Getting started

The quickest way in is the prebuilt .dmg from Releases, a universal build for Apple silicon and Intel Macs. It isn’t signed with an Apple Developer ID yet, so the first launch needs one extra step: see Opening the app the first time.

To build from source instead, you need a Mac set up for Tauri development.

Prerequisites

Install and run 

git clone https://github.com/sthix/tagdown.git
cd tagdown
npm install
npm run tauri:dev

npm run tauri:dev starts the Vite dev server on port 1420 and opens the desktop app with hot reload.

npm run dev on its own serves only the web UI. It can’t read or write notes, because those calls go to the Rust backend that only exists inside the desktop app.

Build a release 

npm run build
npm run tauri:build

The app bundle lands in src-tauri/target/release/bundle/.

First launch

On first launch Tagdown creates a vault at ~/Documents/Tagdown:

~/Documents/Tagdown/
├── note-<id>.md          # one file per note
├── Archive/
└── .tagdown/
    ├── vault.json        # folders, tag colours, vault settings
    ├── search.idx/       # the full-text search index (rebuilt on launch)
    └── history/          # version history snapshots

Three starter notes are created: Welcome to Tagdown, Tagdown Cheat Sheet, and Your First Note. Open one, switch to Split view (⌘2), and start typing. Notes save automatically.

Next steps