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Trash and restore

Deleting moves notes and folders to Trash, where they stay until you restore them — Trash is never emptied on a timer.

Deleting a note or folder moves it to Trash, where you can restore it. Other resources, such as briefs and People records, have different deletion behavior.

Moving things to Trash

  • A note: click the ⋯ next to its date and choose Move to Trash.
  • A folder: right-click it (or open its ⋮ menu) and choose Move to Trash. Banter tells you how many notes and subfolders are inside before you confirm; all of it goes to Trash together.
  • From an AI: when the assistant or a connected AI deletes a note or folder, it goes to Trash the same way. Deleting instructions clears them outright, and deleting a brief removes it permanently. A recording, image, or PDF that an AI’s edit removes from a note is erased on the same schedule as one you remove yourself (see below).

A note in Trash disappears from its folder, from search, and from what the assistant can see, and any pending suggestions for it are hidden until it’s restored.

Opening Trash

Click your avatar at the bottom of the left rail and choose Trash. Deleted folders appear as a tree and deleted notes as a list; select a note to preview it. Trash is read-only: restore a note to edit it.

Restoring

Use Restore from a note’s or folder’s menu, or the Restore button above a previewed note.

  • Restoring a note brings back just that note, in its original folder. If that folder is in Trash too, Banter restores the folder itself as well, but leaves the folder’s other contents in Trash.
  • Restoring a folder brings back the folder and everything that was inside it: its notes, its subfolders, and their notes.
  • If another folder has since taken the same name in the same place, the restored one gets a numbered suffix, like Acme (2), so nothing collides.

How long things stay

Notes and folders stay in Trash until you restore them. There is no empty-Trash button and nothing in Trash expires, so a deleted note is always recoverable, along with the recordings, images, and PDFs inside it. What Banter does erase on its own are files that no note contains any more:

  • Recordings: when no note references a transcribed recording — including notes in Trash — Banter marks it for cleanup and permanently deletes it after a one-week recovery period. Restoring a reference before cleanup keeps the recording. Uploaded recordings that never finish processing are not covered by this cleanup and can remain until account deletion, even after their note block is removed.
  • Images and PDFs: one you remove from a note is permanently deleted within a day, usually within the hour, once no note — live or in Trash — or chat still contains it. There’s no Trash for files removed from a note.

To erase everything, use Delete account in Settings → Account. That removes all your notes, recordings, transcripts, and files from Banter, and cannot be undone.