An attachment is a file you keep inside your vault and embed in a note. Like everything else in Myne, attachments are encrypted on disk. This article covers adding them, the size limits, and how they behave.
Adding an attachment
You add attachments from the editor, in any of these ways:
- Paste an image straight from your clipboard.
- Drop a file onto the editor.
- Use the
/attachcommand. - Pick a file through the attachment picker.
Insertion always happens in the editor. That is where an attachment becomes part of a note.
File types and sizes
Any file type may be attached. An attachment can be up to 64 MiB (note text itself is capped at 16 MiB); a file over the limit is rejected with a message saying why, and nothing is added.
What differs is how a file appears in the note, which depends on whether Myne can render it. To decide that, Myne checks the file’s actual contents, not its extension: renaming a .zip to .png won’t make it render as an image.
How attachments render
In a note, an embedded image shows inline. A PDF shows a first-page preview where it can, and an icon otherwise.
A file Myne cannot render — a .docx, a .zip, anything that isn’t an image or PDF — surfaces as a file-card: a file-type icon, the filename, a type · size line, and a ⋯ menu with Export, Rename, Remove, and Reveal in library. A file-card’s contents are never previewed inline; “using” a generic file means exporting it to disk through the native Save dialog.
A recorded voice note or an attached audio file shows as an inline player with a play control and a time readout. See Voice notes for recording one with the /record command.
Identical files are stored once: if you add the same file twice, Myne keeps a single copy and both embeds point at it.
Renaming, exporting, and deleting
Renaming an attachment changes its display name in the library only; it never rewrites the embeds in your notes, so links don’t break.
Export writes one attachment back to a file you choose through the native Save dialog — the same Save-As action that backs a file-card’s ⋯ menu. The export is decrypted to the path you pick; the copy on disk is no longer protected by your vault.
Attachments are not removed automatically. When you remove a note, the files it embedded stay in the library as unused attachments (zero references) rather than disappearing. The only way to erase them is the explicit Clean unused attachments sweep in the attachments library, which reviews and then permanently deletes the files you confirm; Myne also reconciles stray attachment files when you unlock. If you delete an attachment that a note still embeds, that embed becomes a “deleted attachment” marker (a tombstone) rather than a broken image, so you can see what used to be there.
How they’re stored
An attachment’s name, contents, and type are encrypted; what a copy of the vault folder can still reveal is how many attachments there are and how big each one is.
Attachments live as encrypted files inside the vault; today they’re accessible only through the app. There is no bulk attachment-export tool.
Limits
Native operating-system drag-and-drop from a file manager is deliberately off; use one of the editor methods above. The exact ![[att:…]] embed syntax is in Footnotes and reference links. Attachment contents are not searched: Search covers note text, not what’s inside a PDF or image.