History & trash

Mahfouz has no separate undo-history database — history is git history.

• History (the bottom of the sidebar’s Details section — toolbar ⋯ → Revisions, Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+R, or click the save status) lists every commit that touched the current note (subject, relative time, short SHA). Click one to open that revision read-only in a new tab, with a banner offering Restore (writes a new commit restoring that content — history is always append-only, never rewritten).
• Trash (Sidebar, Cmd/Ctrl+4) is a flat, cross-vault list of every note deleted via git, newest first, each with a Restore button and a click-to-preview.
• Every note edit auto-commits ~30 seconds after your last keystroke in that note (message Auto-save <timestamp>), and any edits made outside Mahfouz (a text editor, another git client) are auto-committed as External edits as soon as Mahfouz notices them, so nothing you do to the vault folder is ever silently lost.

Auto-commit and disk-only notes

By default every note auto-commits, as above. If you’d rather keep a note’s work-in-progress out of history, turn its auto-commit off. The note is then disk only: it still saves to disk as you type, but Mahfouz never commits it on its own, so it isn’t pushed or shared until you say so.

• Turn it off or on with the Auto-commit switch in the right-sidebar Attributes panel, or right-click the note and pick Turn off auto-commit / Turn on auto-commit. The action Toggle auto-commit for note can be bound to a key in Settings → Shortcuts; it has no default key.
• How to tell — a disk-only note shows a drive glyph in the sidebar (filled while it has uncommitted changes), and the toolbar’s save chip reads Saved · not in history.
• Commit now / Discard changes — when a disk-only note has uncommitted changes, the Attributes panel shows both buttons. Commit now records the note as a normal commit. Discard changes asks first, then returns the note to its last committed version (or deletes it if it was never committed). This can’t be undone.
• New child notes created under a disk-only note start disk-only too.
• Blocked pulls — if someone else changes a disk-only note you’ve also edited, the pull would overwrite your uncommitted work, so it’s blocked. A notification names the note(s) and offers Commit now, Discard and Open note. Pulling for the whole vault stays blocked until you resolve it.
• Use remote (overwrites local) (see Git sync) warns first and names any disk-only notes whose uncommitted edits it would destroy. Those edits aren’t in history, so they can’t be recovered.
• Restoring a revision of a disk-only note that has uncommitted changes asks first, since the restore replaces them. The restored version is committed.

Limits worth knowing:

• Deleting a disk-only note still commits the deletion, and restoring it from Trash brings back its last committed version, not the uncommitted edits.
• Commit now also commits any other changes waiting for the next auto-commit, in one commit named after the note. Other disk-only notes stay out.
• Attachments (in files/) that a disk-only note links to are still auto-committed, even while the note itself isn’t.
• Moving the child notes of a disk-only parent can leave history inconsistent (the children committed in their new place, the parent not) until you commit the parent.
• The setting is stored per note, on this computer only: in the vault’s local git folder, never committed or pushed. Collaborators and your other machines are unaffected and keep auto-committing that note. It survives removing and re-adding the vault and rebuilding its index; a fresh clone of the vault starts with every note auto-committing.