GUIDE

OneDrive, drives and other PCs

OneDrive

You can add a OneDrive folder like any other. Files that are "online-only" (the cloud icon in File Explorer) have to be downloaded for Bibliotaph to read them, so:

When you add the folder, Bibliotaph says how many files are online-only. Files already on your PC are read first.
Online-only files download one by one as Bibliotaph reaches them. If that would leave less than 2 GB free on the drive, it waits, and Settings > Processing says so.
Once Bibliotaph has read a file that was online-only, it hands it back to online-only, the same as File Explorer's Free up space. The book stays in your library and searchable, and opening it later downloads it as usual. That's how a cloud library bigger than your disk gets read, a batch at a time.

That last step is the one time Bibliotaph asks Windows to do something to a file: it only drops the downloaded copy. The file's content, name, place and dates don't change. Files you already had on your PC, files set to Always keep on this device, and a book you have open are left alone. To keep everything downloaded instead, untick Return files to online-only after indexing in Settings > Processing.

Other cloud apps' folders work too, as ordinary folders.

Bibliotaph's own catalog is kept in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Bibliotaph on your PC, never in OneDrive. Don't move it into a synced folder: to use your library on two PCs, see More than one PC below.

USB and external drives

A library folder on a drive that isn't plugged in is shown as offline. Its books stay in your library, with everything you did with them, and stay searchable. Nothing is marked as deleted because a drive is missing.

Open one of its books and the reader says which folder and drive it needs. Plug the drive in and click Try again.

When files move

Move or rename files inside your library folders as you like, in File Explorer or anywhere else. Bibliotaph recognizes them by their content, and the book keeps its card, notes, collections and binder items. That includes ZIPs, image pack folders, and files on USB drives.

If a whole library folder moves for good, say to a new disk, open Settings > Library and click Point to its new place beside it. Its books follow without being read again.

A file that's been deleted stays in your library marked as missing, so nothing you did with it is lost. If it turns up somewhere else in your library, it's matched up again.

Network drives

Folders on a network drive or NAS work, but they're slower to read and are treated as best effort: if the network drops, the folder goes offline like an unplugged drive.

Backups

Settings > Backup has everything:

Back up now… saves a backup file wherever you choose. It starts in the backups folder in Bibliotaph's data folder, where Choose a backup… looks too. Bibliotaph also makes one by itself at the first start of each week, in the same folder, and keeps the last four automatic ones; the ones you save are never deleted. Open backups folder shows them. A copy on another drive, or in OneDrive, survives a failed disk too.
A backup holds your catalog: folders, corrections, collections, binders and notes. Your books aren't in it; they stay where they are. Passwords for protected PDFs and AI keys aren't in it either; Bibliotaph asks again when it needs them. Nor are the sign-ins of Bibliotaph's browser: sign in to your online libraries again after a restore on a new PC.
Include the search index makes backups much larger, but a restored library is searchable straight away instead of after your books are read again.

Choose a backup… then Restore and restart… puts your catalog back as it was. Your current catalog is backed up first.

Export CSV… saves a row per book (title, system, type, levels, publisher, tags, collections and where its file is) for a spreadsheet. Export JSON… saves everything in the catalog, for other programs.

A new PC

Install Bibliotaph on the new PC.
Copy a backup across and restore it with Choose a backup… in Settings > Backup.
Bibliotaph lists your library folders as Found or Not found. For one that's somewhere else now, click Point to its new place; for a drive you'll plug in later, Leave it offline.
Click Restore and restart….

More than one PC

To use your library on two Windows PCs, say a desktop and a laptop, connect each of them to your web library in Settings > Devices: Connect… opens bibliotaph.online in your browser, where you sign in, check the code the app shows and approve the PC. The section then says whose library it's connected to and when it last merged, such as "Last merged from bibliotaph.online at 09:14.", and Disconnect ends it.

What travels: your corrections, hearts, notes, collections, saved searches, binders (with any pages online in them), pins, vocabulary, your own tags with the words they're found by, books you own elsewhere (imported ones too) and your answers in Needs review. A new name the AI proposed is answered once for every device: add it, file it under another term or turn it down on the web or on any PC, and the same card goes from Needs review everywhere, with the books that were waiting on it. Terms you kept apart in Find overlaps stay apart everywhere too. Packs travel as well: files you Pack together, a pack you split, a folder you answered Make a pack or Keep separate for, and the cover you chose for a pack are the same on the web and every PC that has those files. Where two devices made a pack of the same folder by themselves, they settle on one. So do the files you said are the same book (or a new version of one), a file you matched to a book you own elsewhere, and Not the same book, which parts them everywhere. Adventures you mark in a file travel with their pages, levels and everything else on them, and so does removing one; your answers to an adventure proposal and to "You own this elsewhere. Is this its file?" travel too. So does what you chose for each book: the page you used as its cover, Forget its text (and Read it again), a Cataloged wrong… you left open, the collections you said Never to, the cover picture you chose for a book you own elsewhere or the one it was imported with from an online library, and its Ask this book conversation. A book opens where you last left it, on whichever device you read it last. A change reaches the web a few seconds after you make it, and your other PCs within a minute or so. Where two PCs change the same thing, the newer change wins; changes to different things are all kept.

Settings about your library travel between your PCs too: the theme, whether every suggestion goes to Needs review, the page you start on, the Library's order while browsing and searching, Packs or Each file, site icons and how books owned online open. The web library takes the first ones it has (Needs review and the start page); its own Library keeps its order and view in your browser. So do your answers about folders, the folder rules you turned on or off and the collections made from folders, for the web library's folders (on the web and every connected PC) and for a folder at the same place on two PCs.

What doesn't: your library folders, the settings about each device (AI, downloads, backups and where windows were), and the sign-ins of Bibliotaph's browser. Add your folders on each PC. Books are matched by their content, so the same file in a different place on each PC is still the same book.

What the AI found in a book is shared with your web library and your other connected PCs as well, so the same book is read by the AI once, wherever that happens first, and so is the text read from scanned pages. See Connecting a Windows PC.

Bibliotaph used to sync two PCs through a folder you picked, such as one in OneDrive. That's gone: the web library does the same for every PC, and for the web. The files it left in that folder (in Bibliotaph sync) aren't read any more, and you can delete them.

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