Common Issues

Search Returns No Results

Symptoms: Searching your vault returns nothing, or the AI doesn’t seem to know about notes you’ve definitely created.

Solutions:

Check the index status in Settings > Search — look for the index entry count. If it shows 0 or nothing has been indexed, the vault may not have been indexed yet.
Click Re-index Vault in Settings to trigger a fresh index pass.
If re-indexing doesn’t help, use Clear Index and then Re-index Vault to start from scratch. This can take a few minutes for large vaults.
Make sure your vault path is set correctly in Settings > Vault. If Atlas is pointing at the wrong folder, it won’t find your notes.

Symptoms: Sign-in fails with an error, or the app says your credentials are wrong.

Solutions:

Verify your credentials at atlasnotes.io — try signing in on the website first. If that fails, use the password reset option there.
Check your internet connection — Atlas needs internet access to authenticate.
Sign out and sign back in — go to Settings > Account > Sign Out, then sign in again. This refreshes your session tokens.
If the app shows “subscription expired” or “invalid token”, signing out and back in usually resolves it.

Symptoms: Voice input does nothing, TTS doesn’t play, or “FFmpeg not found” appears in Voice settings.

Solutions:

Check FFmpeg status in Settings > Voice. FFmpeg is required for audio processing.
- Windows: Download from ffmpeg.org and add it to your PATH
- macOS: Run brew install ffmpeg in Terminal
- Linux: Run sudo apt install ffmpeg (Debian/Ubuntu) or your distro’s equivalent After installing, restart Atlas and check the status again.
Grant microphone permissions — your OS may be blocking Atlas from accessing the microphone. Check:
- Windows: Settings > Privacy & Security > Microphone
- macOS: System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Microphone
- Linux: Check PulseAudio or PipeWire permissions
Verify your subscription — voice features require an active Talk plan. Check Settings > Account to confirm your subscription is active.

Symptoms: Atlas crashes immediately, shows a blank window, or refuses to launch.

Solutions:

Windows: Try right-clicking the Atlas executable and choosing Run as administrator.
Windows: Check if antivirus software is quarantining or blocking Atlas. Add an exception for the Atlas installation folder.
macOS: If you see “Atlas can’t be opened because Apple can’t check it for malicious software” — right-click (or Control-click) the app and choose Open. Confirm in the dialog that appears. You only need to do this once.
Linux: Ensure the AppImage has execute permissions: chmod +x Atlas_x.x.x.AppImage
Try deleting the config file and relaunching (see FAQ for the path). This resets Atlas to a clean state — you’ll need to reconfigure your vault path.

Symptoms: Atlas feels sluggish, especially after opening or when chatting. High RAM or CPU usage.

Solutions:

Switch to BGE-small in Settings > Search > Embedding Model. The small model uses about 100MB of RAM compared to 400MB for BGE-base. You’ll need to re-index after switching.
Increase the embedding idle timeout in Settings > Search. Setting this to 20–30 minutes keeps the model loaded when you’re using Atlas actively, but frees memory faster when you step away.
Check your vault size — very large vaults (10,000+ files) can slow initial indexing. Exclude folders you don’t need indexed using the vault exclusion settings.

Symptoms: The context usage indicator in the chat header turns red or orange.

What it means: Your current conversation is long and approaching the AI’s context window limit.

Solutions:

Start a new session — click New Chat to reset the conversation. Important facts from your current session will be saved to long-term memory before clearing.
Let Atlas auto-compact — if you continue the conversation, Atlas will automatically summarize older messages to free up space. Important information won’t be lost.
If you consistently hit the context limit, consider enabling lean context mode (it’s on by default, so this applies if you’ve turned it off).

Symptoms: “Could not connect to Atlas cloud” errors, AI features failing intermittently.

Solutions:

Check your internet connection.
Go to Settings > Account and verify your subscription is showing as active. If it shows “expired” or “unknown”, try signing out and back in to refresh your session tokens.
Check atlasnotes.io for any service status announcements.
If the issue started after a long period of inactivity (hours or days), your session token may have expired. Signing out and back in generates fresh tokens.

Didn’t find a solution here? See Contact & Support.