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:

• Create an iCloud workspace from the iOS app, following the creation steps.
• This sets up the Octarine folder in iCloud Drive with all the correct permissions.
• Manually move your existing documents from the previous location into this new Octarine folder.
• The app auto-identifies the workspace once it appears inside the Octarine folder.
• Update the desktop app to point at the same location so both stay in sync.

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.