Version history
Nothing to remember to press. It records as you write, and you pick a moment when you need one — including the “I deleted that paragraph yesterday” kind.
What it keeps for you
The painful part of writing isn't a crash; it's “that earlier paragraph was better, and I've already changed it”. Folding Mirror takes checkpoints in the background, and you neither save versions by hand nor need to know Git.
Two grains of detail, two tabs of one dialog:
- This document: the successive contents of the piece you're in, for getting a passage back.
- The whole library: what the library looked like at a moment, for “I think I deleted the wrong file” or “the assistant just touched several documents”.
Opening version history
Three routes to the same place:
- Press ⇧⌘H.
- The ⋯ button at the right of the toolbar → Version History.
- The menu bar: File → Version History…
Recovering an earlier draft
- Open version history on the “This document” tab
On the left is the list of checkpoints, newest first, each with its time, size and the reason it was recorded.
- Click a checkpoint
The right shows how it differs from now. One sentence is enough to read it by: “−” is what comes back if you restore, “+” is what gets dropped.
- Only want one passage? Select it and copy
You don't have to restore the whole document. Most of the time what you want is that one sentence — copy it out of the diff and paste it back.
- If you really do want the whole thing back, click “Restore this version”
The current content is replaced by that version. No need to worry: a checkpoint of the present moment is taken first, so you can come back again.
Taking the library back
Switch to the whole library tab:
- Pick a moment on the left
Each row says how many files it touched, and whether it was recorded automatically or taken before the assistant went to work.
- The middle lists the files changed at that moment
Marked added, changed or deleted. Click a file and the right shows how it differed from now.
- Restore one file, or the whole library
The first touches only that file (“Restore this file”); the second winds the library back to that moment, replacing later changes. Folding Mirror confirms first — and again, the present state is recorded as a new checkpoint before anything happens.
Deleting in the sidebar doesn't go through the Trash, but the library checkpoints usually still have it: pick a moment from before the deletion, find the file in the list, and click “Restore this file”.
When a checkpoint is taken
None of these numbers need managing; they're here so you know how much to rely on it.
| When | What gets recorded |
|---|---|
| You're writing steadily | at most one checkpoint every 2 minutes for a document; for the library, one about 30 seconds after you pause, and one at least every 5 minutes if you never do |
| Before the AI assistant edits a document | a checkpoint first, labelled “before assistant edit” |
| Before you restore a version | the present moment, labelled “before restore” |
Per-document checkpoints prune themselves: at most 40 per document, and records older than 30 days are cleared — but the most recent five are kept forever, so a document untouched for a year still has its last few versions.
Where the backups live
In a hidden folder called .fm inside your library. Two things are worth knowing:
- It doesn't touch your own Git repository. Even if your notes directory is itself a Git repo, these checkpoints are a separate set and add nothing to your commit history.
- It travels with the library. Copy the whole folder to another machine and the history goes too; copy only the
.mdfiles out and the other side gets clean documents.
One honest closing line: version history is a way back while writing, not a backup strategy. If the disk dies it dies with it — anything that matters still wants a cloud drive or Time Machine.