Debugging & Misc

Launch with logs

• Quit Antinote first, then run this to start it from the terminal so its log output is visible:

/Applications/Antinote.app/Contents/MacOS/Antinote

• Leave the Terminal window open and use Antinote as you normally would. When the problem happens, the log lines around it are what matter.
• To capture the logs to a file you can attach to an email, run this instead. It saves to your Desktop as antinote-log.txt while still showing the output:

/Applications/Antinote.app/Contents/MacOS/Antinote 2>&1 | tee ~/Desktop/antinote-log.txt

• Quitting Antinote ends the command and finishes writing the file.
• If Antinote lives somewhere else (Setapp, or a different folder), find the exact path with:

mdfind "kMDItemFSName == 'Antinote.app'"

Back up and reset your settings

• Occasionally a single bad setting will make Antinote crash on launch or misbehave in a way nothing else explains. This resets every setting to its defaults, and saves a copy of your old settings first so the cause can still be found.
• Select the whole block below, paste it into Terminal, and press Return:

osascript -e 'quit app "Antinote"' >/dev/null 2>&1; sleep 2

OUT=~/Desktop/antinote-settings-$(date +%Y-%m-%d-%H%M%S)
mkdir -p "$OUT"

for ID in com.chabomakers.Antinote com.chabomakers.Antinote-setapp; do
  for SRC in ~/Library/Containers/$ID/Data/Library/Preferences/$ID.plist \
             ~/Library/Preferences/$ID.plist; do
    [ -f "$SRC" ] || continue
    case "$SRC" in *Containers*) TAG=sandboxed;; *) TAG=standard;; esac
    cp "$SRC" "$OUT/$TAG-$ID.plist"
    plutil -convert xml1 -o "$OUT/$TAG-$ID.xml" "$SRC" 2>/dev/null
    rm -f "$SRC"
    echo "reset: $SRC"
  done
done

killall cfprefsd >/dev/null 2>&1
cd ~/Desktop && zip -qr "$(basename "$OUT").zip" "$(basename "$OUT")"

echo; echo "Old settings saved to: $OUT.zip"

• Open Antinote again and it will start with default settings.
• A .zip file is left on your Desktop containing your old settings. If you are reporting a crash, attach it to your email — it usually contains the exact cause.

What this does and doesn't change

• Your notes are not touched. Notes live in a separate database and are left exactly as they are, along with your custom themes and extensions.
• Your license is not lost. The license key is kept in the macOS Keychain, so Antinote picks it up again on the next launch. Be online when you relaunch so it can re-verify.
• Settings are reset — theme, hotkey, dock mode, keyword triggers, window size and everything else goes back to its default.
• If you had preferences syncing turned on, it is off after the reset. Turning it back on will pull your old settings down from iCloud, which may bring the problem back with them. If it does, that itself is worth reporting.

Putting your old settings back

• To undo the reset, quit Antinote, unzip the folder from your Desktop, and copy the sandboxed-com.chabomakers.Antinote.plist file inside it back into place:

osascript -e 'quit app "Antinote"' >/dev/null 2>&1; sleep 2
cp ~/Desktop/antinote-settings-*/sandboxed-com.chabomakers.Antinote.plist \
   ~/Library/Containers/com.chabomakers.Antinote/Data/Library/Preferences/com.chabomakers.Antinote.plist
killall cfprefsd

• cfprefsd is a macOS background service that remembers settings for every app. Stopping it is what makes the change take effect immediately — macOS starts it again by itself, and nothing else is affected.