Protected notes, dateModified, and misleading UI

[contributor]

Description

Entering protected session changes date modified for ALL notes in protected tree

This makes the notes that were not actually edited visible in:

• EditedNotes for today
• Search result of note.dateModified=TODAY

TriliumNext Version

0.101.3

What operating system are you using?

Windows

What is your setup?

Local (no sync)

Operating System Version

Windows 11

Error logs

No response

[dosubot]

This behavior is a side effect of how Trilium handles protected sessions. When you enter a protected session, the app reloads all notes in the protected tree to unlock their content, but there is no code that intentionally updates the dateModified field for these notes. However, this reload can cause the UI (and possibly some backend logic) to treat the notes as recently modified, making them appear in EditedNotes and in searches like note.dateModified=TODAY—even if you didn't actually edit them. This isn't an intentional design, but rather a consequence of how the protected session refresh works. There are currently no configuration options or workarounds to prevent this behavior in version 0.101.3. For more technical details, see the relevant code and discussion here.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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[contributor]

I retested and realized that what actually happened was different from what I originally thought.

Here is what really happened:

I was under impression that I was entering protected session, while in reality I inadvertently removed encryption. The UI and language for both "Enter protected session" and "Unprotect tree" is the same

When you select "Unprotect tree" menu item you get this UI:

And when you select "Enter protected session", you eventually get the same UI and language.

So there are two issues:

• When you remove encryption, the should clearly indicates that with a warning sign
• dateModifed is changed when you add or remove encryption - but this is not necessary bug. Though you don't really change plain text content of notes, and dateModified could have remained unchanged for these cases

[arigit]

I'm a trilium newbie but long time user of PKM apps and I bumped into the same confusion, it's currently too easy to remove encryption at rest by mistake. More clear labels and a confirmation would go a long way to address this

[contributor]

it's currently too easy to remove encryption at rest by mistake.

Exactly. I did that by mistake and would not have noticed if I had not found an unusually large number of notes in the Edited Today section.