Getting started
Create your first vault
When DocuCasa opens for the first time, it offers to create a vault. A vault is where all your documents will live. It is one encrypted file on your Mac, in Apple's standard disk image format.
You choose three things:
A name. "Home" is a fine choice. The name becomes the file's name.
A location. Anywhere on your Mac works, with one caution. Pick a folder that isn't synced to a cloud service. If your Mac syncs Desktop and Documents to iCloud, choose somewhere else, such as your home folder. (Why?)
A password. This is what encrypts everything, and it comes with an acknowledgment worth reading twice: "If you forget this password, your documents cannot be recovered. Not by you, not by anyone." Choose a password you'll keep.
Click Create, and your vault opens. Empty, for now.
Unlocking and locking
DocuCasa always opens to the unlock screen. Type your password, or turn on Touch ID in Settings › Security and unlock with a fingerprint.
The vault locks itself when you quit, when your Mac sleeps, and after fifteen minutes of inactivity (you can change that in Settings › Security). To lock it yourself, choose File › Lock Vault.
The window
Three panes, left to right. Your folders and tags in the sidebar, the documents in the selected folder in the middle, and every page of the selected document on the right. Click a folder, click a document, read. Or press ⌘K and search for a word inside anything you've ever filed. Most of DocuCasa is those two sentences.
Changing a document's details
Select a document and its details appear beside the preview: date, title, folder, tags, notes. Click one to edit it. Dates here are typed as YYYY-MM-DD, the same way DocuCasa stores them. 2026-03-12 for March 12th.
Where things are
Settings is in the DocuCasa menu, or press ⌘ comma. Scan, Import, and the Maintenance tools all live in the File menu. Help › DocuCasa User Guide opens this guide.