---
title: "Trash"
description: "Soft delete backed by the revision log, restore that preserves identity, and permanent cleanup."
---

# Trash

Trash is a safety net for your data: a deleted note doesn't vanish for good — it lands in a list where you can restore it or wipe it permanently. Under the hood it isn't a separate store but a **view over the [revision log](/docs/concepts/versioning/)**: a note counts as "in the trash" when its most recent revision is a deletion. Any save or restore on top of that makes a non-deletion the newest revision, and the note automatically leaves the trash.

A nice property falls out of this approach: you can even restore a note that was deleted **outside** Notarium — for example, with the `rm` command in the filesystem. The log catches those deletions too.

## One unified trash

Trash is a single place for everything deleted: both individual notes and whole [spaces](/docs/concepts/spaces-and-projects/). In the interface these are filter tabs — **All / Notes / Spaces** — with a shared search that's always visible. The mechanics behind them differ, but to you it's a single **Trash**:

- **Notes** are restored back into their space.
- A **space** is restored in full — along with all its own trash and history.

The note list is server-side: pagination and title search scale to thousands of records. Each row shows who deleted the note and when; external deletions are flagged separately.

## Restore

Restoring **preserves the note's identity**. That means it keeps the same stable identifier (`notarium-id`), and along with it the incoming links and history:

- the note returns to its original folder at its last known path;
- the user-defined slug and aliases from previous names are restored, so incoming `[[Old name]]` links resolve again instead of turning into broken links;
- a "restore" revision is written to the log.

> [!warning] Restore never overwrites a live note
> If a different note has already appeared at the target path, the restore fails with an error and leaves the existing file untouched. Sort out the conflict by hand.

You can restore a single note (with the button in its row) or a whole batch at once — via multi-select in the bottom bar or **Select all N**.

## Permanent deletion

Permanent cleanup (**Delete N forever**) irreversibly erases a note's entire history and its associated data. It's only triggered by an explicit action: selecting rows or **Select all N** — with nothing selected, the bottom bar doesn't offer cleanup.

> [!danger] Cleanup is irreversible
> After permanent deletion a note can't be restored: every revision and all content are erased. Soft delete is reversible; permanent cleanup is not.

Trash has no automatic scheduled cleanup (after N days) — only an explicit action from the user.

## Boundaries

- Restorability rests on the revision log. Without the metadata database, history survives only for the lifetime of the process: the trash stays available until the next restart, then disappears — with no error.
- If the body of a deleted note never passed through Notarium and couldn't be read at deletion time, the note will still show up in the trash but be flagged as unrestorable — so you see the boundary right away instead of losing the note silently.

You can open a deleted note by its link as usual — it opens in read-only mode under an **In the trash** banner, with buttons to restore or delete permanently.