Workspaces

A workspace is Octarine's top-level container. Each workspace is an independent folder on disk containing your notes, daily entries, and attachments. You can have multiple workspaces — for example, one for personal notes and another for work.

Creating a New Workspace

You can create a workspace during onboarding or later from the Command Bar (pull down and search for "Switch Workspace") or from Settings > Switch.

When creating a workspace you choose:

• Name — displayed in the settings header and workspace chooser. The first letters form the avatar.
• Color — a background and border color for the avatar.
• Storage location:
  • On my iPhone — local device storage.
  • iCloud Drive — synced via iCloud across your Apple devices.
  • Dropbox — synced via your Dropbox folder.

Three starter notes (Welcome, today's daily note, and a weekly note) are generated automatically in every new workspace.

Dropbox

The first time you create a Dropbox workspace, iOS opens the Files picker so Octarine can be granted access to your Dropbox folder. This is a one-time step.

When the picker appears:

1. Tap Browse at the bottom, then tap Dropbox in the sidebar.
2. Stay at the root of your Dropbox — don't enter any subfolder.
3. Tap Open in the top-right corner.

Octarine creates an Octarine folder at the root of your Dropbox and stores all workspaces inside it. Every new Dropbox workspace from here on lands in the same place automatically — you won't see the picker again. Picking the root also matches where the desktop app looks, so workspaces stay in sync across devices.

Switching Between Workspaces

There are three ways to switch:

1. Home — tap the workspace pill (avatar + name) at the top of the Home screen to open the workspace switcher sheet directly, without leaving the page.
2. Command Bar — pull down from the top of any screen, type "Switch Workspace", and select from the submenu listing your other workspaces.
3. Settings — go to Settings and tap Switch next to the workspace name at the top.

The Command Bar and Settings options take you to the workspace chooser, where you can pick an existing workspace or create a new one.

Workspace Discovery

When you open the workspace chooser, Octarine scans the app-created Octarine folder in on-device storage, iCloud Drive, and Dropbox for workspace directories it hasn't seen before. Discovered workspaces appear in the list alongside your existing ones, showing the storage location (phone, iCloud, or Dropbox) with an icon on the right side.

The Octarine folder itself must be created by the app — creating a folder named Octarine yourself (in Files, Finder, or Dropbox) will not work. The app sets up this folder the first time you choose a storage location during workspace creation, and from then on it is the only folder Octarine looks in for existing workspaces. Any workspace folders placed outside of it won't be discovered.

If no workspaces are found, the screen shows a message and a button to create one.

But what about my existing notes??

By operating under the rules of the Apple ecosystem, Octarine can't access your entire system — only the Octarine folder it's entitled to by the OS. Desktop OSes don't have this restriction, so if you already have a workspace synced via the desktop app in a custom location, here's how to bring it over to iOS.

The Octarine folder in iCloud must be created by the iOS app when you create an iCloud workspace. Creating a folder named Octarine yourself in Files or Finder does not give Octarine the access it needs — only the in-app flow sets up iCloud correctly.

1. Create an iCloud workspace from the iOS app (onboarding or Switch Workspace), choosing iCloud Drive. That step is what creates the app-managed Octarine folder in iCloud with the right permissions.
2. Copy your existing workspace folder from the desktop location into that new Octarine folder in iCloud (for example in Files on Mac or iCloud.com). Prefer copying over moving for safety. If you move the data out of the original folder, the desktop app will no longer see that workspace at the old path — that is expected. You are not losing the copy in iCloud; you will reconnect the desktop app to the workspace in its new iCloud location in the next step.
3. The app discovers the workspace automatically once it sits inside the app-created Octarine folder. On iOS, open Manage Workspaces — the copied workspace appears there alongside any workspace the app created during setup.
4. On desktop, use Create Workspace > Open Existing and choose the same workspace folder inside Octarine in iCloud Drive. That reconnects the desktop app to the synced copy (the old custom path will not work anymore if you moved the data out of it).

The first iCloud workspace you created on iOS may have been a small "dummy" setup used mainly to establish the folder. After your real notes are in place, you can delete that workspace from settings if you do not need it, or leave it — either is fine.

Deleting a Workspace

Go to Settings > Delete Workspace at the bottom of the settings page (under "Danger Zone"). This permanently removes the workspace from Octarine. This deletes all notes and folders and the workspace folder from the device/iCloud/Dropbox.

You'll see a confirmation screen with the workspace name and a warning before the delete button becomes active.

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