The daily note

Every day has one note. It is where the day's loose thoughts go: the standup, the thing your daughter said, the sentence you want to remember. Kept creates it when you start writing and not before, so a quiet day leaves nothing behind.

Open today's note

• iPhone. In Notes, today's note has its own row at the top of the library, marked Today, once it holds any writing. Before that, open the title menu and choose Daily notes, then tap today and Start this day's note. On Today, the same note continues beneath the Top 3, Quick wins, and Habits, with no separate Notes heading. Tap the space to write. Opening Today does not create the note. The first words do, the same as starting a day's note from Notes.
• Mac. On Today, the daily note continues beneath the day's cards and rows, with no separate Notes heading. Opening Today does not put the caret in the note; click the space to write, as on iPhone. In Notes, the library's Today row opens it. If this Mac has not read today's note yet, the page shows it loading until it knows, then opens the note, or a blank page when today has none yet. If it cannot reach today's note, for example offline, it says so and offers Try again instead of a blank page, so a note you wrote on another device is never replaced. Notes itself opens where you left it, or on All Notes, never on an empty page you did not choose.

An empty daily note on Today, iPhone and Mac, is unruled paper with one sentence on it: _This is your daily note space. Jot down ideas and thoughts as they come._ The placeholder does not blink a caret while the note is unfocused. Tap the writing space on iPhone to bring up the keyboard and place the cursor. When nightly filing will run for you (it needs Cloud AI, nightly reflection, Sort my notes each night, and filing turned on for your account), the sentence says Kept will organize your notes automatically every night instead. The sentence sits where your first line will start, steps aside while the note has the keyboard, and comes back if you leave the note empty. It is only a label on the page: it is never written into the note, so it is never saved, searched, synced or filed. VoiceOver still hears it while it is hidden. Today does not show the editor's generic cues on that line. After midnight the space starts again, empty, for the new day.

Opening a daily note on iPhone is read-first. The keyboard stays down until you tap into its writing. A tap on the blank paper under your last line puts the cursor at the end of it without adding anything, and the line you are writing stays above the keyboard from the first letter. On Today, the daily note space is as tall as your writing at every text size, no taller.

On iPhone, past days are headed by their date. On Mac's Today, a past day is headed Daily note with the date beside it.

In Notes on iPhone, the note's save status sits under its title. On Mac's Today, it sits at the end of the page header. Tap or click it for details, and for Retry or Review if a change did not sync. See Save status.

When the saved day cannot be opened

If the saved day cannot be opened, writing already kept on this device stays here. Try again reads the saved day before combining it with your draft. A failed read is not an empty day, so Kept does not replace a day's existing writing with a blank-based draft.

If the saved day changed and the versions cannot be combined safely, the draft stays separate for review. A recovered page keeps its original writing, formatting, and saved base. Use note version keeps the saved version in the note and preserves the original recovered page until the choice is safely accepted. Undo restores the recovered version for review. Local recovery does not mean the draft has synced. See Review earlier writing for availability and limits.

Today's panes and your note

Top 3, Quick wins, and Habits live on Today, drawn fresh from the day, and are never written into the note: typing, pressing Undo, or opening the note from Notes adds nothing to it, so its preview and its search results are your own words.

To keep the day's Top 3 beside your writing, type /three in today's note. A pane you place that way, or one an earlier version of Kept saved into a note, stays where it is and shows the live day. Only panes with content take up space: an empty pane has no heading, count, bar, message, or blank band. On the Today screen, the page's own panes replace any copy inside the note, so each pane appears once.

To-dos and cards in today's note

To-dos you type in the day's note look like the rows in Quick wins and Habits: a rounded square you tick, your words beside it, and a done item struck through in place rather than moved. A to-do that has become a task reads the same as any other row in the day's note; its words still open the task. To-dos in every other note keep their own look.

A card you add with /card (or a link from /page) sits in the day's note like any other block, and the page it shows is a page inside the day's note. Touch and hold it on iPhone, or right-click it on Mac, to Move up or Move down. A Top 3 you placed in the note with /three moves the same way when the note is open in Notes. On Mac every block, cards and panes included, also has a drag handle in the margin when you point at it. See Cards.

Browse other days

Open the title menu and choose Daily notes on iPhone; on Mac choose Browse by date from Notes, or click the date in Today's note header. A month grid opens, from a year ago through the next thirty days, in your Mac's or iPhone's language. A small dot under a day means that day already holds writing. On Mac, arrow keys move by day and week and ↩ opens the selected day.

An empty day shows a calm empty page. Start this day's note creates it and puts the caret in place. Browsing alone never creates anything.

On iPhone a day you open from the grid opens ready to write, with the cursor after your last line, never in front of your first word. Close at the top right puts it away, and the + in the bar above the keyboard adds a block, as in every note.

If an earlier daily note contains Today panes, they show that day's stored record and cannot be changed from the past note. Top 3 shows the dated plan, Quick wins shows what was kept that day, and Habits shows that day's kept marks. A pane with no record is absent rather than showing an empty-state message. Kept never substitutes today's rows for an earlier day.

On Mac, while you are reading another day, the quiet line under the Today heading offers Back to today. Open in Notes is in Today note settings.

Where else it appears

Turn on Daily notes under Show in calendar in the iPhone calendar's source menu, or click the Daily notes pill in the Mac calendar, and a small note mark sits beside any date that already holds writing. Tap it to keep writing, then come back to Calendar. Calendar opens notes that exist; it never creates one.

The assistant can read today's note and append to it: "Add to today's note: the plumber comes Thursday." A connected agent can do the same with your permission. When Sort my notes each night is on, Cloud AI is allowed, and nightly filing is on for your account, Kept copies confident free-text lines and leaves the originals in that day's note. A current iPhone or Mac app has to have opened while you were signed in, or nightly filing stays off. Filed words appear directly in an existing or newly started note, without filing labels or receipt text. Open that note's ⋯ → Changes by Kept to see each filing and undo it. Later edits are preserved. Kept never files more than three copies into a note you wrote in one night. Anything you touch becomes yours. A connected agent cannot yet list those copies. Anything uncertain stays in the day's note. After 72 hours without real use, this cloud filing pauses until you return; see When you are away.

Keep it honest

Daily notes with no writing in them are hidden from All notes, from tag lists, and from counts, on both devices. Nothing is deleted; they simply do not clutter the library. A note with even one heading, image, or table counts as writing and stays visible. A daily note keeps the plain grid when you add a table; tables with properties and views live in ordinary notes and their pages (Tables).

Next: Notes on Mac.

If opening a note is interrupted, Try again reopens it. On iPhone, after you choose an empty day during draft review, tap the blank writing space to place the caret and continue. On Mac, your daily draft stays open with its words until the replacement editor can take them.

While draft review is opening, focus requests and taps on the blank writing space leave the note unchanged. Writing resumes after your choice.