Portable mode: your data next to the program

In the .zip release, LightNote keeps settings, sessions, local history and indexes in a Windows folder (%LOCALAPPDATA%), outside the program folder. Portable mode brings all of that next to the executable, and then the whole folder can live on a USB drive, an external disk or a synced folder.

To turn it on: extract the .zip where the copy is going to live, open Settings → General → Portable mode and click Make this copy portable…. The window shows where the data comes from and goes to, how big it is and what changes; on confirmation LightNote copies (never moves) and asks you to close and open the program. The old copy stays where it was, intact — if anything goes wrong, nothing was lost.

After that the program folder gains two new folders: profile, with what is yours (settings, sessions, history, downloaded dictionaries), and profile-cache, with indexes only, which the program rebuilds on its own. You can delete profile-cache at any time to reclaim space.

To update to a new version: download the new .zip, extract it into a new folder and copy the profile folder from the old version into it. That is all. profile-cache does not need to be copied (it rebuilds itself); copying it also works, it is just unnecessary. Do not go the other way round: a profile written by a newer version makes the program open read-only, so that it does not damage what it cannot yet read.

To turn it off: go back to Settings → General → Portable mode and click Turn off portable mode…. Nothing is deleted: the two folders are only renamed (to profile.desativado and profile-cache.desativado), and LightNote uses the Windows folder again on the next start. You decide later whether to delete them, restore them or copy whatever you want from them.

What does NOT travel with the folder to another computer. Three secrets are protected by Windows per user and machine, so they do not decrypt on another PC: the AI keys, the file passwords you asked to remember and the stored Passphrase. Just enter them again there — nothing is lost, and your secure files still open normally with the Passphrase you type. Besides that: open tabs and folders store the full path, so they move if the drive letter changes; the Explorer integration is turned off when you enable the mode (it writes to the machine's Windows, the opposite of what portable mode promises) and can be turned back on in Settings; and the .mcp.json written into your repositories points to the full path of lnote.exe, so it has to be redone on the new machine.

Taking the AI keys with you (optional). In Settings → General → Portable mode there is Protect the keys with a passphrase…. Turned on, the AI keys and the remembered file passwords stop depending on Windows and travel with the folder. Think twice: today, losing the stick costs nothing — the secrets do not open outside your machine; with a passphrase, whoever gets the folder can try to guess it at their leisure. Use a long passphrase. The workspace Passphrase does not go into this keyring, on purpose: it opens your secure notes, and a single phrase should not unlock everything. Tick Remember on this machine so you are not asked on your own computer — elsewhere, the question comes back.

Portable mode is for the .zip release. A copy installed by the installer and the Microsoft Store edition cannot be converted — their folder is read-only or is managed by the uninstaller — and the window says so instead of leaving the button without effect. From the command line, with LightNote closed: lnote portable --status, lnote portable --on (accepts --dry-run) and lnote portable --off.