Troubleshooting

Trilium is currently beta quality software, so it's quite expected there will be some bugs.

General quickfix

You guessed it - it's restart.

If there's a UI problem, it usually means that the Trilium frontend got into an inconsistent state and is acting up. The easiest way to fix it is to reload the application - just press CTRL-R and frontend will be reloaded.

If this still doesn't help, or you suspect it's actually a backend issue, you can restart the whole application - in case of desktop (Electron) build, you just close the window and re-open it again.

Broken note crashes Trilium

Sometimes a particular problem can cause issues for Trilium (e.g. render note with faulty script) and causes Trilium to crash. But since Trilium will normally try to load previously open notes, it will attempt to load again the note, causing the crash again.

To break out of this vicious cycle, you can specify TRILIUM_START_NOTE_ID environment variable, which will reset the open tabs to only one with the specified note ID (just use root). In linux you could use it like this:

TRILIUM_START_NOTE_ID=root ./trilium

Alternatively, you can also start up Trilium in a "safe mode" which will reset the current note to root:

TRILIUM_SAFE_MODE=true ./trilium

Broken script prevents application startup

If you experiment with scripting, it might happen that you create a script which crashes the whole Trilium. That's even worse if you set it as a startup script or in an active custom widget.

In such cases you can start Trilium in "safe mode" which will not execute any custom scripts:

TRILIUM_SAFE_MODE=true ./trilium

Depending on the Trilium distribution, there are also ready made scripts for this: trilium-safe-mode.bat and trilium-safe-mode.sh.

Once Trilium starts up, find the note which caused the crash and fix it/delete it.

Sync and consistency checks

Trilium periodically checks logical consistency of the database (e.g. that every note should have a parent). If some inconsistency is detected, the user is notified on the UI about the inconsistency.

In such case, it is recommended to file a bug report and attach anonymized database (see below).

Restoring backup

Trilium makes regular automatic backup, so When things go really bad we might need the last option - restore backup.

Forgotten username/password

In case you forgot your password, this means that:

• your protected notes are forever lost - they cannot be decrypted without the password
• normal (unprotected) notes are recoverable. Read below to see how.

To be able to change username/password and thus recover your unprotected notes, you need to get access to the document file in a data directory. You then need to open the document.db file with SQLite client (command line or e.g. DB Browser) and execute following queries:

UPDATE options SET value = 'your_username' WHERE name = 'username'; -- feel free to change 'your_username' to your desired username
UPDATE options SET value = '77/twC5O00cuQgNC63VK32qOKKYwj21ev3jZDXoytVU=' WHERE name = 'passwordVerificationSalt';
UPDATE options SET value = '710BMasZCAgibzIc07X4P9Q4TeBd4ONnqJOho+pWcBM=' WHERE name = 'passwordDerivedKeySalt';
UPDATE options SET value = 'Eb8af1/T57b89lCRuS97tPEl4CwxsAWAU7YNJ77oY+s=' WHERE name = 'passwordVerificationHash';
UPDATE options SET value = 'QpC8XoiYYeqHPtHKRtbNxfTHsk+pEBqVBODYp0FkPBa22tlBBKBMigdLu5GNX8Uu' WHERE name = 'encryptedDataKey';

After executing the changes, don't forget to commit/write the changes!

This will set the password to "password". You can use that to login to the application again.

If you already had protected notes (which are not unrecoverable), I recommend deleting them or alternatively export the unprotected notes, delete the document.db and start anew.

If you decide to continue using the existing document file, don't forget to change your password (Options -> Change password).

Reporting bugs

It's a great help to send bug reports. Here are some tips where to look at:

Trilium uses GitHub issues - so please send your reports here: https://github.com/zadam/trilium/issues

Check error logs page for info how to provide the necessary info.