Last updated: September 13, 2026
NoteLess is made and sold by Ben Dansby (“we”, “us”). These terms cover your use of the NoteLess apps for macOS, iPhone, and iPad, and this website. Installing or using NoteLess means you accept them. If you don’t, don’t install it — and if you already paid us, ask for a refund and you’ll get one.
Where you got NoteLess decides who sold it to you. Buy the direct download from this site and we are the seller, through Lemon Squeezy — all fourteen sections below apply to you. Buy it on the App Store for Mac, iPhone, or iPad and Apple is the seller: Apple’s terms govern that purchase, there is no license key and no reminder, so sections 1 and 2 don’t apply; payment and refunds go through Apple, so section 3 doesn’t either; and updates arrive through the store rather than from us, though section 4’s promise that fixes are free still stands. Get it through Setapp and your subscription with Setapp governs it: there is no purchase from us at all, so sections 1 through 4 don’t apply, and your access lasts as long as your Setapp subscription does. Sections 5 onward — and section 7 especially — apply to every version.
Buying NoteLess buys you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use it, on as many Macs, iPhones, and iPads as you personally use, for as long as you like. Commercial use is included — notes you write in NoteLess are yours to use at work, in products, and in anything you publish.
A license key is issued to one person or one organization. You may not share, resell, sublicense, or publish a key. Activations are counted, and a key that turns up on unrelated machines may be deactivated.
The direct-download Mac version is not time-limited and holds nothing back. Every feature works, nothing is watermarked, no note is truncated, and no card is locked. What an unlicensed copy does instead is remind you: roughly every tenth time you summon a card, a dialog asks you to buy a license. The reminders don’t stop until a license is entered, but they never block your work and they never touch your notes.
Payments for the direct download are handled by Lemon Squeezy, which acts as the merchant of record and handles taxes. We never see your card details.
If NoteLess isn’t what you wanted, email within 30 days of purchase and you’ll get a full refund. No form, no justification required. Refunded keys stop working at the next validation.
Purchases made on the App Store are refunded by Apple, under Apple’s policy, not ours — we have no ability to issue those. Write to us anyway if something went wrong; we’d rather hear it.
The direct-download version checks for updates and can install them for you. Bug fixes and improvements to the version you bought are free, on every channel. A future major version may be a separate purchase; if it is, that will be said plainly before you’re asked to pay for anything.
Everything you write in NoteLess belongs entirely to you. We claim no rights over any of it, and we never receive any of it. Your notes are a plain JSON file on your own device, and — if you turn iCloud Drive on — in your own iCloud account. There is no NoteLess account, no NoteLess server, and no copy of your notes anywhere we can reach. See the privacy policy for exactly what does and doesn’t leave your device.
This is the one section to read twice. A card you have not pinned is permanently deleted seven days after it was last edited. This is the app’s central feature, not a fault, and it happens automatically without asking you first. Pinning a card exempts it. Deletion is not reversible and there is no trash, no archive, and no backup held by us.
NoteLess is a scratch pad for thoughts you are willing to lose. Do not use it as the only copy of anything you need to keep — not passwords, not records, not work you can’t recreate. If it matters, pin it or put it somewhere built for keeping things. You accept that using NoteLess means notes will be destroyed on this schedule, and we are not liable for a note that expired as designed.
Each card is also hard-bounded: text that doesn’t fit the card is rejected as you type rather than stored out of sight. That, too, is deliberate.
If you turn on iCloud Drive for NoteLess, syncing is performed by Apple’s iCloud service under your Apple ID, and your use of it is governed by Apple’s terms. That service is not ours. We can’t guarantee its availability, and we can’t recover notes that fail to sync, sync late, or are lost by it. A pin, an edit, or a deletion made on one device propagates to your others — including the deletion.
NoteLess is provided “as is”, without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We don’t promise it is error-free, that it works with every configuration of macOS, iOS, or iPadOS, or that it will never lose a note. Keep your own copies of anything that matters to you.
Some jurisdictions don’t allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you; you may have consumer rights that these terms cannot limit, and nothing here is intended to.
To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost data, lost notes, lost profits, or lost time, arising from your use of NoteLess. Our total liability for any claim relating to NoteLess is limited to the amount you actually paid for it in the twelve months before the claim.
Your license ends if you materially break these terms — most obviously by redistributing the app or its keys. You can end it any time by uninstalling NoteLess. Sections 6 through 10 survive the end of the license.
These terms may change as the app changes. The current version always lives at this address with its date at the top, and material changes are called out in the release notes of the version they land with. Continuing to use NoteLess after a change means accepting the updated terms.
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Nothing here removes any mandatory consumer protection you have where you live.
Questions about these terms, refunds, or licensing: ben.dansby@gmail.com. You’ll get a real reply from a real person.