between two syncs — the version that loses is kept in the note's history. Deleting a note for good travels too: the other devices delete their copy, unless they hold writing that the deleting device never saw, in which case the note comes back rather than the writing being lost. Where a document sits — pinned, its folder, its place in the manual order — is decided separately from its text, so moving a note on one device and editing it on another keeps both changes. The indicator shows Local only, Connecting…, Synced, Offline — changes queued, or Sync error.

Editing offline is fine. Changes queue and go up when you are back.

Encrypting your synced notes

Settings → Encryption for synced notes turns sync end-to-end encrypted. Pick a passphrase and the title, text, folders and tags of every synced note are encrypted on your device before they leave it; markbird's server then stores nothing but ciphertext.

  • The passphrase never leaves your devices and is not stored anywhere. Nobody — including us — can recover it, or the notes in the cloud, if you lose it. The notes on your devices stay readable either way, and exports and folder sync are untouched.
  • Every other device asks for the passphrase once, then remembers the derived key (not the passphrase). Until it does, that device keeps its own notes and syncs nothing, rather than uploading readable copies into an encrypted account.
  • What remains visible to the server is what sync needs to work: which account a record belongs to, when it last changed, and whether it was deleted. Hiding that would need a different protocol, not a different cipher.
  • Turning it off re-uploads every note as text again.

Conflicts

If the same document was edited on two devices, the later save wins — but the version that was overwritten is kept and restorable. markbird tells you when this happens rather than letting the other version vanish. Version history holds the recoverable copy.

Your data, exported and deleted

Account & data… lets you export everything, and delete your account. Deletion removes your account, your synced documents and any server-side share copies.

Local documents in your browser are yours to delete from the library; signing out does not erase them.

Where synced data lives

Google Cloud Firestore in the EU. Browser clients never talk to the database directly — all access goes through markbird's API, and database rules deny client access entirely.