Everything it does,
and nothing it doesn’t.

What is available today: the Mac app and the web app. Where this page describes the iPhone or iPad app, that is software that is built and tested but not released yet.

Notes

A rich-text editor built on Apple’s own text engine. Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, headings, bulleted and numbered lists, checklists, blockquotes, inline code, code blocks, links, dividers, tables, images and file attachments, with familiar keyboard shortcuts throughout.

Typing is never blocked by anything else. Saving, search indexing, text recognition and sync all happen after the fact.

Notes live in notebooks — which nest — and carry as many tags as you like. Favourite the ones you keep coming back to. A notebook can have a default template, so new notes in it start the way you want. Deleted notes go to the trash first, and you can put them back. Every note keeps a version history, so a bad edit is recoverable.

Share a note as a read-only link, from the Mac, iPhone or the web — copy it, send it, and revoke it whenever you like. Nobody needs a ClearNote account to read it.

Bringing notes in

Bring an archive in from somewhere else and ClearNote reconstructs your notebooks from your file and folder names, keeps every attachment byte-for-byte, and then proves what it did. Evernote’s ENEX exports work today, as does a folder of Markdown files (Obsidian, Bear’s export, or one you keep by hand), and on the Mac so does Apple Notes, read straight from the Notes app. In a browser, a Google Keep Takeout and a Notion Markdown & CSV export (as a .zip, no unzipping) work too. The verification is the part that generalises. The full story →

Attachments

Images, PDFs, audio, documents, anything. ClearNote stores the original bytes exactly as they arrived, records a SHA-256 hash, and re-checks them after an import. Attachments are separate objects with stable identities, so a large file never puts the note database at risk. Quick Look works on the Mac; thumbnails are generated separately and never replace the original.

Search

A local full-text index over note titles and bodies, tags, notebook names, task titles and descriptions, attachment filenames, text recognised from images, and text extracted from PDFs. Diacritics fold, so searching cafe finds café. Results highlight what matched and say where it matched.

Filters can be typed inline: tag:receipts, notebook:Archive, type:pdf, is:task, is:favorite, has:attachment, after:2020 — and a leading minus excludes, as in tag:house -tax.

Keep a search you run often as a Saved Search: it sits in the sidebar, re-runs any time, and syncs to your other devices.

Scanning and text recognition

On iPhone and iPad the capture button offers Scan Document; on the Mac, File → Scan or Edit Images does the same for photographs already on your Mac. ClearNote uses Apple’s document camera: it finds the page edges, captures when the shot is steady, corrects the perspective, and lets you crop, rotate, reorder and add pages.

Text recognition then runs on device using Apple’s Vision framework — images, screenshots and scanned PDFs alike. The recognised text becomes searchable and you can view it, copy it, or insert it into the note. It never replaces the scan: the scan is the artefact, the text is an index of it.

Tasks and reminders

A deliberately small task system. Inbox, Today, Upcoming, All and Completed. Projects, labels, four priorities, subtasks, due dates with or without a time, and repeats — daily, weekdays, weekly, monthly, yearly, every N of anything, or specific days of the week. Filter by tag, duplicate a task, and see a week on a calendar, rescheduling by dragging; the calendar exports as an .ics file.

Quick Add understands what you type: Call John tomorrow 10am #Work p1. The parsing is local and deterministic — no AI, no network — and it shows you what it understood before you commit.

Reminders on the Mac and iPhone are local notifications, so they fire with no network at all. Complete or snooze straight from the notification. A checklist item inside a note can be promoted to a real task, with a link back to where it came from.

Ask ClearNote

Ask a question in plain language and get an answer grounded in your own notes, with citations you can click through to. ClearNote finds the relevant passages on your device first and sends only those. Exactly what is sent →

On a single note: summarise, explain, rewrite, shorten, expand, or pull out the action items and turn them into tasks. Nothing is ever written into a note without you choosing to.

Optional live web search is available per question, and web sources are always shown separately from your own notes so you can tell them apart at a glance.

Mac and iPhone

Every device keeps a full copy and syncs through your ClearNote account. A note saved on the Mac appears on the phone and in the browser about a second later, in any direction, and every device keeps working with no network at all — changes queue up and reconcile when you are back. When two devices edit the same note, neither edit is discarded: the newer one wins and the other is kept where you can get at it. A task edit that loses a conflict is shown as a Recover lost edit item, so you can review it and keep yours.

If two devices edit the same note while offline, ClearNote keeps both versions: the merge result becomes the note, and the other version is kept in the note’s history with a banner asking you to review it. Nothing is silently overwritten.

Quick capture

On the Mac, a menu-bar panel takes a note, a task, or the clipboard, and searches your library — without opening the main window. On iPhone, one capture button offers a note, a task, a scan, a photo, a picture from your library, or a file. A share extension saves from Safari, Photos and Files in two taps.

Shortcuts and Siri can create notes and tasks, run a search, and show today’s tasks, without putting a window on screen. Widgets show what is due today and start a capture.

Export

Export everything, any time, with no subscription and no network. You get a folder of ordinary files. The format is documented →