Multiple users/clients tips and tricks

[meichthys]

You want multiple-user support?

There have been many issues and discussions requesting multiple-user support (#3546, #1375, #2679, #2143, #2109, #1527, #1436, #964, #600, #450, #169).

TLDR: It's likely not coming anytime soon on this repository, but support is planned in TriliumNext

@zadam has provided reasons in the FAQ for why multiple users are not currently planned in this repository, and therefore multiple-user environments are not supported or fully attainable in the current version Trilium despite the tips below.

Some multiple-user functionality can still be achieved

We can use this discussion to document (Unofficial and likely Unsupported) tips and tricks that may help those of us desiring a multi-user use case to replicate some of that functionality. Some general notes about trying to use Trilium with multiple users:

• 🛑 This is an unsupported use case - do so at your own risk! (Backup your Trilium data - or export a copy often and you should be fine)
• 🔑Sharing credentials can provide a different 'user' (person) access to your notes
  • ⚠This 'user' has all the same permissions as you, so you must trust the user with your notes!
• 🔓It is possible to disable authentication to allow anyone with access to your server/instance to log in
  • ⚠Do not expose unauthenticated instances to the internet or LAN with users you don't trust
  • 🔒You can still re-use the instance password to protect specific notes - this may be useful to lock down specific notes in an unauthenticated instance - but remember, widgets/scripts will not work when protected.
• 💥Simultaneously editing the same note is possible but will result in one user's changes being overwritten - The user to sync last wins.
  • 🔁**Sync** conflicts can occur. Trilium handles these gracefully (I have not had to manually intervene since using Trilium with multiple users, but remember, the last sync always wins)
• 2️⃣You can always run additional server instances of trilium, but notes cannot be shared between instances
• 🌎If other users only need read-only access to notes, Sharing access using the Sharing" feature is an excellent way to provide read-only access to your notes. You can even make human-readable urls, or password protect the shared notes.
• 📖If you want to prevent other users from accidentally making note changes, you can add a #readOnly (inheritable) attribute to the root note. Note: this does not prevent editing, but rather adds a pencil button that must be clicked before editing is possible.
• 🕶You can archive notes. This 'hides' the notes from search and autocompletes. (This does not prevent access to the notes in any meaningful way)
• 🏢You could potentially setup each 'user' (who are sharing a single credential) with their own workspace. You can then use the cloning feature to link relevant notes into a user's workspace. Remember, this would not prevent each user from accessing other user's work spaces if they wanted to.

Do you know any other tips/tricks?

If you have any other tips/tricks/widgets/etc that make Trilium more usable by multiple users, please let us know!