NoteLess
Mac · iPhone · iPadA note is whatever fits on one card.
Summon a card with a hotkey, catch the thought, and let it expire on its own unless you pin it. The same cards follow you to iPhone and iPad.
Or pick it up in a bundle with over 30 other apps. Also available on Setapp.
What it does
Summon, don't switch
Press ⌘⇧Space from any app and a card floats over what you were doing, cursor already blinking. ⌘↩ keeps it, Esc throws it away, and you're back where you were before the thought could get away.
One card, one thought
A note is whatever fits on one card. Reach the edge and the card shakes instead of scrolling; a pasted block trims to fit. Rather let notes grow? One switch in Preferences lifts the limit.
Cards let go on their own
Unpinned cards expire after seven days, or 30, or a year, or never. A card in its last day turns pink, and NoteLess can warn you first. ⌘⇧K pins the few worth keeping.
Markdown, live in the card
Type **bold** or *italic*, or press ⌘B and ⌘I, and the text styles itself with the asterisks out of sight. Dashes become bullets, numbers number, and “- [ ]” is a checkbox you click to tick off.
Every card at a glance
⌘⇧G turns the card into a wall of every card you have, pinned ones on top. ⌘F filters as you type, ignoring case and accents, so “cafe” finds “Café”.
Arrow keys step between cards and Return opens one, even mid-search. Hover a card for Copy, which hands over the whole note as plain Markdown.
Hold ⌥ to dictate
Hold Option and talk; let go and the words land in the card. Speech recognition runs on your Mac, so the audio never leaves it, and your Bluetooth headphones keep playing at full quality.
Quiet in the menu bar
No Dock icon and no main window, just three global hotkeys, each rebindable. Hide the menu bar icon too if you'd rather NoteLess were invisible until you call it.
Synced over iCloud
Cards follow you across Mac, iPhone and iPad under your own Apple ID, with no account to make. Edits from two devices merge instead of overwriting, and each keeps a full copy offline.
Screenshots
On iPhone and iPad
The same cards, in your pocket.
NoteLess is a native iPhone and iPad app too, with the same one-card-per-thought rule, the same 7-day TTL, and the same grid of everything you've pinned or not yet let go of.
Notes sync over iCloud Drive, so a card you jot down on your phone is already on the Mac.
Get NoteLess
On the App Store for Mac, iPhone, and iPad — one purchase covers all three. Or a small, notarized direct download for the Mac. No tracking, no account, no subscription. Buying more than one app? NoteLess is included in my bundles, along with over 30 other apps. Also available on Setapp.
Support
Questions, bug reports, or feature requests? Email ben.dansby@gmail.com and you’ll get a reply, usually within a day or two.
For how-to documentation, see the NoteLess documentation.
Also here: the privacy policy and the terms of service.