More honest than a feature list: what is here was checked against QuartzControl while writing this handbook.
What QuartzControl pointedly does not do
It is not an editor. Notes are written elsewhere. QuartzControl reads the content folder and does not touch its content.
It never kills a foreign process on its own. A dev server started by a terminal is listed but stopped only on an explicit decision — see 5.4.
It does not write into somebody else’s vault. If content/ is a
link, importing a
template package skips the content part.
It gives no all-clear it cannot measure. Cannot check, unknown and CSS unchecked are answers of their own and never mean “fine”.
What it cannot do
| Limit | Way out |
|---|---|
| No Windows package — macOS (dmg, zip) and Linux (AppImage, deb) are shipped | — |
| QuartzControl for macOS is not notarised; the first launch is refused | “Open Anyway” under System Settings → Privacy & Security |
| One window only; two projects cannot be open side by side | Switch between them |
| A snapshot does not back up a linked vault | Back up the vault itself |
| Snapshots do not travel with the project | On the second machine the list starts empty |
| Credentials travel with no backup — they live in the keychain | Enter them again on a new machine |
| On Linux without a keychain the encryption is only formal | Set up gnome-keyring or KWallet |
| rsync does not work with password authentication | Key file or SSH agent, see 6.4 |
| Bundled plugins ship no option descriptions | Add values by hand; the names are in the plugin’s repository |
| A frame from a plugin gets no preview | — |
| A component placed more than once can only be hidden together per page type | — |
| Variables a theme sets only inside an element cannot be overridden globally | Custom CSS |
| A theme without colour settings of its own cannot be configured here | Variables or custom CSS |
This handbook is bilingual, the interface around it is not
On an English page of this handbook, “Inhaltsverzeichnis”, “Graphansicht”, “Zuletzt bearbeitete
Seiten” and the search’s labels stay in German. That is not a forgotten translation: Quartz’s
components read the site’s language, not the language of the page they are building — checked in
the built code of the explorer and the backlinks, not guessed. The same holds for the search index,
“last modified”, the global graph and the single 404.html.
One of those can be moved: dates are reformatted in the browser in the page’s language. Everything else takes a build per language — at the price of two addresses.
The handbook of the example template Example shows the same behaviour, so the limit is not this site’s doing.
Where the boundary to Quartz runs
Much of what stands out on the finished page is decided not by QuartzControl but by Quartz or a plugin: what becomes of an Obsidian drawing, which task states survive, how a diagram is rendered, what the explorer sorts by.
Two addresses for that:
- The handbook of the example template Example — it shows, for every element, what becomes of it, and keeps a list of known limits of its own.
- The Quartz documentation.
When something is missing
Help → Send feedback opens a prepared message.