Desktop app start without sync

Support
1

Windows 7 Pro SP1 64-bit
Joplin version 2.9.17

On my Android phone, for some reason I saw two copies of a To-Do list note. I had never encountered that before, but without thinking about it too much, I identified the one that was most recent, and deleted the other one. When I got back on my phone several hours later, all instances of that note were gone. I didn't worry about it too much; I figured my desktop Joplin still had the deleted note, so I would rescue it there when I got home.

When I started up Windows, I tried to see if Joplin had a command line option to start without sync, believing that if sync completed, it would delete the note from the desktop app as well. I subsequently found a statement by Laurent that Joplin has no command line options. Fortunately, when I started Joplin, I was able to quickly copy the contents of the note (select all - copy) before the sync deleted it as anticipated. I then simply recreated the note.

Is there any way to start the desktop app with sync disabled? I found the article Restoring Deleted Notes. But since I anticipated this scenario, starting Joplin with sync disabled would be a much simpler approach.

2

There is no way to disable the sync*. You can try to restore the deleted note, but really, the only way to protect yourself from this kind of a scenario is to have proper backups (which synchronisation is not). There is even a plugin for that (see https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/backup-plugin/13964).

* You could do it in a hacky way by modifying the config file manually and disabling sync there before starting the program.

3

Thanks for the reply. I'd like to understand how to disable sync manually in case this situation arises again. BTW, I do have the Backup plugin installed and configured, so I have that option available to me if needed. But as I said in my original post, disabling sync and saving the note from within Joplin seems like a simpler option, since I anticipated this scenario.

In Windows, I found the configuration file in %USERPROFILE%\.config\joplin-desktop\settings.json. The only setting I see related to sync is this one:

"sync.target": 7,

What value would I set here to temporarily disable sync?

Thanks.

4

"sync.target": 0 will do it.