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Image storage

When you paste, drop, or import an image, Binderus saves it as a real file (or encrypted blob) and inserts a clean Markdown link — no base64 inlining, no bloated .md files. Storage shape adapts to your vault's storage backend.

Pasting an image

Press Cmd V (or Ctrl V) inside the editor with an image on the clipboard — a screenshot, a copied browser image, an image file. Binderus:

  1. Reads the bytes from the clipboard
  2. Determines the storage location (filesystem path or encrypted DB blob — see below)
  3. Writes the bytes
  4. Inserts a relative Markdown image link at the cursor

Filesystem mode (default)

If your vault uses the plain filesystem backend, images go to a date-partitioned folder under the vault root:

<vault>/
├── My Note.md
├── another-note.md
└── _images/
    └── 2026-04-28/
        ├── 2026-04-28-091522-clipboard.png
        └── 2026-04-28-091807-screenshot.png

The Markdown link inserted at the cursor is relative:

![](_images/2026-04-28/2026-04-28-091522-clipboard.png)

Encrypted DB mode (libsql)

If your vault uses the encrypted libsql backend (see Settings → Storage), images go to a sidecar database next to your notes DB — not loose files on disk.

<vault>/.binderus/
├── notes.db          ← your notes (encrypted)
└── images.db         ← image blobs (encrypted, sidecar)

The Markdown link is rendered through Binderus's image abstraction layer, which knows how to load the blob from the sidecar DB at render time. To you it looks like the same ![](...) syntax — the storage path is hidden.

Image toolbar

Hover over an image in the editor to bring up the inline toolbar with these actions:

  • Move to note folder — relocates the image to live next to the current note (instead of _images/YYYY-MM-DD/) and updates the link. Useful for self-contained note exports.
  • Move to… — pick a custom destination folder.
  • Resize / crop — basic image manipulation
  • Reveal in finder — open the source file in your OS file browser (FS mode only)

Supported formats

PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF, AVIF, and SVG. Binderus uses the source format from the clipboard — PNG screenshots stay PNG, JPEG copies stay JPEG. There's no automatic re-compression.

Export and interop

Both storage modes use the same Markdown format on export. When you export from an encrypted DB vault, Binderus dumps every image blob to disk alongside the .md files, rewrites the link paths, and you get a self-contained Markdown bundle that opens in any other editor.

Tip: for git-versioned vaults, the _images/YYYY-MM-DD/ folder is just another tracked directory. Most teams add a single rule like _images/**/*.png to .gitattributes with filter=lfs if their hosts charge per-MB.

Size limits

No hard limits in v1. Soft guidance:

  • Single images over ~10 MB will hurt editor load time — consider compressing (TinyPNG, ImageOptim) first
  • Vaults with thousands of images run fine in DB mode; FS mode depends on your filesystem (modern APFS / NTFS / ext4 are all fine)