Data directory contains:

Location of the data directory

Easy way how to find out which data directory Trilium uses is to look at the "About Trilium Notes" dialog (from "Menu" in upper left corner):

Here's how the location is decided:

Data directory is normally named trilium-data and it is stored in:

If you want to back up your Trilium data, just backup this single directory - it contains everything you need.

Changing the location of data directory

If you want to use some other location for the data directory than the default one, you may change it via TRILIUM_DATA_DIR environment variable to some other location:

 Windows

  1. Press the  key on your keyboard.
  2. Search and select Edit the system variables.
  3. Press the Environment Variables… button in the bottom-right of the newly opened screen.
  4. On the top section (User variables for [user]), press the New… button.
  5. In the Variable name field insert TRILIUM_DATA_DIR.
  6. Press the Browse Directory… button and select the new directory where to store the database.
  7. Close all the windows by pressing the OK button for each of them.

 Linux

Trilium reads TRILIUM_DATA_DIR when it starts, so the variable must be set in the environment that launches it.

Desktop application (.deb, .rpm, AppImage or .zip)

To use the new location however Trilium is started (from the application menu, a desktop shortcut, at login or from a terminal), set the variable for the whole session:

  1. Create the file ~/.config/environment.d/trilium.conf with the following content, using the full path (~ is not expanded in this file):

    TRILIUM_DATA_DIR=/home/myuser/data/my-trilium-data

  2. Log out and log back in.

This works on desktops started by systemd, which covers most distributions running GNOME or KDE Plasma. On other systems, add the following line to ~/.profile instead, then log out and log back in:

export TRILIUM_DATA_DIR="$HOME/data/my-trilium-data"

The same line in ~/.bashrc (or your shell's equivalent) only applies when Trilium is started from a terminal, not from the application menu.

Flatpak (Flathub)

The Flathub version runs in a sandbox that cannot see the rest of the file system, so it needs access to the folder as well as the variable:

flatpak override --user \
    --env=TRILIUM_DATA_DIR=/home/myuser/data/my-trilium-data \
    --filesystem=/home/myuser/data/my-trilium-data:create \
    org.triliumnotes.Trilium

To return to the default location, run flatpak override --user --reset org.triliumnotes.Trilium. This also removes any other overrides set for Trilium.

Server running as a systemd service

Add an Environment= line to the [Service] section of the unit file described in Packaged version for Linux:

[Service]
Environment=TRILIUM_DATA_DIR=/var/lib/trilium-data

Then reload and restart the service:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart trilium

The user set in User= must be able to write to the folder. For Docker, see Using Docker instead.

 macOS

You need to create a .plist file under ~/Library/LaunchAgents to load it properly each login.

To load it manually, you need to use launchctl setenv TRILIUM_DATA_DIR <yourpath>

Here is a pre-defined template, where you just need to add your path to:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>set.trilium.env</string>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/bin/launchctl</string>
        <string>setenv</string>
        <string>TRILIUM_DATA_DIR</string>
        <string>/Users/YourUserName/Library/Application Support/trilium-data</string>
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

Create a script to run with specific data directory

An alternative to globally setting environment variable is to run only the Trilium Notes with this environment variable. This then allows for different setup styles like two database instances or "portable" installation.

To do this in Unix-based systems simply run trilium like this:

TRILIUM_DATA_DIR=/home/myuser/data/my-trilium-data trilium

You can then save the above command as a shell script on your path for convenience.

Electron user data directory (desktop only)

When running the desktop application, Electron stores internal data (caches, spell-check dictionaries, session storage, etc.) separately from the Trilium data directory. By default this goes to the system's application data folder (e.g. %APPDATA% on Windows), which may be undesirable in corporate environments with roaming profiles or when running in portable mode.

To keep Electron data out of the system's roaming profile, set the TRILIUM_ELECTRON_DATA_DIR environment variable to an explicit path. The trilium-portable script does this automatically, pointing it to trilium-electron-data/ next to the application.

Fine-grained directory/path location

Apart from the data directory, some of the subdirectories of it can be moved elsewhere by changing an environment variable:

Environment variable Default value Description
TRILIUM_DOCUMENT_PATH ${TRILIUM_DATA_DIR}/document.db Path to the Database (storing all notes and metadata).
TRILIUM_BACKUP_DIR ${TRILIUM_DATA_DIR}/backup Directory where automated Backup databases are stored.
TRILIUM_LOG_DIR ${TRILIUM_DATA_DIR}/log Directory where daily Backend (server) logs are stored.
TRILIUM_TMP_DIR ${TRILIUM_DATA_DIR}/tmp Directory where temporary files are stored (for example when opening in an external app).
TRILIUM_ANONYMIZED_DB_DIR ${TRILIUM_DATA_DIR}/anonymized-db Directory where a Anonymized Database is stored.
TRILIUM_CONFIG_INI_PATH ${TRILIUM_DATA_DIR}/config.ini Path to Configuration (config.ini or environment variables) file.
TRILIUM_ELECTRON_DATA_DIR System appData Directory for Electron internal data (caches, spell-check dictionaries, etc.). Set this in portable mode to avoid writing to the system profile (desktop only).