Getting Started

Creating an instance

When first opening up Catalog, you will be prompted to choose a location on your filesystem which Catalog will use for storing your data.

For example, you could choose your home directory, or a cloud-synced directory like Dropbox and Drive if you have one.

The location you choose is called an instance , and when you create the instance for the first time, it will initialize a few files.

The first file is actually a directory by the name Catalog, which will contain the following structure:

└── 📁 Catalog
    ├── 📁 files
    └── 🖹 sqlite3.db

Tip: Use the same instance for all of your data. You're not likely to benefit from having two or more instances.

Adding files

Files are stored in the files directory shown in the above diagram.

What you shouldn't Do

Catalog makes a few assumptions about the content of files that you shouldn't break.

Make sure to follow these instructions:

  • Don't add files to the files directory yourself
  • Don't delete files from the files directory yourself
  • Don't rename files from the files directory yourself

Note: not following these instructions may cause Catalog to misbehave.

The reason for this is because Catalog maintains a registry of all existing files, and currently cannot tell when you add / delete / remove a file yourself.

How to add Files

There are currently three ways to add files:

  1. Add new text file: provide a name for the file and Catalog will create an empty text file for you and add it to your files directory
  2. Import existing files: locate the files you want to import from your filesystem and Catalog will add them for you to the files directory
  3. Web clip images: using the Web Clipper extension, you can easily capture images from the web browser and add them to your files directory.

Finding Files: Just starting out

When starting out, the most intuitive way to find your files is probably the Timeline screen.

The Timeline screen lists your files by the order they were added, i.e. it's a chronological list of your files.

Tip: to quickly access files you just added, visit the Timeline screen and you will find these files at the top of the list.

Finding Files: I am drowning in files, please help!

When you have more than a few dozens of files, you will probably find that going through all your files one by one is tedious.

Catalog was built exactly for solving this problem, as it lets you find files efficiently.

The first solution you can employ is to visit the Search screen and execute a query to get all files by name. Your files will be filtered by this name and you will only retrieve files with matching names. Probably sounds familiar to you, as this feature isn't unique to Catalog by any means.

However, we don't always give meaningful names to our files, and more crucially, we don't always remember the names we give to files, since we have other things that need our attention. A unique name for every file is just a limitation that the computer imposes on us, but it doesn't serve our needs.

Read more about Categories to find another solution