title: The ''run-simple'' sub-command
role: manual
tags: #command #configuration #manual #zettelstore
syntax: zmk
back: 00001004050000 00001012080500 00001018000000
backward: 00001004010000 00001004050000 00001012080500 00001018000000
box-number: 1
copyright: (c) 2020-present by Detlef Stern <ds@zettelstore.de>
created: 20210126175322
forward: 00001003000000 00001004010000 00001004051000
lang: en
license: EUPL-1.2-or-later
modified: 20250627161010
published: 20250627161010
visibility: public

# `zettelstore run-simple`

This sub-command is implicitly called when a user starts Zettelstore by double-clicking its GUI icon.
It is a simplified variant of the [`run` sub-command](00001004051000).

First, this sub-command checks if it can read a [Zettelstore startup configuration](00001004010000) file by trying the [default values](00001004051000#c).
If this is the case, `run-simple` just continues as the [`run` sub-command](00001004051000), but ignores any command line options (including `-d DIR`).

If no startup configuration is found, the sub-command only allows specifying a zettel directory.
The directory will be created automatically if it does not exist.
This differs from the `run` sub-command, where the directory must already exist.
Unlike the `run` sub-command, no other command-line parameters are allowed.

    zettelstore run-simple [-d DIR]