Notes
A note is a page the household keeps: the boiler's model number, what the vet said, the plan for the kitchen. The app opens on Home; the Notes tab is one of its five, and most of what the app does — to-dos, questions, people, dates, tags — can be done from inside a note without leaving it.
Where notes live
Notes live in the same folders as to-dos and are chosen the same way: Personal, Work (in your own workspace), the household's own folders. They are the same folders as on Home, where a folder's notes, to-dos and questions show together. The Notes tab shows one folder, the folder chosen on every tab; tap its path in the bar at the top to switch to another, or hold one in that list to rename, move or remove it. A folder's page shows its own notes and its subfolders' together, each of those saying which folder it is in. All notes, at the top of the Notes tab, shows every note across every folder. Under the title, a line offers New note and New folder, and each note's row shows its title, when it was last written, a line of its text, a photo count and a PDF count when it has any, and your reminder on it ("⏰ tomorrow 9:00") when there is one.
Writing
A note is one page of plain text. The first line is its title. What you type is saved after a short pause, so there is no save button and nothing to lose if the phone goes to sleep.
Two people can have the same note open at once. Each one's words are merged into the other's screen as they go, and where both changed the same words, both versions stand for someone to tidy — nothing anyone typed is thrown away. While someone else has the note open, a small badge on the note's top edge names them and says whether they are writing, and a thin line in the text with their name on it shows where their cursor is.
Lines that do something
Certain lines mean something when you leave the note — go back, switch tab, or tap outside the text; your words are saved as you type, but these lines wait, so a half-typed one never acts. A marker has to be at the start of its line.
| Write | What happens |
|---|---|
todo book the MOT | Makes a to-do in the note's own folder. The line is marked "(now a to-do)" so it is not made twice, and completing the to-do writes "(done …)" back onto the line. |
ask @sam: which tile? | Asks Sam a question. ask: on its own asks nobody in particular. The line is marked "(open question)" so it is not asked twice. Questions gather on the Questions screen, and answering one writes "(answered …)" over that mark. |
answer: the grey one | On the line directly under a question, answers it when the note saves: the question's line takes the "(answered …)" stamp and your answer line stays as written. a: is the short form. A blank line between the two breaks the pair, on purpose — the answer means the question right above it and nothing else. |
@sam | Names a person, and makes one the first time that name is used. Typing @ offers the household's people; on a keyboard, the arrows move through them and Tab or Enter takes one. |
[Sep 4, 2026] | A date in square brackets puts the note on that day of the calendar. A plain date in the text is listed with the note's days, but does not put it on the calendar. |
cal: dentist tomorrow | Puts the note on every day the line names, without typing the brackets: when the note saves, the day is pinned and bracketed — cal: dentist [tomorrow (Sep 26, 2026)]. A plain "today" or "tomorrow" anywhere else in a note is just a word: it is not chipped, not rewritten, and not offered for the calendar. In brackets, [tomorrow], it counts. |
remind: tomorrow 9am call the vet | Sets a reminder for you, at that time. A day the app knows and a time, both needed — "remind: 6pm bins" alone means today, or tomorrow once six has passed — and when the note saves the line is marked "(reminder set for Oct 11, 09:00)". A line without a time sets nothing and is left as written. See Notifications and reminders. |
#renovation | Tags the note, for finding everything about one job. |
Nothing is required; a note with none of these is just a note.
Formatting
A note stays plain text: formatting is characters you type at the start of a line, and the note draws them. The characters stay in the text — a note copied out of the app is ordinary Markdown.
| Type | Stored as | Shows as |
|---|---|---|
# and the words | # | A heading |
## | ## | A smaller heading |
- or * | - | A bullet |
[] or [ ] | - [ ] | A checklist box |
| (tap the box) | - [x] | A ticked box, its words struck through |
| two spaces, or Tab | two spaces per level | Nested under the line above, up to three deep |
**words** | **words** | Bold |
# needs its space: #renovation is still a tag. On the line you are writing, the characters show faintly; on every other line you see what they mean. The first line is still the note's title, with or without a # .
Enter at the end of a bullet or a box starts another at the same depth; Enter on an empty one ends the list. Backspace right after a bullet or a box takes the bullet, not the line. On a keyboard, Tab and Shift+Tab nest and un-nest a list line, Cmd/Ctrl+B is bold, Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+7 a bullet, Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+8 a box, Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+H cycles the heading, and Cmd/Ctrl+Enter ticks the box on the line.
A box is not a to-do. A checklist lives in its note and nowhere else — it is never on To-dos, Home or the calendar. Tapping the box ticks it, and the tick reaches everyone who has the note open like any other keystroke. todo stays the tracked kind: it makes a to-do with its own row, its date, its place on Home. To turn a box into one, hold the box and choose Make it a to-do; the line becomes todo … and the note saves.
The bar above the phone's keyboard. While you write on a phone, a thin bar sits on the keyboard's top edge: Heading (once for #, again for ##, again for none), Bullet, Box, Outdent, Indent, then todo, ask (which also opens the people list), @, #, and a date that opens the phone's own picker and writes the day in brackets. Each acts on the line you are on, or at the cursor, and none of them closes the keyboard. A button lights when the line already has that format. On a computer the same bar sits docked under the note the whole time it is open — over the tab bar in a narrow window, along the foot of the note when the app is side by side.
Names written without @. When a note names someone the household already has in People without the @ — "with Priya and Marcus" — a line under the note says so, with Link them, which writes the @ for you so the note reaches their pages.
Beside a todo line the note draws a small box. Once the line has saved, tapping the box completes the to-do right there and writes "(done …)" onto the line — the same completion as the to-do's own row or the note's sheet — and tapping the box of a done line puts the to-do back. Before the line has saved the box is dashed and does nothing: the to-do is made when you leave the note. On a keyboard, Cmd/Ctrl+Enter on the line does the same. Beside an ask line it draws a ?, and an answered question goes quiet. An answer: line sits in under its question.
People and nicknames. Typing @ completes to a person's full name with their nickname in brackets, like @shiyi_liu_(Alice). Either half finds the person afterwards, and a name typed that way makes a person with that nickname.
What a note carries
Under the note's text sit its photos and PDFs, as square tiles you can tap to open — five at most. A note with more shows four and a +N tile, which opens every photo and PDF on a page of their own: tap a photo to open it full size, and Back takes you to the note. Under the tiles is one line that leads with what asks something of you: the note's open to-dos, its open questions, and the next day it names — "1 to-do · 1 question · Thu 9 · +5". The +5 is everything else the note carries, and the + at the end attaches a photo or a PDF. People are never what the line leads with; a name in the note is already there to read.
Tap the line for In this note, a sheet with everything in one place, in this order:
- To do — each to-do the note made, with its box: tick it here to complete it, and "(done …)" is written onto its line at once. Tick it again before closing the sheet to take it back. Tap the words to open the to-do in its list. Each open question has Answer.
- Find to-dos — when the assisted features are on. Find reads the note for actions written without
todo— "Priya to send the Q3 deck", "chase the landlord about the boiler" — and lists them, each ticked, with a rhythm where one is a chore ("Change the air filter · every 3 months"). Untick what is not a to-do and tap Add: a line already in the note becomes itstodoline where it stands, the rest are added at the end, and the to-dos are made at once, linked to their lines like any other. Nothing is added until you tap Add, and one the note already has as atodoline is not offered again. - Photos and files — two rows at most, captions under the photos; with more, the last tile is See all, to the same page of every photo and PDF.
- Days — every day the note names, soonest first, saying how far off it is ("in 3 days", "2 days ago") and whether it is on the calendar or only mentioned. Tap one to open that day on the calendar. A mentioned day has Put on calendar, which writes the brackets round its words for you — "dentist Oct 20" becomes "dentist [Oct 20]". A day that has passed is shown the same way as one to come.
- Reminder — Remind me for this note: a day and time you pick, for you or for everyone. See Notifications and reminders.
- Reach out — every phone number, email, link and address in the note, each with its button: Call, Email, Open or Map.
- Named here — the people and tags in the note; tap one to open their page.
Photos
Attach — the + at the end of the line under the note, or Attach… there while the line has nothing else — opens a sheet with two choices; Photo takes one or picks one from the library. An image pasted onto the note is filed as a photo too. Big photos are fine — they are shrunk on the phone before they upload. Each photo opens full size, swipeable and zoomable.
Each photo can carry a caption — what it is, in your words: "the boiler's plate", "before the tiles went in". Add caption under the open photo writes one, Enter or Save keeps it, and Edit caption changes it; emptied, it is gone. The assistant knows photos by their captions, so "show me the boiler plate" finds the one you named.
When the assisted features are on, a photo also offers Read text, which reads the words on it — a label, a receipt, a whiteboard — and keeps the reading with the photo. A few lines of it show under the photo; tap them to open the whole reading in the same sheet a PDF's text opens in (see PDFs), with its numbers and dates live and the corner button for the whole screen. There, Edit text corrects it by hand, Clear text removes it (and offers the read again), and Add to note puts it into the note.
PDFs
PDF, on the same Attach sheet, attaches a PDF to the note — the boiler manual, the quote, the statement — up to 10 MB. As it is added, the words in it are read on your phone (no assisted feature needed) and kept with the file, so they can be searched and read without opening it.
A PDF sits with the photos under the note, as a tile with its name. Tapping it opens a sheet showing its page count and size and the text read out of it, keeping what the phone could of how it was set — lines set larger become headings, bold and italic stay bold and italic, and a sentence broken across printed lines is joined again — with the phone numbers, emails, links, addresses and dates in it live where they stand: tap the number to call it, the address to map it, the date to open that day on the calendar. A button in the sheet's corner grows it to the whole screen and back, and the sheet ends with Open PDF to see the file itself and Remove PDF, which asks first — a removed file cannot be brought back. A scanned PDF that has no text in it, or one whose fonts the phone cannot read, is kept all the same, and the sheet says so; lines the phone could only read as garbage are left out rather than kept.
Finding notes
Search, on a folder or on All notes, looks through titles, text and the words of any PDFs attached, and understands #tag and @person: #renovation finds everything tagged, @sam everything that names Sam.
Archiving, deleting, moving
A note's archive box (on its row, and at the top of its page) archives it rather than deleting it, and a bar at the bottom of the screen says so with Undo for a few seconds. An archived note sits on a shelf inside its folder, where it can be restored or, only from there, deleted for good. There is no delete button anywhere else, on purpose.
Holding a note offers to move it to another folder, or to another workspace. So does the note's own title: at the top of the note's page the name sits over the folder it is in, and tapping it opens the same choice of places. A moved note keeps its photos and PDFs, and the questions it asked move with it, so they show under the note's new folder on Questions and on Home. So do the open to-dos its todo lines made, when it moves to another folder: a meeting filed under its project takes its action items along.