Pergalino
Your notes are files in your own Google Drive or OneDrive.
Pergalino is a Markdown notes app whose vault is a folder you choose — in Google
Drive, in OneDrive, or one of each open side by side. Wikilinks, backlinks, a graph,
kanban boards and a document scanner, on top of plain .md files that
Obsidian, or a text editor, or you in ten years, can open just as well.
--- status: in progress owner: "[[Anna]]" due: 2026-10-14 --- Quote from [[Meier Bedachungen]] is in, see the scan. #haus - [ ] Compare with the second quote 📅 2026-09-19
Roof repair
- status
- in progress
- owner
- Anna
- due
- 14 October 2026
Quote from Meier Bedachungen is in, see the scan. #haus
The left one is the file. It is what is in your Drive, or your OneDrive.
There is no database. There are files.
A folder you already have
Point Pergalino at any folder: in My Drive, one shared with you, one on a shared drive, or one in your OneDrive. That folder is the vault. Nothing is copied anywhere else, and no account is created for you here.
Plain Markdown, nothing invented
[[wikilinks]], #tags, YAML frontmatter, Obsidian's task
syntax. Open the same folder in Obsidian and it works there too. Edit a note
there while Pergalino has it open and Pergalino notices within the minute.
Leave whenever you like
Stop using it and your notes are exactly where they were, in a format that will outlive this app. There is nothing to export, because nothing was ever imported.
What it does
All of it over the same folder of Markdown files, and all of it available offline once a vault has been read.
Drive and OneDrive, at the same time
A vault is one folder in one cloud, and you can have several — some in Google Drive, some in OneDrive, open together in one window, in one sidebar, in one search box. Each keeps its own settings and its own property vocabulary in its own folder, so nothing about one is written into the other. Microsoft accounts work either way: a personal one, or the one your employer or school gave you — and on a work account a folder in a Teams channel can be a vault as readily as one in your own OneDrive.
Links, in both directions
[[wikilinks]] complete as you type, and backlinks sit under every note.
Under those, the links you almost made: dangling links with a button to create the
note, unlinked mentions shown with the sentence they appear in, and related notes
the link graph puts nearby.
A graph of the whole vault
Drawn on canvas, in the sidebar or across the middle of the window. It settles and then stops, so a graph left open does not keep a phone warm.
A board is a note
Three lines of frontmatter turn any note into a kanban over the vault: what view, what to group by, what to filter to. Drag a card between columns and it writes that property on that note. Group by folder instead and dragging moves the file.
Properties with a vocabulary
Declare a vault's property names once and give each a type: text, number, date,
checkbox, a list to pick from, or the notes in a folder. The panel then shows the
control that fits, and due, Due date and
deadline stop being three fields. The vocabulary lives in the vault,
so it reaches every device that opens the folder.
Point your phone at the paper
The scanner finds the page in the camera view, waits for your hand to steady, straightens it, and saves the session as one PDF or as a picture per page, straight into the vault and linked from the note. It also names the file after what the page says, choosing a line that is literally printed on the paper rather than inventing one.
PDFs and pictures render in the note
Not a link to open somewhere else: the app downloads the bytes and draws them itself, so it works in a private window and under a second signed-in account. Docs, Sheets and Slides sitting in the vault preview in place and open in Google's own editor in one click. Word, Excel and PowerPoint files in a work or school OneDrive do the same, through Microsoft's own viewer; on a personal OneDrive Microsoft offers no preview, so those open in Office instead.
Search that means one thing
One query language, in the side panel and in Quick Open: tag:,
path:, property:status=draft, an exact phrase in quotes,
and - in front of any of them to exclude. Ranked, over an index built
on the device. Milliseconds, not requests.
Offline, and installable
The tree and the note text are cached on the device, so a vault opens on a train. Add it to a phone's home screen and it behaves like an app. There is a macOS window too, and in that one a Google Doc is editable in place rather than previewed.
Tasks, in the text
- [ ] Call Hans is the whole storage. A due date, a priority and a
status are picked from the line with @, ! and
% and written as the plain markers Obsidian's Tasks plugin reads. The
Tasks panel collects every one of them across every open vault, grouped by due
date, note, tag or status.
A shopping list that remembers
view: checklist turns the same task lines into a dense list for a
thumb, and typing an item proposes the ones you have bought before —
most-used first, minus what is already on the list. The words live in the vault
rather than in the note, so a fresh list each week starts knowing everything.
Your storage keeps the history
Every revision Drive or OneDrive holds is listed beside the note, with a diff and a way back. Edits from your other devices arrive on their own and merge; only a genuine overlap stops to ask, and nothing overwrites an unsaved draft.
Panes, tabs and a palette
Drag a tab to the edge to split the editor, pin the ones that must stay, and step
back and forward through where you have been. Mod+Shift+P opens a
palette holding everything the app can do, and every shortcut in it can be
rebound.
Files, not just notes
Drop or paste anything into a note and it is uploaded beside it. Pictures and PDFs render in place, a folder can have a note of its own, rows can be coloured by name or path, and moving or trashing a note offers to take its own attachments with it — rewriting the links either way.
Mail that files itself
Label a Gmail thread Pergalino and it arrives as a note in your inbox
folder, attachments included. Move the note into a folder and the thread is
relabelled to match; label a thread Pergalino/Projects in Gmail and the
note goes straight into Projects. Replies are added below whatever you
wrote. Off until you switch it on, one vault at a time.
The guide describes all of it, in the order you are likely to meet it.
What to know before you ask
This is the part most products leave out. Read it before you sign up, not after.
- It is a preview. One person builds it. It changes several times a week and things break. There is no support desk, no uptime promise, and no plan to pretend otherwise.
- Access is manual, and with Google there is a hard ceiling. Google's consent screen is in Testing, which caps signing in with a Google account at 100 test users. Your address is added to that list by hand, by a person, when there is room. If there is no room you wait, and there is no queue position to check.
- With Google, you will re-authorise about once a week. An authorisation granted in Testing mode expires seven days later. It is one tap with your account already chosen, it is every week, and it does not go away until the app goes through Google's verification. Microsoft does not work that way: a OneDrive sign-in lasts about three months.
- Pergalino asks for access to your whole Google Drive. It uses the full Drive scope, not the narrower "only the files you pick" one, so the permission Google shows you is the broad one and you should read it as the broad one. What it does with it: it reads and writes the files in the vault folder you chose. It also watches Drive's account-wide change feed to notice edits, which means it sees that files elsewhere in your Drive changed, and ignores them.
- Pergalino asks for your own OneDrive, and no more unless you ask it to. Microsoft has no per-folder permission at all, so there is no narrower thing to ask for than your own drive — that is what signing in requests, and it needs nobody's approval but yours. A vault in a Teams channel needs a wider permission that reaches everything you can see, and Microsoft treats that one as needing an administrator, so it is asked for separately, at the moment you go looking for a Teams folder, and never otherwise. Either way the app reads and writes the one folder you chose, and unlike Google's the change feed it watches is scoped to that folder, so nothing else is even looked at.
- Gmail is only asked for if you switch the Gmail sync on. Until then nothing can read your mail, and Google's screen asks for Drive alone. Switching it on asks Google for one more permission, to read mail and change its labels, which Google rates as sensitive as the Drive one. The app uses it for the threads carrying your Pergalino label and nothing else: it copies them into notes in your vault and moves the labels when you move a note. It never deletes, sends or archives a message.
- Two things a OneDrive vault does not do. A scan is named after the date rather than after the text on the page — Microsoft has no equivalent of the text recognition that reads a letterhead. And on a work or school account, undoing a deletion is not offered: Microsoft only lets an app pull a file back out of the recycle bin on personal accounts, so rather than a button that fails after the file is gone there is no button. The file is in your OneDrive bin either way, and you can restore it there.
- Google's sign-in screen will say the app is not verified. That is what Testing mode looks like, and it is accurate. Microsoft shows its own consent screen, and on a work or school account your administrator may have to approve it before you can get in at all.
- Your notes are not held here. The app talks to Google and to Microsoft from your browser. The one server involved holds your sign-in, so that you are not asked for it every hour, and nothing else. It never sees a note. The two sign-ins are separate: signing out of one leaves the other alone, and a vault in one cloud is never reachable with the other's permission.
- Nothing to pay, and nothing to cancel. There is no plan, no card, and no trial that ends.
Ask for early access
Leave the address you would sign in with, Google or Microsoft. Somebody reads the list by hand and adds people as there is room.
Your address is emailed to Pascal so he can invite you. There is no database and nothing else about you is kept. No newsletter, no sharing, no cookies. How it is handled.
There is a desktop app.
Pergalino runs in the browser, and on a Mac or a Windows PC it runs in a window of its own as well. Same app, same vault, same sign-in — whichever you open it in is up to you. The one thing only the window can do: a Google Doc, Sheet or Slide sitting in your vault is editable in place there rather than shown read-only, which a browser cannot do at any URL, with any permission.
- You need access before it is any use. It is a window around
app.pergalino.ch, not a copy of it, so it signs in the same way and the same invite list applies. Downloading it does not get you in, and it will show you the sign-in screen and stop. - Apple Silicon, or 64-bit Windows. An M1 Mac or later, or Windows 10 or later on an Intel or AMD machine — and on an ARM PC it runs too, Windows emulating it. There is no Intel Mac build and no Linux build. An iPad reports itself as a Mac and can run none of it, so on a phone or a tablet add the site to the home screen instead: that is the whole story there.
- Both refuse to open the first time. Neither app is signed the way its operating system wants, so both stop you once
and then never again. On a Mac: unzip into Applications, open it, then System
Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down to Security,
and press Open Anyway next to the line about Pergalino. On Windows: unzip the
folder, open
Pergalino.exe, and where it says Windows protected your PC press More info and then Run anyway. - It stays current by containing nothing. The window holds no copy of the app, so a deploy reaches it on its next launch. This download only needs replacing when the window itself changes, which is approximately never.