Troubleshooting

The window takes two seconds to open (Linux)

Another Vulkan driver is slow to load. Bref already skips the NVIDIA one when the machine has no NVIDIA card, unless you set VK_LOADER_DRIVERS_DISABLE yourself. To see what remains, run VK_LOADER_DEBUG=driver bref in a terminal.

The window does not open, with an error about a surface or an adapter

There is no usable Vulkan driver. Install the one for your GPU: vulkan-intel, vulkan-radeon, nvidia-utils… on Arch; mesa-vulkan-drivers on Ubuntu.

macOS or Windows refuses to open Bref

The downloads are not notarized or signed. See macOS and Windows for the one-time step.

Bold text is not bold

The font you picked is a variable font, which the text engine cannot embolden. Pick another font, or none to go back to the built-in ones.

A note was not renamed after I changed its title

Either another note already has that name, or the file name did not match the first line to begin with, and that line is not a # title you just added or changed. See Names and renaming.

Changes made elsewhere show up late

Bref is told by the system when the vault changes, and also looks at it every 30 seconds in case an event got lost. When the system cannot watch the folder, it looks every two seconds: on some network drives, or when Linux has run out of inotify watches. In that case, raise fs.inotify.max_user_watches.

See Changes from other programs.

Sync fails

git must reach the repository without asking anything, and the vault must be in a plain state. See Requirements and What it refuses.

Bref crashed

The last crash is written to the file crash of the configuration folder, with the version of Bref. Attach it to a bug report: on Windows, the window has no console to show it.

Known limits

• The name field of a new folder or a rename only edits at its end: type, or erase with Backspace.
• Links written as plain text inside a code block are not followed when a note is renamed.