Dashboard

The dashboard is the first thing you see when you open Ariv. It gives you a bird’s-eye view of your vault — what needs attention, what you’ve been working on, and what’s drifting into the background. Think of it as your personal knowledge command center.

How it works

When no note is open, the dashboard fills the main content area. It pulls live data from your vault’s SQLite database, so everything you see is always current. Click any element to dive deeper.

Lifecycle Overview

At the top of the dashboard, a visual breakdown sorts every note in your vault into one of three lifecycle buckets:

• Active — Notes modified within the last 5 days. These are your current focus areas.
• Inbox — Recently created or captured notes that haven’t been processed yet.
• Background — Notes untouched for 5 or more days. Not forgotten, just resting.

This gives you an instant health check on your vault. A healthy vault typically has a small inbox, a focused set of active notes, and a large background archive.

Tip

If your inbox count keeps growing, consider scheduling a Weekly Review to process those notes.

Action Items

The Action Items section extracts tasks from across your entire vault. Any line in your notes that uses a Markdown checkbox (- [ ] or - [x]) is automatically tracked here.

Each action item shows:

• Status — Pending or completed
• Due date — If one is associated with the task
• Source note — Where the task lives

Click any action item to expand a detail panel showing the full context around the task. From there you can jump straight to the source note to edit or complete it.

Note

Action items are backed by the database, not a separate task file. They update in real time as you check off items in your notes.

Active Notes

A row of cards showing your most recently modified notes. Depending on your chosen dashboard style, you’ll see between 5 and 12 cards at a glance. Each card displays the note title, a brief content preview, and the last-modified timestamp.

Click any card to open that note in the editor.

Inbox Preview

Below the active notes, the dashboard shows the 8 most recent unprocessed notes in your inbox. These are notes that were quickly captured or recently created but haven’t been reviewed or filed yet.

This serves as a gentle nudge — a reminder that these notes are waiting for your attention without demanding it.

Vault Statistics

A summary panel showing high-level numbers about your vault:

• Note count — Total notes in your vault
• Tag distribution — A breakdown of your most-used tags
• Activity overview — Recent editing activity

This is useful for spotting trends over time and understanding the shape of your knowledge base.

Quick Actions

Three buttons for the things you do most often:

• New Note — Create a fresh note
• Search — Open the search dialog
• Quick Capture — Launch the Quick Capture overlay

These are the same actions available through keyboard shortcuts, just surfaced here for convenience.

Dashboard Styles

Ariv ships with six visual styles for the dashboard. Each rearranges and reskins the same underlying data to match your aesthetic preference:

Style	Description
Default	Clean, balanced layout with all sections visible
Classic	A traditional, straightforward presentation
Desk	Sticky-note look with slight card rotation — feels like a physical desk
Terminal	Monospaced, dark theme with a command-line aesthetic
Arcade	Playful, retro-inspired pixel style
Blueprint	Technical drawing feel with gridlines and precise layout

To change your dashboard style, go to Settings > Appearance > Dashboard Style and pick the one that suits you.

Tip

Try the Desk style if you like a more tactile, physical feel. The slight rotation on each card makes the dashboard feel less like a spreadsheet and more like a real workspace.

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Related: Quick Capture — Capture thoughts without leaving your workflow | Weekly Review — Process stale notes from the dashboard