Data directory contains:

• document.db - document
• config.ini - instance level settings like port on which the Trilium application runs
• backup - contains automatically backup of documents
• log - contains application log files

Easy way how to find out which data directory Trilium uses is to look at the "About Trilium Notes" dialog (from "Menu" in upper left corner):

Here's how the location is decided:

Data directory is normally named trilium-data and it is stored in:

• /home/[user]/.local/share for Linux
• C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Roaming for Windows Vista and up
• /Users/[user]/Library/Application Support for Mac OS
• user's home is a fallback if some of the paths above don't exist
• user's home is also a default setup for docker

If you want to back up your Trilium data, just backup this single directory - it contains everything you need.

If you want to use some other location for the data directory than the default one, you may change it via TRILIUM_DATA_DIR environment variable to some other location:

export TRILIUM_DATA_DIR=/home/myuser/data/my-trilium-data

You need to create a .plist file under ~/Library/LaunchAgents to load it properly each login.

To load it manually, u need to use launchctl setenv TRILIUM_DATA_DIR <yourpath>

Here is a pre-defined template, where you just need to add your path to:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>set.trilium.env</string>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
            <string>launchctl</string>
            <string>setenv</string>
            <string>TRILIUM_DATA_DIR</string>
            <string>/Users/YourUserName/Library/Application Support/trilium-data</string>
        </array>
    </dict>
</plist>

An alternative to globally setting environment variable is to run only the Trilium Notes with this environment variable. This then allows for different setup styles like two document instances or "portable" installation.

To do this in unix based systems simply run trilium like this:

TRILIUM_DATA_DIR=/home/myuser/data/my-trilium-data trilium

You can then save the above command as a shell script on your path for convenience.

It's possible to configure e.g. backup and log directories separately, with following env. variables:

• TRILIUM_DOCUMENT_PATH
• TRILIUM_BACKUP_DIR
• TRILIUM_LOG_DIR
• TRILIUM_ANONYMIZED_DB_DIR
• TRILIUM_CONFIG_INI_PATH

If these are not set, default paths within the data directory will be used.