Welcome to Accent

Accent allows you to work with code, PDFs and drawings in a single workspace, which we call a vault. Its files remain ordinary files, alongside any terminal sessions you open in Accent.

In such a vault, you can use Accent to

• Connect notes and sources. Follow wikilinks, tags and backlinks, embed drawings, and link a selected PDF passage to a note. The link takes you back to the passage.
• Work directly on documents. Annotate and rearrange PDF pages, edit draw.io diagrams on a native canvas, and move between LaTeX source and its PDF with SyncTeX.
• Keep development in the same window. Edit code, run Jupyter cells, review and resolve Git changes, and return to terminal sessions after closing the window.
• Manage references. Edit BibTeX bibliographies, import references by DOI and attach their PDFs.
• Work where the files live. Open a vault over SSH with search, Git and tools running on its host, or let an agent use the vault through the command line and MCP server.

Install and open a vault

Accent supports Linux through native and Flatpak installations, macOS, and an Android companion app.

Download the Flatpak bundle for your machine (x86_64 or aarch64) from the latest release, then install it with:

flatpak install --user accent-<version>-<arch>.flatpak

The same release carries native packages for Ubuntu 26.04 or newer, Debian testing, Fedora 44 or newer and openSUSE Tumbleweed, which install with sudo apt install ./<file>.deb, sudo dnf install ./<file>.rpm or sudo zypper install --allow-unsigned-rpm ./<file>.rpm. On NixOS, nix run github:stroblme/accent builds and starts it.

For a native install on any other recent GNOME Linux system, use the installer:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stroblme/accent/main/install.sh | bash

For macOS 15 or later, download the disk image for Apple Silicon or Intel from the same release and copy Accent.app into Applications. The app is signed ad hoc, so macOS may require you to allow its first launch in Privacy & Security. For Android installation and its available features, see Android app.

Open Accent and choose Open Local… to use a folder you already have, or make a new one in the folder chooser. Accent will show its files in the sidebar and start indexing them for search and links. The files remain ordinary files in that folder.

You can also open a folder from a terminal with accent ~/Notes. See The workspace for the window, tabs and file tree, or start with your first note. For a folder on another machine, see Remote hosts.

The workspace

Each vault is a folder of files, and Accent gives it its own window. Open one with Open Local… from the menu, or use Open Remote… for a folder over SSH. The start screen lists recent vaults, so picking up where you left off is quick. See Remote hosts if your files live on another machine.

Files and tabs

The Files pane shows the vault’s folders and files. Choose New File (Ctrl+N) or New Folder (Ctrl+Shift+N) to add one. To make a note, give the file a .md ending, such as Journal/Wednesday.md. You can type / in a new file’s name, and Accent will make the folders along the way. The Notes page covers links, attachments and templates.

Click a file to open a temporary preview tab. Click another and it replaces that tab, which keeps a quick browse from filling the tab bar. Edit the file, double-click its tab, or click its eye to keep it open. Double-click a tab that is already kept to find its file in the Files pane. You can also pin a tab from its menu, which offers the same file commands as the file’s row in the Files and Git panes. Drag a tab or a file to an edge of the document area to open a split pane. The active pane is the one you last worked in, and Ctrl+Tab walks recently used tabs across every pane in the window.

Hidden files appear dimmed by default, and you can hide them under Preferences → Files. Ignored folders still appear in the tree, but search skips their files until you open them. Markdown files ignored by name remain searchable when their folder is indexed. Opening an ignored text file adds that file to search. Files in dependency trees such as node_modules open read-only, while their top folder can still be moved, renamed or trashed as a whole. You can open a file from outside the vault with Open File… (Ctrl+O), though it will not have vault backlinks.

Find your way

Use the sidebar’s pane icons to switch between Files, Search, Info and Outline. Other panes appear when they apply, such as Git, remote ports or a diagram’s Properties. Press F9 to show or hide the sidebar. Press Ctrl+E to find a file by name, or Ctrl+P to run a command by name. In the same palette, start with # for tags or @ for symbols. The Keyboard shortcuts page has a small cheat sheet. Use Alt+Left and Alt+Right to go back and forward through places visited across the window, including files whose tabs you closed.

Images open fitted to the window, and you can zoom with Ctrl++ or Ctrl+-. For scans and screenshots, Accent can recolour the image to match the theme. You can adjust that in Preferences. For other document types, see PDFs, diagrams, notebooks and code.

Notes

A note is a Markdown file ending in .md. Write in the editor, and Accent saves your changes after a short pause. Headings, lists, tables, task lists, footnotes and math work in notes. For example, - [ ] Pack a notebook makes a task, while $x^2$ adds inline math. Press Alt+X to cycle a task through open [ ], in progress [/] and done [x]. An ordinary list item becomes a task on the first press.

Links and tags

Use [[Trip plan]] to link to another note, or [[Trip plan#Packing]] to link to its heading. Add a label with [[Trip plan|our plan]]. If the note does not exist yet, following the link offers to create it. Accent suggests notes as you type [[, and you can browse the links to and from the current note in Info.

Add #travel in the text to tag a note. You can also put tags and alternative names in front matter at the top:

---
tags: [travel, ideas]
aliases: [Summer trip]
---

Search for an alias in Go to File, or pick a tag from the Info pane. See Search for both.

Paste an image or drop one into a note to copy it into the vault and insert an embed. You can also write ![[map.png]] by hand. Set the destination under Preferences → This Vault → Attachments Folder.

Org files

Accent opens an Org mode file (.org) as a note, with styled markup and spell checking. Its headings fill the Outline and fold, and its links work as a note’s do: [[file:Trip plan.md]] or [[./trip.org::*Packing]] reaches a file, [[*Packing]] a heading in the same file, and F12 or Ctrl+click follows one. A note reaches an Org file as [[trip]]; a note of the same name wins. Heading tags such as :travel: and #+FILETAGS are listed with the note tags, #+TITLE names the file in search, and moving or renaming a file updates the links in Org files too. Ctrl+M opens its preview, and its file menu offers printing and HTML export as for Markdown. The rendered page includes lists, tables, source blocks, quotes, footnotes, images and math. Drawers, planning lines and most keyword lines stay out of the page, and source blocks are displayed without execution. [[id:…]] links are not followed. Use Alt+X to cycle checkboxes through [ ], [-] and [X], or to cycle a heading’s TODO state. Tab aligns a table and moves to the next cell.

Templates

Put .md files directly in the vault’s Templates Folder, which is Templates/ by default. When you create a note with New File, choose a template to fill it in. Insert Template… puts any template at the caret of an open note. You can use {{title}}, {{date}}, {{time}} and {{cursor}} in the template. The first {{cursor}} sets the caret, and Tab moves through any later ones.

Give a template its own destination to use New from Template… (Ctrl+Shift+D):

---
accent-target: Daily/{{date:%Y-%m-%d}}.md
---
# {{date}}

{{cursor}}

Running this command again on the same day opens the existing note without changing it. For a different day, {{date-1}} means yesterday, and {{date+1}} means tomorrow. The accent-target line is only an instruction to Accent, so it does not appear in the new note.

Preview and export

Press Ctrl+M to open the rendered preview in a tab beside the note, or switch between that preview and its editor. Drag the preview into a split pane to read it alongside the editor. The preview follows your edits and lets you follow links and tags. Markdown callouts such as > [!note] A useful detail render as titled blocks. On the desktop, Mermaid fences show their source. Use a search fence to show live vault results in the preview. Right-click a note’s tab or its row in the Files pane and choose Print… or Export as HTML… when you want to share it. The HTML export includes local images, so it works as one file. Printing opens the rendered page in your system browser, whose print dialog can also save a PDF. Accent suggests the rest of a line as faint ghost text, from what your vault has written before. Press Tab to accept it, Ctrl+Right to take one word, or Esc to dismiss it. Turn Ghost Text on or off under Preferences → Editor. The suggestions come from merl, which is built into Accent. To try a merl build of your own, set ghost = ["/path/to/merl-rt"] under [lsp] in ~/.config/accent/config.toml.

Search and info

Press Ctrl+Shift+F to search across the vault. Results include notes, code and other indexed text, plus labels in diagrams, sources in notebooks and the text of PDFs. Choose a result to open its file.

Narrow a search

With the search options off and the replace field closed, words match in any order. Put a phrase in double quotes to keep its words together. Use Filter beside the query to insert a qualifier, or type one directly.

Combine words and qualifiers, for example quantum #research kind:pdf,note -path:Archive. All conditions must match, while comma lists in tag: and kind: accept either value. A leading - excludes a word or qualifier, such as -draft or -#read. There is no OR operator or grouping with parentheses. Qualifiers alone list matching files, newest first.

PDF results

A PDF is listed once for each page that matches, with the page number, such as p. 12. Choosing it opens the PDF on that page with the match highlighted; press F3 for the next match. After a vault opens, Accent reads the text of its PDFs in the background and shows its progress in the status bar, where Stop ends it until you open the vault again. Scanned PDFs without a text layer are not searchable.

Exact search and replacement

The buttons under the query let you match case (Aa), whole words (Word) or a regular expression (.*). Turning on any of them, or opening the replace field, searches the query as text and disables Filter. Use All to search ignored folders too. These extra results appear after the indexed ones, and Replace All does not change them. For a ranked search, this extra walk needs a single word or phrase with no qualifiers. To replace across indexed files, open the replace field and review the count on Replace All before confirming.

For a single open document, press Ctrl+F instead. Type to find, then use Enter and Shift+Enter to move between matches. Ctrl+H opens replacement in the current document. The find bar belongs to its pane, so each half of a split can have a different search.

Saved searches

Put a query in a search fence in a note to list its results in the desktop preview.

```search limit=10
#research -#read kind:note,pdf
```

The list updates when the vault changes and leaves the note holding the query out of its results. Choose a row to open the file, or its matching PDF page. Without limit=, it shows up to 20 rows, with 100 as the maximum. Org notes use #+begin_src search and #+end_src around the same query. Printouts and HTML exports show the query under a Saved search caption. On Android, Show Results opens the query in Browse.

Info and outline

The Info pane (Ctrl+Shift+B) brings related details together. Links shows notes that link to the current file, and its arrow button switches a note’s list to the files it links to. Tags lists tagged notes in the vault. Open Details there for facts such as a note’s word count or a PDF’s page count. The Outline pane (Ctrl+Shift+W) lists headings in the open note, so a long page is easier to navigate. For names of files instead of their contents, use Go to File (Ctrl+E) in the workspace.

PDFs

Open a PDF from Files to read it alongside your notes. Use Find to search its text, or open Outline for bookmarks, comments and page thumbnails. You can drag across text, even across pages, to select and copy it.

Link a passage to a note

Select the passage, then right-click and choose Copy Link to Selection. Paste the link into a note, for example [[paper.pdf#page=1&selection=0,6,0,15|a useful result]]. Accent highlights the passage in the PDF, and clicking the highlight opens the note. Following the link from the note returns to that passage. The highlight lives in the note, so sharing the PDF alone will not carry it. If you need marks in the PDF itself, choose Export Highlights from the page menu.

Draw and arrange pages

Select Drawing in the header to open the tool ring. It offers Pen, Highlighter, Eraser, Line, Rectangle, Circle, Text and Select. The Drawing toggle is remembered separately for each PDF, and a new PDF opens with its tools hidden. Choose a width or colour from the tool’s options. If a stylus is connected, it draws while the mouse selects text. To draw with the mouse instead, turn on Draw with the Mouse in Preferences. Touch drags pan the page, two fingers zoom, and a long press begins a text selection.

Choose Text and click the page to type, then finish with Ctrl+Return, Esc or a click elsewhere. Click text you added with the same tool to edit it again. The tool accepts Latin-1 and Windows-1252 characters, including the euro and typographic quotes.

Choose Select to pick ink strokes or text and pictures added in Accent. Draw a lasso around a group, or click an item to pick it. Ctrl+click adds or removes items, and a selection stays on one page. Drag the selection to move it, use its handles to resize strokes and pictures, or its rotation ring to turn them. Pictures keep their proportions, and typed text can only be moved. Use the tool ring or the page menu to cut, copy, paste, duplicate or delete the selection. The same actions use Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+D and Delete. Arrow keys move a selection by one point, or ten with Shift, and Esc releases it. Colour on the ring recolours selected strokes and typed text. The palette offers the same swatches as Recolour Selection commands.

Paste an image with Ctrl+V, or drop an image file onto the page, to add it to the PDF. Use Select to move, resize, rotate or copy it, including into another PDF.

Use the thumbnails in Outline to move pages by dragging them. Their buttons insert or delete a page, and the page menu offers the same actions. You can also drop another PDF between pages to insert its pages there. Press Ctrl+Z to undo a drawing, text, picture or page edit. Accent saves these edits in the PDF and updates page links in your notes when pages move. To start a blank drawing, use New File, give it a .pdf ending and choose a page size.

Print, export and colours

Use Print… or Export as PDF… to share the PDF with your ink and note highlights. The original PDF stays as it was. The viewer can recolour pages to match your theme, and Invert PDF Colours changes one document’s appearance. You can turn PDF recolouring off in Preferences.

See Keyboard shortcuts for reading and drawing keys. On Android, PDF reading and links work differently.

Diagrams

Open a draw.io file (.drawio, .dio or .drawio.xml) from Files to edit it on a canvas.

Edit the drawing

The tool ring adds rectangles, ellipses, text, connectors and images. Select a shape to move or resize it, or use the Properties pane to change its appearance. Drag a connector from one shape to another to keep them connected as you move things around. Double-click a shape or label to edit its text, then click away to finish. Use Ctrl+click to select several shapes, and Ctrl+Z to undo an edit.

Accent shows a dashed box for a draw.io shape it cannot draw yet. If the diagram uses images from the web, choose Load in its banner to show them.

Pages and notes

The Outline pane lists pages and shows their thumbnails. Click a page to open it, or drag its thumbnail to change the order. Use the thumbnail buttons to add or delete pages.

To show a diagram in a note, write ![[flow.drawio]] for its first page. For a named page, use ![[flow.drawio#Page name]]. Click the embedded drawing to open the diagram.

Share the result

Print… and Export as PDF… include every page. Export as PNG… and Export as SVG… use the current page. Exports use the file’s colours, even if you have inverted the canvas to read it. See Preferences for diagram colours and the grid, or Keyboard shortcuts for canvas controls.

Bibliographies

Accent manages BibTeX and BibLaTeX references in ordinary .bib files. The Bibliography pane appears when one is found in the vault. Choose the file at the top if there are several, or run New Bibliography from the command palette to create one. Opening a .bib tab shows its source and selects it in the pane.

Add and edit references

Choose Add Reference to enter a DOI or DOI URL, paste BibTeX, or fill in an entry manually. Review the metadata before adding it. The Download PDF checkbox optionally tries to attach a PDF as the reference is added. A failed download keeps the reference, and Attach PDF can import a file downloaded elsewhere.

Click a reference to find it in the source, or use Edit Reference from its row menu to edit fields. The source and the pane share autosave and Undo. Accent preserves unrelated fields, comments and formatting. If a file has syntax errors, edit its source before using structured changes.

Cite, check and share

Use a reference’s row menu to copy its citation key, refresh metadata, open its PDF or find usages. Insert Citation writes \cite{keys} into the active LaTeX document and @key for each key into a Typst document. Copy Citation Keys also works when writing in another application.

The pane’s More menu offers Check and Merge Duplicates. Checks identify missing fields, duplicate keys, malformed DOIs and broken attachments. Renaming or merging a key used in another indexed document stops so you can update its citations first.

Copy to Bibliography… and Move to Bibliography… transfer selected references to another .bib file, including their inheritance dependencies. Copies are independent, and attachment paths are adjusted for the destination. Removing a reference keeps its attachment files. These management controls are available on desktop, including remote vaults.

Code editing

Open a source file as you would a note. Accent picks syntax highlighting from the file type and indents new lines as you type. It wraps long lines by default, but Alt+Z toggles wrapping for the current tab.

Navigate code

Open the Outline pane with Ctrl+Shift+W to jump to a declaration. The outline can use Accent’s index while a language server is starting or unavailable. When a server reports foldable blocks, click a gutter chevron or use Ctrl+Shift+[ and Ctrl+Shift+].

Use Shift+Alt+Up or Shift+Alt+Down to add carets on neighbouring lines. Alt+J adds a caret at the next match, and Ctrl+Shift+L selects all matches. For a bird’s-eye view, enable Minimap in Preferences or run Toggle Minimap.

Language servers

Install a language server on the computer that holds your vault. Accent starts a supported server when you open a file. For example, it tries rust-analyzer for Rust, pyright or pylsp for Python, texlab for LaTeX and tinymist for Typst. On a remote vault, install the server on the host. The Flatpak starts a local vault’s servers inside its sandbox, so it does not find the ones installed on your computer.

Completion appears as you type, or you can request it with Ctrl+Space. Choose a suggestion with the arrow keys, then press Tab or Return. Hover over a name for details, or use F12, Ctrl+Shift+Return, or Ctrl+click to go to its definition. The Info pane shows references, while the status bar’s diagnostic count toggles inline messages. Use Quick Fix… (Alt+Return) for a diagnostic’s fixes or Source Action… for actions on the file.

For Python, choose Python Environment in the Code pane to use the vault’s interpreter for analysis, debugging and notebooks. A running program or kernel keeps its interpreter until restarted. Project settings for Pyright’s virtual environment take precedence for language analysis.

To choose a different server, set its command in ~/.config/accent/config.toml:

[lsp.servers]
python3 = ["pylsp"]

You can also set a server for one vault under [vaults."/path/to/vault".lsp.servers]. Without a server, you can still edit, search, and use the indexed outline.

LaTeX and SyncTeX

Accent edits .tex files, and texlab adds language features if it is installed. Build the document with SyncTeX enabled, for example latexmk -pdf -synctex=1 paper.tex. Then use Show in PDF from the .tex tab’s menu to find the line under the caret in the built PDF. To go the other way, Ctrl+click the PDF page or choose Go to Source from its menu.

Both commands need a matching local build with .synctex or .synctex.gz data. They are unavailable for remote vaults and for PDFs whose pages you have rearranged since building.

Typst

Accent edits .typ files with syntax highlighting, and the Outline lists their headings even without a language server. With tinymist installed, it also completes labels and citations, shows errors and builds the PDF whenever you save. The PDF goes beside the main document, the file that includes the one you are editing, so saving a chapter rebuilds the whole document. Open the PDF from the Files pane once, and it reloads after every build. While the main document does not compile, the status bar names it over the tabs of its files. Typst writes no SyncTeX data yet, so Show in PDF and Go to Source stay greyed for its documents.

Lean

Open a .lean file in a Lean project with lake serve available. The Code pane shows goals and the expected type at the caret, while a bar in the gutter shows checking progress. Type an abbreviation such as \to, then press Tab to insert →. These abbreviations also work while the server is still starting. After rebuilding imports, run Restart File in Language Server from the command palette.

To use Helix, Vim or another terminal editor for text files, choose it in Preferences.

Notebooks

Open a Jupyter .ipynb file or a marimo notebook from your vault. Accent shows its code and Markdown as editable cells, with saved outputs below them. You can add, move, split, join, convert, or delete cells from their buttons and More menu. Undo and Redo cover cell changes as well as typing.

Run Jupyter cells

Install ipykernel in the Python environment used by the notebook. Choose its interpreter from Python Environment in the Code pane. This choice is kept for the vault and also applies to Python debugging and language analysis. Accent starts a kernel on the first run, in the notebook’s folder. The notebook must be inside a vault to run.

Select a code cell and press Ctrl+Return to run it. Shift+Return runs it and selects the next cell, adding one at the end if needed. The Code pane has Run All, Interrupt Kernel, Restart Kernel, and Shut Down Kernel. While a cell runs, its Run button becomes Stop, which interrupts the kernel. Outputs and execution counts are saved with the notebook, so they are still there next time.

For another language, such as R or Julia, install a Jupyter kernelspec for it where the vault lives and choose it from Kernel in the Code pane. The kernel must support Jupyter’s ipc transport. Accent keeps that choice for the notebook without changing its metadata.

Code cells also use the code editor’s completion, diagnostics, hover, and Go to Definition. Markdown cells offer note links, completion, spelling and ghost text, although their links and tags do not contribute to the vault’s index or link updates. The Outline and search help you move between cells. Marimo notebooks can be edited here, but run through marimo itself.

Copy and export

Right-click an output and choose Copy Output to copy a picture as an image, or other output as plain text. The notebook’s file menu offers Print… and Export as HTML… with cell sources and saved outputs. Printing opens the page in your browser, where the print dialog can save a PDF. Interactive widgets appear as a description of the output.

Debugging Python

Install Python and debugpy on the computer holding your vault. Accent uses the nearest .venv or venv for your program, or python3 if neither exists. Use Python Environment in the Code pane to choose another detected interpreter for the vault. The choice is shared with notebooks and Python language analysis, and a running debug session changes interpreter only when restarted. If your interpreter lives elsewhere, set it in ~/.config/accent/config.toml:

[debug]
python = ["env/bin/python"]

The path in this example is relative to the vault root.

Start and stop

Open a Python file and press Ctrl+F5 to start debugging it. Accent saves your open changes first, then opens the program in a terminal tab. Preferences → Terminal → Debug Terminal chooses whether it opens behind the source or in a split pane. Click the editor gutter to add or remove a breakpoint, or press Ctrl+F9 on its line. Breakpoints return when you reopen the vault.

The Code pane shows the call stack, variables, watches, and breakpoints when the program pauses. Pick a stack frame to inspect it, or add an expression in Watch to see its value at each stop. Hover over a variable in the editor to see its value.

Use F5 to continue, F6 to pause, and F10, F11, or Shift+F11 to step over, into, or out. Press Shift+F5 to stop or Ctrl+Shift+F5 to restart. The same controls are in the Code pane and the command palette.

Open Debug Console from the Code pane to see adapter messages and evaluate Python expressions. Expressions run in the selected stack frame while the program is paused. Your program’s own input and output stay in its terminal tab.

On a remote vault, install debugpy on the host so the program runs there. The Flatpak cannot debug a local vault yet, though remote debugging works.

Git

When a vault contains a Git repository, the Git pane appears in the sidebar. If it contains more than one, choose the repository at the top of the pane. Accent uses Git on the computer holding the vault, including a remote host. For a folder without a repository, run Initialize Git Repository from the command palette.

Review and commit changes

The pane separates merge conflicts, staged changes and other changes. Click a file to inspect its diff. Use Stage or Unstage on a file, folder or section, then enter a message and choose Commit. If nothing is staged, Commit includes changed tracked files but leaves new files out. Stage a new file first if it belongs in the commit.

Discard restores tracked changes or removes new files, so Accent asks before doing it. The Files pane also marks changed files.

Sync and branches

Choose Sync to pull and then push the current branch. If the branch has no upstream, the button offers Publish instead. Use Sync All beside the repository picker to sync every repository in the vault.

Click the branch name to switch branches, create one or merge another local branch into it. Git checks whether switching is safe and tells you if it refuses.

History and conflicts

The lower part of the pane shows commit history. Click a commit to see its files, then click a file to compare its versions. Choose Load More to see older commits.

If a merge stops on a conflict, open the file under Merge Conflicts. The merge view shows your current version, the result and the incoming version side by side. Take either side or both for each block, or edit the result directly. Then choose Mark Resolved to save and stage it, and commit when all conflicts are resolved. The banner in the Git pane lets you abort a merge or rebase.

See Keyboard shortcuts for Git and merge actions.

Terminals

Press Ctrl+J to open a terminal tab at the vault root. Without a vault, it opens in your home folder. Terminals can share the same splits and tab controls as your documents. Right-click a folder in Files and choose Open in Terminal to start in that folder. In the Flatpak, local shells run on your computer with its installed tools.

Closing a terminal tab with Ctrl+W ends its shell. Closing the window leaves the shell running, and reopening the vault restores its tab and screen. Use Ctrl+Shift+C and Ctrl+Shift+V to copy and paste in a terminal. Most other Ctrl keys go to the shell, so commands such as Ctrl+C work as expected.

In a remote vault, New Terminal opens on the host. Choose New Local Terminal for a shell on your computer, or New Remote Terminal… to connect to another host. If a remote connection drops, press a key in its terminal tab to reconnect and recover the screen.

Terminal editors

Under Preferences → Editor → Text Editor, choose Accent or an installed Helix, Neovim, Vim, Kakoune, Emacs, Nano or Micro. Text files then open in that editor in terminal tabs named after their files. PDFs, images, diagrams and notebooks keep their own views. Read-only dependency files stay in Accent’s editor. Search hits, symbols, definitions and references open at their line, with a column where available. Opening a file already in a terminal editor brings its tab forward without moving its cursor.

The editor runs where the file lives, including on a remote vault’s host, where it must also be installed. The chooser detects local programs, and a remote host uses the editor’s usual command name, such as hx for Helix. If that command is missing, the file opens in Accent’s editor with a message. Closing the window preserves a running editor with the vault’s session. Closing its kept tab asks before ending it and losing any unsaved changes. Use Open in Accent’s Editor from its tab menu to switch back for one file.

While the terminal editor has focus, Ctrl+W, Ctrl+E and Ctrl+J reach it. Use the tab controls or the command palette for Accent’s corresponding actions. Preview, Outline and References need Accent’s own editor. Helix starts with a theme using the terminal’s colours by default. Set editor.true-color = true in Helix’s configuration to use a truecolor theme.

See Preferences for saved commands that run in terminal tabs.

Remote hosts

You need SSH access to a Linux host running on x86-64 or AArch64. Accent uses your system SSH settings, including hosts in ~/.ssh/config, and uploads its helper when you connect. The Flatpak can connect to a host with the same processor architecture as its own build.

Open a vault

Choose Open Remote… on the start screen or in the menu. Enter the SSH host and the vault’s path on that host, then choose Connect. The host field accepts an SSH config alias, and ~ in the path means your home folder there. You can also open a vault with accent ssh://user@host/path/to/vault.

Your files stay on the host, where search, Git, language servers, and notebook kernels run. For Typst, install tinymist on the host from its package or as the static musl build from its GitHub releases, and it builds the PDF there for Accent to open. To search the text of PDFs, install pdftotext (the poppler-utils package) on the host; without it, Accent says once that their text is not searched. New Terminal opens a shell there too; see Terminals for local and other remote shells. Deleting a file from a remote vault is permanent, so Accent asks before doing it.

Forward a port

Open the Ports pane to make a service on either computer reachable from the other. For example, set Local to 8080 and Remote to 8000, then choose Add. Now localhost:8080 reaches port 8000 on the host. Click the arrow between the fields to reverse the direction, or use Stop Forwarding on a row to remove it. Accent restores active forwards after a reconnect.

Reconnect

If an established connection drops, Accent retries and shows the next attempt in a banner. Choose Reconnect Now if you want to retry sooner or need to enter a passphrase. If the first connection fails, choose Reconnect after fixing the problem.

Remove uploaded helpers

Accent stores uploaded binaries in ~/.local/share/accent/server/ on the host, named accent-cli-<hash>. An upload removes unused older builds and retains those still used by running processes.

To remove all uploaded binaries:

1. Let remote terminal jobs finish, then close their terminal tabs. Closing a window alone leaves its shells running.

2. Close all Accent windows connected to that host, including those on other computers using the same SSH account.

3. From a separate local terminal, run the following, replacing user@host with your SSH destination or config alias:

   ssh user@host 'rm -f -- "$HOME"/.local/share/accent/server/accent-cli-*'
   

This removes the uploaded binaries, leaving vault files and indexes in place. Accent uploads its helper again the next time you connect.

Command line and MCP

Use accent /path/to/vault to open a vault, or add a note path to open it too. accent --terminal /path/to/folder opens a terminal there. For a remote vault, use an address such as accent ssh://user@host/path/to/vault. Run accent --help for the other launch forms.

accent-cli can query a vault without opening a window. For example, accent-cli search --vault /home/me/Notes "meeting notes" prints matching lines. Use accent-cli backlinks --vault /home/me/Notes Project.md to find notes linking to Project.md. The tags and stats commands show a vault’s tags and index summary. CLI search accepts the same qualifiers as the Search pane. Quote the query so the shell passes tags and date comparisons unchanged.

accent-cli search --vault /home/me/Notes '#research kind:pdf,note modified:7d'

PDF matches name their page, for example paper.pdf#page=12. PDF text is read in the background while the app or an MCP server keeps the vault open. A one-shot CLI query uses text already indexed.

Connect an agent

Set your agent’s MCP server command to accent-cli with these arguments:

mcp --vault /home/me/Notes --read-only

This starts a local stdio server, and it works while the Accent window is closed. Read-only mode lets the agent search and inspect files without editing them. Omit --read-only if you want to allow its note-writing tools. For a remote vault, run the MCP server on the host beside the files.

To start an agent connected to the open vault, add it under Preferences → Commands and run it from the vault’s window. For Claude Code:

claude --mcp-config '{"mcpServers":{"accent":{"command":"accent-cli","args":["mcp","--vault","."]}}}'

For Codex:

codex -c 'mcp_servers.accent.command="accent-cli"' -c "mcp_servers.accent.args=[\"mcp\",\"--vault\",\"$PWD\"]"

The MCP tools include search, backlinks, tags, code exploration, and diagram rendering. Diagram rendering also needs the Accent app and a graphical display where the server runs.

Explore and read files

Ask explore about names, paths, words, [[links]] or #tags to get ranked source excerpts with line numbers, outlines, links and call paths. Its default code relationships match names within the same language. It quotes call sites and lists implementations or subtypes where the scanner finds them. Set precise to request a language server’s call hierarchy and a trait’s implementations when available.

Comparing the same method with CodeGraph on seven questions about this repository yields following benchmark results:

You can run the benchmark yourself via build-aux/explore-bench.py.

read_note reads Markdown and Org sections, and returns a text file’s etag for subsequent writes. For a PDF, it returns indexed text under page headings without a write etag. A Jupyter notebook returns cell sources by default, while view: "raw" returns its editable JSON and etag. write_note needs the returned etag to replace an existing file.

Jobs and shared terminals

Add --allow-jobs to enable detached command jobs and terminal tools on the machine running the server. Jobs continue after the client disconnects. They start an argument list directly, so shell syntax needs an explicit shell such as sh -lc. The tools can start, list, read and stop jobs, and send literal input to terminals. In read-only mode, only listing and reading are available.

To make a desktop terminal available, right-click it and choose Share with MCP. Use Revoke MCP Access from the same menu to remove that access. Sharing controls Accent’s terminal tools, while clients allowed to run arbitrary commands retain the host user’s normal access. An unattached terminal’s result includes a host-local attach command for taking it up interactively. Finished jobs remain for seven days, with a rolling 16 MiB output tail read by byte offset.

Preferences

Open Preferences from the main menu or with Ctrl+,. Changes take effect in every open window.

Appearance

Choose System, Light, Dark or Solarized under Theme. Solarized follows the system’s light and dark setting. Focus Mode decides how much of the window fades while you write. Choose None to keep everything visible, Medium to fade the bars and sidebar, or High to fade text away from the caret and other panes too. Moving the pointer or pressing Esc brings the controls back. You can also change how images, PDFs and diagrams are recoloured to match the theme.

Editor and files

Text Editor chooses Accent or a terminal editor found by your login shell. Document Font changes the editor’s font, while Preview Font changes the rendered page and its printouts and HTML exports. Until you choose one, the editor uses the system monospace font and the preview uses the system document font. Column Width sets how wide the text can grow, and Full-Width Preview gives wide tables more room. The editor also offers Spell Checking, Word Suggestions, Ghost Text, Line Numbers and a Minimap. See Notes for ghost text and preview use.

Under Files, Show Hidden Files controls names beginning with a dot. Colour Changed Files tints files changed in Git and their folders in the Files pane.

Commands and terminals

Under Commands, choose Add Command to save a name, command line and optional shortcut. Run it by name from the command palette or with its shortcut. It opens in a terminal at the vault root, on the host for a remote vault, and closes after a successful exit. An unsuccessful exit keeps the tab and its output visible. Closing the window leaves a running command available when the vault reopens.

Under Terminal, Debug Terminal places a debugged program’s terminal in the same pane or a split on the chosen side. It leaves the keyboard in the source editor.

This Vault

Set Templates Folder for the templates used by notes. New Files Folder is where New File starts when no folder is selected in the tree. Attachments Folder is where pasted and dropped images go. Leave it empty to store images beside the note, use ./images for a subfolder beside it, or use Images for a folder at the vault root.

Keyboard shortcuts

You can do almost everything from the keyboard. Press Ctrl+P to search commands by name, including commands without a shortcut. For the full list, choose Keyboard Shortcuts from the main menu or press Ctrl+?.

Shortcuts for a PDF, diagram, notebook, terminal or debug session depend on what is in front. The in-app shortcut list shows those keys too. In a terminal editor, Ctrl+W, Ctrl+E and Ctrl+J go to the editor.

Change a shortcut

Open Run a Command… and click the keys beside a command to assign a new shortcut. Press Backspace there to leave it unbound, or choose Restore Default to bring its original keys back. Accent warns you if another command already uses the keys. An unbound command stays in the palette, so you can always find it again.

Android app

Install the APK from the Accent releases, or use Obtainium to follow them. The Android app works with a folder of files on your device, like a desktop vault. Choose that folder on first launch and allow file access when asked. If you keep a vault on several devices, sync its folder with a separate app such as Syncthing.

Find your way around

Tap Browse to open Search, Files, Tags, Links and Command. Swipe between them or tap their chips. Search finds text in the vault, while Files finds names and folders. Search accepts the same words and qualifiers as the desktop. Tap a tag in a note to see its notes in Browse. Links shows which notes link to the document you are reading. On a note, its arrow button switches to the files that note links to. Command includes New Note, Find and Print… when they apply. New from Template… and Today’s Note use the vault’s templates.

Read and write

A note opens as a rendered page. Tap Edit to work on its Markdown, then Done to read it again. Org notes also open rendered and can be edited in their own syntax. For a saved search, tap Show Results to open its query in Browse. Tap a link to follow it, or tap an image to open it on its own screen. You can pinch to zoom an image and use Invert if its colours are hard to read.

Read PDFs

A PDF’s bar offers Find, Contents for bookmarks and Invert for its colours. Pinch to zoom, then drag to pan a zoomed page. Long-press a word to select it, and move the handles to extend the selection. Choose Copy link to paste a passage link into a note; that link makes a highlight in the PDF. Tap a highlight to open its note, then press Back to return to the page. Use Print… in Command to print a note or PDF, or choose Save as PDF in Android’s print screen.

PDF drawing and page editing are currently available in the desktop app. The desktop app also edits draw.io diagrams and provides Git tools.