Multiple Instances in 2026
Picking up this request from 2018. Did anything chance?
https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/379/multiple-instances
As of today I settled with using The Archive for two different purposes.
A (daily inbox) journal for business notes and one for private notes.
I create new files every (other) day (or at least one per week).
At the moment I keep both journals in the same archive/vault/repo with different name schemas and switch between the notes. Going forward I want to split up the stream of notes into two archives.
However as I use both note types within little seconds from each other.
Hence, I want to avoid switching the archives/repo/vault all the time.
Instead I would be happy to utilize a 3rd display to have both archives open at the same time.
Is there a way to have 2 instances running at the same time?
Copied The Archive.app and renamed to The Archive2.app.
This allows for browsing one vault with different notes open at the same time.
If one switches an Archive it switches on both apps however.
Is there another version we can download?
like a Pre-Release or Alpha instance?
That could be used simultaneously as fully separate instance?
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Comments
As a quick fix I just added tags to each note type (#private and #business) and use saved searches to have both note streams displayed at the same time on the two instances.
Preferable, I still want to run it without having a filter in the searchbar and separate things more clearly into two git repos – without using some magic (like a Hazel folder script that puts copies of each note depending on the type into a git dir for private and a git dir for business notes.)
@dataduke This comment may not be relevant, as each person wants to set up their system as best it suits them. But I have a ZK that houses what could easily be split into 4 archives: personal history, personal other, work and journals. I choose to keep them in one archive, fully integrated (and linked).
As you noted, you can use saved searches on particular tags, to focus on just one group of notes. Another approach would be to start each title with one of several group identifiers, such as "P" for private and "B" for business. If you are using date UIDs, then instead of "202609190930 This is a title", you might have "B202609190930 A business title" and "P2026091945 A private title", etc. Some people have discussed on the forum about using special symbols at the start of their titles for this purpose.
Personally, I prefer having a number of saved searches, which are very simple to use, and then rely on more complicated searches if I want to combine tags, to be more specific. But that's just my preference
@dataduke check out https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/20296/#Comment_20296
I don't want to make promises for v2, but it was discussed, and let's say it's not impossible
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
@ctietze Thanks. This would be cool to see in a future release. As your wife I am also in a scenario that makes sense from legal & security stand point. Hence, the repos need to be separated down the line.
@GeoEng51 I switched from tags to group identifiers in the note name. Added them as trailing part to keep the overall timeline visible and spot the most recent notes in the global stream without a filter. Added saved searches accordingly. Looks like we share this parts of the setup. Thank you. (I do not use any inter-linking of notes anymore as all my wikis live elsewhere. Switched away from classical Luhmann Zettelkasten a decade ago - even so I enjoyed it a lot.).