Frequently asked questions

A markdown editor and note-taking app built on plain markdown files. Your notes live in ordinary folders on your device, in standard syntax any other markdown editor can open. Sync and AI are optional layers that live on top of your existing notes.

No. Notate opens in Guest mode on desktop and mobile, with no sign-in and nothing uploaded. You only need an account if you want to sync across devices or use AI.

Yes. Notate reads and writes ordinary .md files in folders you choose. You can open, edit, back up, or move them with any other tool, and nothing about them depends on Notate being installed.

Desktop apps for macOS and Windows, with Android and iOS on the way. There is also a web app and a command-line tool, both included with the Sync plan.

Yes, and it is not a trial. Writing and organizing notes on your own devices is free, including live preview, wiki-links, tags, search, version history, and trash. Paid plans allow you to add sync across devices and AI capabilities.

Nothing happens to your notes. They are plain files on your device and stay exactly where they are. You keep paid features until the end of the period you already paid for, then the account returns to a normal guest mode editor.

Sync keeps your notes in step across every device and adds access to the web app, the command-line tool, cloud image storage, and optional end-to-end encryption. The AI plan includes all of that and adds the assistant, transcription, AI tools, and semantic search.

Yes. The web app is part of the Sync plan. You can create an account on the web, but opening the app itself needs a Sync or AI plan. The desktop and mobile apps are the free, files-first way to use Notate.

Yes. The desktop and mobile apps read and write files on your device, so everything works with no connection. When sync is on, changes queue locally and go out when you are back online.

In folders you pick on your own device. With a paid plan a copy also syncs to Notate's servers so your other devices can pick it up, but the copy on your disk stays the original you can open in any editor.

Your notes are encrypted in transit whenever they sync. On the Sync plan you can also turn on end-to-end encryption, which encrypts note titles, content, tags, summaries, and transcripts on your device before they reach our servers, so we only ever store text we cannot read. You hold the only key, so keep your recovery phrase somewhere safe.

Any devices you sign into with the same account, across desktop, mobile, and the web app.

No. Notate does not use the content of your notes to train models. AI requests are sent to third-party providers to generate a result, under agreements that limit what they may do with it.

Yes. AI is optional and can be switched off in Settings. Nothing is sent to an AI provider unless you use an AI feature.

Yes, on the Sync plan. Add your own Anthropic or OpenAI key in Settings and Notate uses it, so the provider bills you directly instead of you buying the AI plan. Each key turns on the features it powers: an Anthropic key covers chat, writing tools and image descriptions, and an OpenAI key covers transcription. Semantic search is included either way.

No, and that tradeoff is deliberate. End-to-end encryption means the server cannot read your notes, so AI features and semantic search are turned off while it is on. Keyword search keeps working on your devices.

AI usage is metered in credits. The AI plan includes a monthly allowance that refreshes each billing period, and you can buy credit packs if you need more. Packs never expire and are only used once the monthly allowance runs out.

Meetings, lectures, and quick voice memos. The transcript builds as you speak rather than after you stop, and when you finish Notate turns it into a titled note with a summary and the key points, in plain markdown you can edit like any other note.

The AI plan. Recording and transcription both run on it, and the usage is metered along with the rest of your AI usage.

Yes, on the desktop app. Meeting mode captures your microphone and the audio coming out of your computer at the same time, so a remote call is transcribed in full rather than only your half. It is available on macOS and Windows.

Audio is uploaded so it can be transcribed, and it is processed by a third-party speech-to-text provider under agreements that limit what they may do with it. As with the rest of Notate's AI, your recordings are not used to train models.

The Model Context Protocol is a standard way for AI clients to reach outside tools and data. Notate exposes an MCP endpoint over HTTP, so a client like Claude or ChatGPT can search, read, and organize your notes while you talk to it. You paste a URL and a token into your client's configuration; there is nothing to install and no server to run.

The Sync plan and above. In an MCP session your AI client does the thinking on its own subscription, so connecting Notate does not consume your Notate AI usage. Three things do need the AI plan, because they spend on our side: tag suggestions, summaries, and searching by meaning rather than by keyword. Without it, search still works, it just matches wording.

Only if you allow it. Every destructive action starts switched off and you enable them one at a time in Settings. An action you leave off is not offered to the client at all, so it cannot even propose it. Notes you do let it delete go to Trash and can be restored, and rewrites keep the previous version in history.

No, for the same reason AI features do not. End-to-end encryption means the server stores your notes as ciphertext that only your own devices can read, so a remote AI client has nothing readable to fetch. An encrypted account is refused when it connects, with an explanation, rather than appearing to work and returning nothing.

Each client connects with its own token that you create and can revoke at any time from Settings. A token can be narrower than your account but never wider, so switching an action off at the account level applies to every connected client at once.

Any client that supports the Model Context Protocol, including Claude and ChatGPT, as well as agents you write yourself. Notate exposes a remote endpoint over HTTP rather than a local one, so it works with hosted clients and not only desktop apps.

Most of what the apps can. Create, edit, search, move, tag, and favorite notes, manage folders and workspaces, work with trash and version history, import and export, and run AI queries against your notes. It reads from stdin and writes structured output, so it composes with the rest of your shell.

The Sync plan and above. The CLI works against the same account as the apps, so notes you create in the terminal appear everywhere else.

Yes. Unlike the AI features, the CLI runs on your own machine, so it can encrypt notes before sending them and decrypt them when you read. Your key never leaves your device. It checks your encryption state on every run, so it will not write readable notes to an encrypted account by mistake.

Install it from npm with npm install -g @notatemd/cli, then sign in with notate login. It needs Node.js 20 or newer and runs anywhere Node does, including a server or a scheduled job.