Upgrading from Canto 0.10

Canto 1.0 is a rebuild. Your notes, folders, tags, chats and settings come along, and a few things are gone. This page says what happens the first time 1.0 opens your vault, what to expect afterwards, and how to go back if you need to.

Before you install#

• Canto 1.0 is a separate download from the beta channel: lonelyduck.io/canto. A copy of Canto 0.10 never updates itself to a beta.
• Install it in place of Canto 0.10, in your Applications folder. Your data folder stays where it is: ~/Library/Application Support/Canto, or the folder you moved it to.
• Once you install a beta, Canto keeps you on beta updates.

The first launch#

The license agreement#

Canto 1.0's license agreement is rewritten (what can leave your Mac, AI answers, Free and Pro), so the first launch asks you to read and agree to it before anything else: The license agreement changed.

A copy of your database#

The first time 1.0 opens your vault, it updates your notes database (to version 62). Before the first change it saves a byte-for-byte copy, still encrypted, in the Backups folder inside your data folder, named pre-migration-v58-<date>.db (the number is your previous version's). Canto keeps the three newest such copies. If that copy can't be made, nothing is changed.

Finishing the upgrade#

The first launch can have one-time work to do: updating the database, turning notebooks into notes, clearing data the old sync left behind, and building the search index. While it runs, the toolbar's status dot says Finishing the upgrade, and its panel lists each step with its progress. All of it happens on your Mac.

What's new in Canto 1.0#

A vault from 0.x skips the six setup steps that a new vault gets and shows a short What's new in Canto 1.0 sheet instead, with a link to the full release notes. It shows once.

Notebooks#

Canto 1.0 has no notebooks. On the first launch, every notebook (including those in the Trash) became an ordinary note:

• Markdown cells became text.
• Code cells became code blocks.
• Each cell's last output became an "Output" block.
• Images a cell produced became attachments.
• Folders, pins, tags, dates, projects and chat references came along.

Before converting, Canto saved every notebook twice, as a .cnb file (the original, which Canto 0.10 can open) and as Markdown with its images and files, under Backups/Notebooks (before 1.0) in your data folder. File › Import › Notebook Backup (.cnb)… brings one back as a note.

Running code inside Canto is gone, and so is its Python runtime. Running arbitrary code inside a notes app was a security risk. If you used Python, Canto offers once to delete the packages it had installed.

What macOS asks again#

Canto 1.0 is signed as a new app (io.lonelyduck.canto; 0.10 was com.canto.app), so macOS asks some questions again. Your notes and settings carry over unchanged.

• Microphone: the first time you dictate or record a meeting.
• Automation: the first time Apple Notes refreshes.
• Documents or Desktop: once, if your Canto data folder is there.
• Keychain: once, about an item Canto saved there. Choose Always Allow.

Apps connected over MCP need their setup again. Canto's MCP server now always asks for its access key, also from apps on your Mac. Copy the setup for each app again from Settings › Connections › Other apps.

Your license#

If you bought Canto before 1.0, you don't need to do anything. The first time 1.0 reaches LonelyDuck, your license moves over by itself, now covers 3 Macs, and includes 12 months of new Pro features from this release. Settings › Account shows "Your Canto 0.x license" with Try again while the move is waiting.

After that, a Mac with Pro checks in with LonelyDuck about twice a week (your license and an id for this Mac, never notes) instead of sending your license key every few minutes. Your license and Macs explains Your Macs and working offline.

What moved#

Your theme's palette is kept the first time you open 1.0.

What was removed, and why#

• Notebooks and running code. See Notebooks.
• Cloud speech-to-text (Deepgram, AssemblyAI) and a hidden browser speech engine that sent audio to Google. Dictation runs on your Mac only.
• MCP automation (screenshots, synthetic clicks and window control through canto_invoke). It let any connected app drive Canto's window. The vault tools stay.
• Turbo mode and the bundled model server. One engine runs local models again, with less memory. If you downloaded Turbo files, Settings shows how much space you can reclaim.
• The old iCloud Drive sync. It kept every edit forever in your database and could lose changes. Attachments that existed only in iCloud Drive were copied back to your Mac first. Once sync through iCloud has finished, Settings › Sync & storage offers to move the old iCloud Drive/Canto/Sync folder to the Trash.
• Vault Manager and the document agent panel. Ask beside a note or a canvas does their work.
• WebM, MKV and AVI files. Audio and video are now read by macOS itself. Canto reads MP4, MOV, M4V, M4A, MP3, WAV, AAC, CAF, AIFF and FLAC.
• The free AI trial of cloud features, replaced by Free and Pro.
• Autocomplete was retired earlier, before 0.10.

Known issues in the beta#

• Sync checks for changes every few minutes rather than instantly.
• Search by meaning understands English only; Korean is found by words. Attachments, canvases and projects are found by words.
• With a model on your Mac, each follow-up message reads the whole chat again, so long chats take longer to start answering.
• Chats from 0.10's canvas agent aren't listed in Ask's history. They stay in your vault, and searching past chats still finds them.
• A deleted folder isn't listed in the Trash. Its notes are, and they restore to the nearest folder that still exists.
• If your only Mac on a Pro · 1 Mac license is gone, write to support@lonelyduck.io to release it.

Going back to 0.10.3#

The copy Canto saved before the update is your vault exactly as 0.10 left it. Anything you wrote in the beta is not in that copy.

To go back to exactly where you were:

1. In the beta, export what you wrote or changed since installing it: File › Export › Markdown… (⇧⌘E) for each note.
2. Quit Canto.
3. Open your data folder. In Finder, choose Go › Go to Folder… and type ~/Library/Application Support/Canto (or use Help › Open Data Folder in Canto before you quit).
4. Move canto.db, and canto.db-wal and canto.db-shm if they are there, into another folder. Don't delete them yet.
5. Copy Backups/pre-migration-v58-<date>.db into the data folder and rename the copy to canto.db.
6. Install Canto 0.10.3 from lonelyduck.io/download in place of the beta, and open it. It may ask for your license key again; it's in your purchase email.

If you open 0.10.3 without restoring the copy, it opens the beta's database and everything you wrote in the beta is there. But each former notebook appears twice (as the notebook, and as the note the beta made of it), the old iCloud Drive sync is off, and 0.10.3 may ask for your license key again. Turn the old sync back on only if you didn't move the iCloud Drive/Canto/Sync folder to the Trash in the beta.

If you turned on sync through iCloud in the beta, your notes stay in your iCloud; 0.10.3 doesn't read them. If you later install the beta again, notes you wrote in 0.10.3 come along, but changes to notebooks made in 0.10.3 don't.