§ ·Sync, privacy and safety

iCloud sync

The same folders and pages on every Mac and iPad, and how Dactylo keeps both versions safe.

How it works

With iCloud Drive on and iCloud Sync on (Settings › Sync and Safety), your folders and pages live in iCloud Drive › Dactylo and stay the same on every Mac and iPad signed in to your Apple Account. While Dactylo is open, changes from another device arrive within seconds.

Open Dactylo on another device and it puts the page you were typing back in the machine, so you carry on where you left off.

Nothing is overwritten

Typing on one device while the page is open on another is fine: the other device shows each change as it arrives. Only if both devices change the same page before they see each other's changes does Dactylo keep both: the other version becomes one page right after yours, titled From another device. Read them both and keep what you want; if you type on that page, it becomes an ordinary page.

The same settings everywhere

With Same Settings on Every Device on (Settings › Sync and Safety), your settings follow you: paper size, margins and line spacing, typing, sounds, the machine's colours, ink, goals, your name for publishers and the rest. Change one on your Mac and your iPad has it a few seconds later. Pages therefore break in the same places on every device.

What stays with each device: the view you are in, how close you are, the manuscript's zoom, the key column, window sizes, the lock and the iCloud Sync switch. Each page's own look (its paper, lines, typeface and tab stops) travels with the page itself.

When you turn it on, the device takes the settings already in iCloud. The first device to turn it on puts its own settings there.

Turning iCloud Sync off

Turn off iCloud Sync to keep your writing on this device only. Dactylo copies your library to the device and you go on writing there; the copy in iCloud Drive stays as it is.

Turn it on again and your writing goes back to iCloud Drive: pages written on this device are added there, and a page changed in both places is kept twice, so nothing is lost.

If iCloud isn't available

If iCloud Drive is off on the device, or you aren't signed in, Dactylo keeps your writing on the device and says so in Settings › Sync and Safety.

Still stuck? Write to support@dactyloapp.com and say which device you use.