Notes

Notes is for writing that should still be useful next month: meeting notes, a plan, a list you keep adding to, a thought you want to find again. iPhone and Mac share the same notes, the same folders, and the same links to tasks.

The library

On iPhone Duo held sideways and open, the note list sits beside the wider editor. Ordinary and daily notes open on the editor page, including in the folder-first library. Search in the dock opens Quick Find; View options holds the list scope and sorting, and the note’s Share and More actions live in the dock. Open a note on the closed phone, then unfold: the editor keeps your caret and Undo history. Upright while flat uses the phone navigation. In an upright partial fold, the note stays above the crease and the list sits below it, with rows readable through the lower page down to the dock reservation. With Reduce Motion on, page changes use a fade.

On Duo, Share stays beside More in the dock while you type, including on the cover with the editor toolbar above the keyboard. A short keyboard budget uses compact controls with full touch targets; Back stays above them. The compact running title rests on opaque paper, and a large heading scrolls behind it as a whole line, so its descenders do not peek out below the band. The note uses the native writing page for text selection and accessibility.

On Duo's open spread, choosing an ordinary or daily note changes the native right page immediately, with no snapshot covering the list or hiding the editor. The writing page takes its final position and width when the crease changes, so choosing a row never keeps resizing its text. On the cover, the row opens into the final-width page in one motion, and Back uses the same page measure to return symmetrically to that row. Words keep their line breaks throughout the move. With Reduce Motion on, the cover's opening and closing use a crossfade.

A note opened by a link on Duo goes straight to its writing page, including on the cover and upright. It asks for any missing document through the same protected loading path as a list-row open; it does not wait for a navigation slide that this retained page never makes.

A note whose words are ready prepares behind the cover's list, then grows from its card into the painted writing page. The list stays visible until that page can take over, so the note dock never arrives alone over unprepared paper. A cold note keeps its brief bounded opening hold. On the spread, changing text size or the page's available space alone leaves a closed note closed, with the empty page ready for your next choice.

In a narrow list, All notes stays whole and today's badge moves above its date when the two cannot fit beside each other. The date can wrap onto a second line. Opening the keyboard keeps the upright layout, and folding back keeps your words and Undo history; the first Back returns to the list.

• iPhone. Open the drawer and tap Notes. One title, one menu: tap the title to pick All notes, a folder, or a tag, and to choose the sort. Starred notes have their own section first, and when your list also holds notes you have not starred, those sit under their own All notes heading so a note you never starred never reads as starred. With nothing starred, there is no Starred section and no second heading. Today's daily note follows in its own row, then the rest of the list. Each row shows the note's title and, under it, the words that follow the title, joined by a dot where the note starts a new line. Today's row is titled with the date, so the line under it starts with the first words you wrote that day, on up to two lines at the largest text sizes, and its accent mark sits just inside the card's left edge, clear of the rounded corners. A note that is only its title has nothing to show under it, so its title takes that line and wraps onto a second one instead of being cut short.
• Mac. Click Notes in the main sidebar. That outer navigation sidebar turns into the inner Notes library: Starred when you have them, Today, Recents, All Notes, Daily Notes, Folders, and Tags. Daily Notes is the chronological archive, not a second folder of the same name. The wordmark at the top of that library is Back to Kept. The chevron beside the traffic lights is Back.

On iPhone, Daily notes is always a row in the library, even before you have written a daily note. The list header keeps only the All Notes scope title; when you choose a tag, it adds the useful filtered result such as _6 of 13 notes · tagged investors_. The same holds on iPhone's list menu row and on Mac: All Notes and the other lists show no running count until a folder, tag, search, or filter narrows them, and then the count reads _N of M_. Search counts appear while a search is active even when no tag is selected.

On Mac, All Notes shows your standalone notes plus today's daily note, and earlier daily notes live in Daily Notes, so a year of journal entries never buries your other writing. On iPhone, All notes includes past daily notes too, with today's note in its own row after Starred when present. On iPhone the default sort is Recent: starred first, ordered by when you starred them, then the notes you most recently made, edited on any device, or opened on this iPhone (see Recents); the sort menu also offers Edited, Created, A to Z, Open checks, and a Starred only filter. Starred notes stay above the rest under every sort. On Mac, open a folder, All Notes, Daily Notes, or a tag and the page is a centered library. Updated is the default sort, with Created, Title A to Z, and Manual in a folder you can arrange. Filter combines tags, a linked goal, and notes that have tasks, and shows N of M. Drag a note onto a folder, or onto All Notes to unfile it. Move to folder in the row's menu does the same. Recents keeps what you just made, edited, or opened close at hand.

On iPhone and Mac, Shared with me is a separate section for notes whose view, comment, or edit links you have opened while signed in. Those notes never enter All Notes, folders, tags, your own search, your assistant, or your plan. Kept remembers them on this device for the account that opened them. Signing out or switching accounts removes the previous account's shared list and access from the device.

On a new device with a big library, the newest notes appear first and the rest arrive behind them while you work. Until they have all arrived, counts say Loading notes instead of a partial number, and nothing that has not arrived yet is treated as gone. See A large library on a new device.

Search the list and Kept finds words throughout a note: headings, checklists, code, table cells, links, and subpage names. Subpages appear as their own results with In [parent name] beneath them. Searching a folder or page grouping includes its pages' descendants. Choosing a result opens that exact note. On iPhone, pull down past the top of Notes to open Quick Find with the keyboard ready. It searches note titles and bodies without asking Kept, and Starred, Daily notes, and Open tasks narrow the results when your library has notes in those groups; a filter with nothing in it stays hidden until it would change the answer. The results sit right under the filters, and each result's second line is the note's own words after its title, the same line the Notes list shows, so a note never repeats its title under itself. The filters show their counts only once your whole library has arrived on the iPhone. When more notes match than Quick Find lists, a line at the end of the results says how many it is showing, so you can type more to narrow them. With no notes in your library yet, Quick Find shows the same line as the empty Notes list, _Nothing here yet. Write a note and Kept keeps it._, and while your library is still arriving it says _Loading notes_. Choosing a result grows that note open from its row; with Reduce Motion on, it appears in place instead. The magnifying glass above the list still opens the search field in the rail; Clear search empties it and closes search, so your next tap opens the note you tapped. On Mac, the Notes sidebar already keeps Search notes visible and searches the whole library while you type. Its adjacent menu sorts matches, while the library's folders, tags, Daily Notes, and task filter provide the narrower views, so Notes does not add the iPhone pull gesture there.

On iPhone, every note grows open out of its row, the same move a page card makes: the row becomes the page, its title travels up to become the page's title, and the note's first lines rise into place. Notes in a folder, search results, pages inside pages, today's note and past daily notes all open this way. Back shows the current title and words in the list, including edits you made offline. It folds the page into the row it came from, wherever that row is now; if the row is no longer in the list, the page fades away where it is. While a note is open the list stays exactly as you left it, so Back lands where you tapped; a note you just opened moves up in Recent order the next time you come to Notes. Once the list stops moving, Kept fetches the notes you are looking at, so a tap usually opens straight onto the whole note. If a note's words have not arrived yet it opens anyway, with the words you saw in the list where its first line will be, and the rest appears the moment it arrives; Back works while it loads. With Reduce Motion on, a note appears in place and fades in, and Back fades too.

Recents

Recents is what you just made or touched, on any of your devices. Write a note on your iPhone and it is at the top of Recents on your Mac within a couple of seconds, before you have opened it there. Write or edit one on your Mac and it leads the iPhone's Recent order the same way. A note you open is in Recents too, so going back to something older brings it to the top.

Each note counts by its newest moment: when it was made, when it was last edited on any device, or when you last opened it on this device. Newest first.

• On Mac, Recents in the Notes sidebar shows the eight newest.
• On iPhone, Recent is the default order of the Notes list.
• Starred notes stay in Starred rather than appearing twice, and daily notes stay with Today and Daily Notes.
• A note an agent or a connection wrote for you, or a note someone shared with you, joins Recents once you open it, so a busy agent never crowds out your own writing.
• A note filed into a folder overnight counts as edited then, so a note you captured that day can rise when it is filed.

Which notes you opened is remembered on each device for your account, and a note you delete leaves Recents (Undo puts it back where it was). If a note made on your other device is slow to appear, see Sync, offline, and pending changes.

Folders first, and notes that find their place (iPhone)iPhone

Where it is rolling out, Notes on iPhone opens on one list instead of a title menu. From the top: a line about recent filing when there is one, your tags (All, the five tags with the most notes, and All tags), nonempty groupings (Recent, Starred, Daily notes, and Unsorted when you have at least five notes and a folder), then Folders, the five notes you edited most recently, and See all notes.

Folder rows sit flush with the rest: an icon, the name, and how many notes it holds. A folder with subfolders says what it includes, such as _Includes Fundraising, Hiring_, and its count includes them. Tap a folder to open it; its subfolders list first, then the notes filed directly in it. Tags you pick inside a folder stay with that folder, and Back returns you to the same tags and the same place in the list. Misc is not a folder row: its notes, and notes that were never filed, are in Unsorted. Where it is rolling out, New folder, Rename, New subfolder, and Move to… appear when folders can be changed from the iPhone. Move to… in any folder's context menu or the open folder's actions menu lets you choose a top-level folder or Top level, excludes the folder itself and its descendants, and keeps folders with subfolders at the top; the Library refreshes after the server accepts, and a refused or offline move leaves your folders unchanged. If Notes cannot confirm a move, it says so and checks again when you reconnect, then tells you where the folder is now. Destinations wait for that check before another move. Moving a folder has no Undo; move it back the same way. With VoiceOver, folder rows offer Rename, New subfolder where available, and Move to… as named actions.

Notes also find their own place. When a note clearly belongs in a folder, it moves there and Notes says so: _10 notes found their place · View_. View opens the receipt, grouped by folder. A receipt from automatic filing has Undo filing for each folder; a receipt from Reorganize selected notes has one Undo all. Undo puts back only what still matches, so a note you moved or edited afterward stays as you left it, and the receipt names it, as in _Restored 7 notes. One was moved afterward._ Undo stays available for 30 days. When notes find their place while Notes is open, a toast says so for eight seconds with Undo; VoiceOver reads it aloud, and with Reduce Motion it fades in place.

Tidy now, beside search, runs the same filing right away. It is there when your Intelligence setting lets you ask for it, and absent at On this device. If the server declines, one line says so and your notes stay as they are. In Unsorted, Reorganize selected notes lets you choose notes, including ones you placed in Misc yourself, and files them at once, with Undo. Notes that do not clearly fit a folder stay in Unsorted. On iPhone, Select changes the note rows into choices and Reorganize shows how many you picked. Cancel returns those rows to browsing.

Make a note

Tap New note (+) while you are in Notes and a blank page opens with its title ready to type. On Mac, ⇧⌘N starts a note in the folder you are looking at, and New note in the toolbar does the same.

A new note starts at its name. Type the title, press Return, and you are in the body. Or start from a template: the templates Kept ships come in as ordinary blocks you can edit like any other writing. Their headings stay in search, share, and export. The first words you type into a writing space stay too. In a note you already have open, /template adds the chosen template at your current line without replacing what you wrote. One Undo removes that insertion.

Returning to Kept keeps the note you had open. The keyboard steps aside while you are away, so the first Back tap goes back once and typing starts again when you tap the page.

On iPhone, an open note has a top row of its own and no avatar row above it: Back at the top left, and at the top right one glass capsule holding Share and the note's ⋯ menu. The note's title sits right under that row. Back returns to wherever you opened the note from: the Notes list, the note a card or link was in, search, a pinned note, or a link. A note that opens on its own, such as a task's source note or the daily note's sheet, keeps the same Share and ⋯ capsule and puts itself away with Close instead of Back. Hiding the keyboard only stops typing; the note stays open. A note opens in one move: its header and title land where they stay. With Reduce Motion on, it appears in place and fades in instead of sliding across. If a note's words take a moment to arrive, the words you saw in its row stay where its first line will be until the rest lands, in light and in dark, so a note still loading never reads as an empty page.

Put a picture in a note

Choose Image from the block palette and pick a photo. Kept holds the space the picture will take the moment you pick it, so nothing under it jumps once the pixels arrive.

Or paste one. A screenshot or an image you copied lands under the line you are on and takes the same path as a picked photo, on iPhone and Mac. If the clipboard also holds words, Kept pastes the words.

A picture sits on the page like a paragraph: it starts on the same left edge your words do, with no frame, no tint and no controls around it. On Mac, rest the pointer on the picture, select it from the keyboard, or tab to one of its controls, and a small strip of verbs appears at the picture's top-right. Click the picture itself to open it in Quick Look. Press Return or Space on a selected picture to do the same. On iPhone, tap the picture and it takes a thin outline, with its verbs in the bar above the keyboard. Press Escape, or click or tap anywhere else, and the verbs go again.

The verbs are the same on both, minus one. Alt describes the picture for VoiceOver, and the words under a picture are already its caption, so Kept does not ask you for a second one. Delete removes it, with Undo. Mac adds S, M and L: small, medium, or the full width of the writing column. A narrow picture folds Alt and Delete into More so the strip stays on the picture. iPhone honors the size you chose on the Mac and does not offer to change it, because on a phone's column small and medium have nowhere to go. A loaded picture on Mac opens from a click, Return, or Space, including when the note is read-only. On iPhone, Open in the keyboard bar shows it full size. There the bar reads Alt text, Open and Delete, with Delete in the caution colour, each a full-size target above the home indicator; at larger text sizes, touch and hold a verb to read it enlarged. Alt text opens its field in that bar with the keyboard; Return or Done keeps what you wrote and brings the verbs back, and tapping anywhere else keeps it too.

If a picture cannot load, it says so in the space it already reserved and offers Try again.

Write a note from Today. On iPhone and Mac, this opens a blank note in Notes with its title ready to type. Switching another capture to Note keeps the whole text you entered, including words outside an automatically suggested description. A content field you edited yourself stays as you wrote it.

Tables in notes

A note can hold a table: rows you are tracking, with properties like a status, a date, or a link, shown as a table, a list, or a board. Insert one with /table or Insert → Table, and open any row as a page of its own. A table is part of the note, so it is shared, published, and exported with it, and deleting the note keeps its rows' pages, as it keeps any subpage. Tables covers all of it, including what happens when two devices change the same cell.

Pages inside pages

Any note can hold other notes. A note inside another note is a subpage: an ordinary note with one parent page, so it has its own title, its own words, and its own place in search. Saved subpages stay under their parent in the Notes list while your phone is offline or reconnecting. The parent keeps its page-count chip. Expanding a page keeps its subpages in that page's list card, even when their stars differ. Each starred subpage keeps its own star. Search and filters can show a matching subpage on its own, with its parent named for context.

With typed tables on (see Tables; they are off in public builds), a page attached to a table row stays inside that table instead of appearing again among ordinary pages or Move to page destinations, and on Mac, pages that are in no folder are listed under Pages, above Folders. Search can still find an attached page. If its row or table is removed, the page returns to ordinary Notes. While the table's note has not loaded, Kept keeps the page visible until it can confirm the attachment.

• Make one from inside a note. Type /page (or /subpage) and Kept makes a new page under this one and puts a link to it on your line. /card does the same with a card instead of a link. Page in the insert bar makes one too, and Turn into → Page turns the paragraph, heading, quote, or list you are on into a new page, with its words as the page's title and contents; one Undo puts them back.
• Make one from the list. Choose New subpage in a note's menu.
• Show it the way you want. A page sits in its parent as one of four shapes: Show as Link (a line of text), Small card (a square; a run of small cards sits side by side, up to four in a row), Card (the width of the page), or Wide card (the width of the page with more of the page showing). Choose from the card's menu; one Undo changes it back. Every shape opens its page the same way.
• Find it again. In All Notes, a page with subpages has a disclosure arrow; open it to see what is inside. On Mac, the Notes list does the same wherever you are looking at it: click the arrow beside a page (or press Right Arrow on it) and its subpages sit under it, indented, each opening like any other note. A page you open from a card, a path, or search opens its way in the list, so it is never hidden inside a closed page. Above its own title, each subpage shows the pages it sits in, starting from the top; tap or click any of them to go there. On iPhone the pages between the top page and the parent fold into Show page path; on Mac a path of more than three pages folds the same way. Under its words, a page lists Pages: each subpage it does not already show as a card, a link, or a table row, so a page you made from the list is always one tap away. Search lists every page on its own, with its parent named under it.

Renaming a subpage updates its label in the parent's library preview and export without changing the parent's edit date. If only an older preview is on this device, open the parent once to load its page cards and refresh their names.

A subpage starts in its parent's folder, and after that folders and pages are separate: move a subpage to any folder, or file its parent somewhere else, and neither follows the other. A subpage filed in another folder shows there, and under its parent in All Notes. Folder counts count the notes filed there.

• Move to page… in a note's menu puts it inside another page, chosen from a searchable list that names where each page lives: the page it is inside, or its folder. On iPhone and Mac alike, Top level is the first row when the note is already inside a page. Kept will not put a page inside itself or inside one of its own subpages, and a day's note is not a page you file under. On Mac, the menu is also on a right-click of any note in the list.
• Make top-level takes a subpage out of its parent and leaves it where it is filed.
• Pages nest up to eight levels. A page eight levels down takes no new subpages, and Move to page… won't put a page anywhere that takes it deeper than that. Kept says so, _Pages nest up to eight levels. Add this one higher up._, instead of doing nothing. Pages already deeper stay as they are and keep their whole path.
• Removing a card or link never deletes the page. The page stays in Notes, under its parent.
• Deleting a page keeps its subpages: after the Undo moment passes they become top-level notes, and their own subpages stay with them.
• Sharing a page shares that page only. Its subpages stay private: a published page shows their titles as plain words, and people you invite into a note see each subpage's card as Not shared with you (Edit a note together).
• Duplicating a page copies that page only, next to it in the same folder.

Linking to a page you already have, with a note link or a card, never moves it. A card for a page that is not inside this one shows a small link symbol and reads as Linked page. If the page was deleted, or you no longer have access to it, its card says Page unavailable.

Folders and tags

Folders are places; tags are threads that run across places. A note lives in one folder and can carry any number of tags. A tag chip counts the notes shown in the current scope, including when a selected tag stays beside the five most common tags. Searching can also find tagged subpages within that scope.

Kept can suggest a tag for a captured note, but only when your own words name a subject. It never invents one. Add or remove tags from the note's tag control any time. A daily tidy pass standardizes capitalization and spacing on tags and merges exact duplicates; it never removes a tag because it is missing from the text.

On Mac, switch the library to Manual order from its menu and drag folders into the order you want; the default Recent order sorts itself. Nested folders stay expanded together as you browse.

The Library and notes that find their place, on MacMac

Availability: The Library column and notes that sort themselves are arriving gradually. If Notes on your Mac still opens with the library in the main sidebar, they are not on for your account yet.

The Library. With the Library on, Notes on Mac has three columns: the Library, the list, and the note. The main sidebar stays your way around the app. The Library starts with All notes, Recent (edited in the last seven days), Starred, Daily notes and Unsorted, with empty groupings hidden. Unsorted appears only when you have at least five notes and a folder. Notes without a folder do not wear a status badge. Folders come next. A folder with subfolders has a disclosure arrow, and every folder sits flush with the rows above it, so a folder without subfolders is not pushed in. A parent's count includes its subfolders. Misc is not listed under Folders: what is in Misc shows in Unsorted. Tags shows the five tags with the most notes where you are, then All tags… to search the rest. Tags narrow the list; choose two and only notes with both stay.

The list. Click a folder and the list shows its notes, then one section for each subfolder; click a section's name to open that subfolder. Search with ⌘F looks only where you are, and Search all notes widens it.

Keyboard. In the Library, the up and down arrows move between rows. The right arrow opens a folder, then steps into its first subfolder. The left arrow closes an open folder, then steps back to its parent. Return opens the row. Tab moves to the list, where the arrows move between notes. The selected row is filled only in the column that has the keyboard.

Folders. Right-click a folder for Rename, New subfolder and Move to…. Subfolders go one level deep, so a subfolder's menu shows New subfolder dimmed with that reason. When folders can't be changed right now, those three are left out of the menu and + leaves the Folders heading; they come back later on their own.

Notes that find their place. When your Intelligence setting lets notes sort themselves, a note that clearly belongs in a folder goes there, and one that doesn't stays in Unsorted. Tidy now, above the list, runs that pass at once. It is not offered at On this device. If your setting keeps it off, one line says so and your notes are unchanged.

Receipts and Undo. When notes move, a line above the list says how many, such as _10 notes found their place · View_. View opens the receipt in the window, grouped by folder, with Undo filing for each folder. Undo puts back only what still matches, so a note you moved or edited afterward stays where you put it, and the receipt says so. Undo stays in the receipt for 30 days. While Notes is in front, new moves also show for eight seconds at the bottom of the window with Undo; while that shows, ⌘Z undoes those moves and nothing else. Moves that happened before you opened Notes on this Mac wait in the receipt line instead of raising a toast.

Reorganize selected notes. In Unsorted, choose Reorganize selected notes, pick notes, including ones you placed in Misc yourself, and choose Reorganize. They find their place at once, with one Undo all in the receipt and the eight-second Undo.

Star a note, or pin it to the sidebar

These are two separate lifts. Star note keeps a note at the top of Notes, in the Starred section, and follows your account across iPhone and Mac. On iPhone, swipe left on a note or use its menu. On Mac, right-click the note, use its … menu or Edit, or press ⌘D; the same shortcut unstars it. The first time you do it, Kept explains, _Starred notes stay at the top of Notes._ The small information button beside Starred explains both choices.

Pin to sidebar puts the note under Pinned in the main navigation sidebar, one click from anywhere in the app. On iPhone that is the navigation drawer; on Mac it is the outer Kept sidebar you see outside the Notes library, and Edit carries the same action for the selected note. Use Unpin from sidebar to remove it. The first time, Kept explains, _Pinned notes live in the main sidebar, one click from anywhere._ A sidebar pin never stars the note, and a star never adds a sidebar pin. Existing old-style Notes-list pins become stars; existing main-sidebar pins stay pinned there.

The rest of a note's menu is sentence case: Open note, Move to folder, Copy link, Copy as plain text, Delete note. A daily note has no Rename or Move to folder, because the day names it.

Delete a note

If a note contains subpages, deleting it first asks you to confirm and explains that its immediate subpages become top-level pages; their own pages stay inside them. Undo restores the page and those parent links. A subpage whose changes have not synced stays on this device, including when a refresh confirms its parent was deleted.

Delete a note and Kept offers Undo for a moment before the removal syncs. Let it stand and the note leaves your account on every device, along with its revision history. Only you can delete your notes, and deleting one never touches another. Kept keeps a copy of each deleted note for 30 days in a Trash only you can open, then removes it; deleting your account removes that Trash at once. Opening the Trash to restore a note comes to the iPhone and Mac apps in a later update.

Share a note

Tap Share in the note's top row (on Mac, the Share button beside More, or Share… in More). The sheet has three tabs: Share, Publish, and Export, with Done beside them to close the sheet from any tab. On iPhone and Mac, the first opening waits for sharing readiness with a brief skeleton. Once ready, Share and Invite people appear in the same session, without reopening Kept. If sharing is unavailable, the sheet opens on Publish and offers Export too. If sharing becomes available while that sheet stays open, Share and Invite people appear without closing it. A tab you choose yourself stays selected.

• Share is where you invite people to edit the note with you. Type their email addresses under Invite people; a comma, a space, a semicolon, or Return turns each one into a token you can remove, and an address Kept cannot send to is marked Check this address. Choose Invite. Up to 100 people per note. People lists you as the owner, then everyone in the note, then each invitation as Invited; the menu on a row removes someone or cancels an invitation. The access row says who can open the note, Only invited people, and Copy link copies the note's link, which opens only for people in the note. How sharing works explains the rest. Someone you invited sees the same list, can copy the link, and can Leave note; only the owner invites people or publishes. A daily note stays yours: its Share tab says so, and Publish and Export work as usual. While shared notes are not available for your account yet, the sheet shows Publish and Export only, and opens on Publish.
• Publish puts the note on the web. It shows a live preview of the page, with its title and opening lines, and how many pictures and highlights the page will carry. Publish makes the link and copies it. In your Personal space Kept asks once before it publishes, Publish from your Personal space?, and choosing Publish there puts the note up and copies the link. Once it is on the web, the tab shows the link with Copy link, a Let search engines find this switch that starts off, and the link's menu to change what readers may do or revoke it. Anyone with the link can read the note; comment and edit links require the reader to sign in, and links you made before Publish existed stay listed under Other links. The page keeps the note's structure: a numbered list keeps its numbers, a blank line stays blank, and a callout keeps its color, with a label that follows the color, so a Tip or Important callout reads Note on the page. Previews, search results, and exports likewise follow the words currently in the note instead of an older copy of a changed line. Revoking blocks new requests immediately, though it cannot recall a copy someone already saved.
• Export writes the note out as a PDF, Markdown, or Plain text, and Print sends it to a printer. The PDF is US Letter pages that open with the note's name, then its words, in Kept's own typefaces. The PDF and the printed page are the same page. A PDF carries the pictures Kept can load; one it cannot shows _This image isn't available._ with the picture's description. Before you export, Kept says This page only: pages inside the note are linked, not included, and the links open in Kept for people with access to those pages. In Markdown and Plain text a picture appears as its description and a Kept reference, not the picture itself, and private download links are never written into the file.

Markdown and plain-text exports begin with the note's title. Markdown uses current subpage names and keeps line breaks inside table cells within the same row. Page links remain Kept links; exporting a parent does not export its private subpages.

The opening Publish preview keeps a table's header and cells together as a table. It shows a short opening preview, so longer tables continue on the published page.

The note's ⋯ menu still has Export for a quick Markdown, plain text, or PDF copy.

An edit link lets people read and comment, but not edit, once you invite people into the note. The Publish tab explains this even after those people leave. Comments show on the web page for that link, not in Kept yet.

A newly published link shows its address with Copy link and Open link. After reopening the sheet, choose Show link in its menu to reveal the address again. If Kept cannot recover an existing address, choose Make a new link; the previous link stays active until you revoke it. If publishing is unavailable, the sheet says that no link was made. A document brought in through document import (such as a PDF) is read-only, so a link on it can be Can view or Can comment but never Can edit: Kept refuses that role, both when you publish and when you change a link, instead of handing out a link whose edits would all be turned away. The page keeps showing pictures as the note stands now, so a picture you add after publishing appears on the page without publishing again.

Open a note shared by link

On iPhone and Mac, open the kept.do/d/ page and choose Open in Kept for a view or comment link, or Edit in Kept for an edit link. Sign in with your Kept account if you have not already. The app opens the shared note with the access carried by that link. The link decides what you may do:

• A view link opens the note for reading. Editing and commenting controls are not shown.
• A comment link keeps the note read-only and offers an action to comment on the note.
• An edit link opens the note in the editor. Its title stays read-only. Body changes save to the shared note, never to a copy in the owner's or recipient's ordinary notes library.
• Once the owner invites people into the note, an edit link can read and comment but not edit, even after the invited people leave: its page offers Open in Kept, and Kept opens the note without an editor instead of taking changes it could not save.

If Kept is not on the device, Open in Kept and Edit in Kept continue to Kept's page on the App Store. Safari also shows the App Store banner on that shared page.

The note then appears under Shared with me, separate from notes you own. Kept refreshes it when it opens, when the app returns to the foreground, and periodically while the note stays open, so another person's saved changes appear without moving the shared note into your library.

The link is the access credential. Kept keeps it only in the device Keychain for the signed-in account. It never appears in logs, analytics, crash reports, or another URL. Only the shared title and body, the owner's display name, the link role, and the information needed to keep that shared body current reach the recipient. The owner's folders, private task connections, extraction details, and other private note fields do not.

If the owner revokes the link, or Kept cannot recognize it, the note does not fall through to an owned-note error. It says: _This link no longer works. Ask the owner to share it again._ Once Kept confirms that access is no longer active, it removes that link's saved body, retained writing and Keychain credential from this device, including after an app restart. If the device is locked and its Keychain cannot remove the credential yet, Kept keeps an empty cleanup record and retries when you unlock, reopen or refresh the app. A temporary connection failure, a busy service or an unrecognized error keeps the retained writing and credential so you can try again.

A recognized retry returns the same saved comment instead of posting it again, including after its original block is deleted. Kept still checks your current access. Comments keep working while service and data store updates arrive in either order; see Shared note privacy.

Keep private details when sharing

When shared-note privacy protection is enabled, invited people receive the shared writing, checklist state, link labels and table values. Private source text, import details and private picture or page references stay with the owner. Before protection is enabled, those saved details can still accompany an invited note, so share notes whose saved content you are ready to share. A reference does not grant access to a separate task, picture or page. See Shared note privacy.

Where notes show up elsewhere

• Calendar shows a quiet link to an existing daily note on its date, so a day you wrote about is one tap away from the day you planned.
• Tasks can link a note as reference, and a checkbox written in a note becomes a real task, except in a note you share with people, where checkboxes stay a shared checklist (Edit a note together).
• The assistant, with Cloud AI on, can search your notes by keyword or by meaning, read one in full, and append to today's daily note. It never moves a note into or out of a page on its own. The background context Kept prepares for it from your notes uses their saved words, and a note you emptied does not bring back its older text. If Ask Kept tries to change a shared note in a way that would make it larger than 1 MiB, it says _This note is too large. Your changes were not saved._ and the note stays as it was; a smaller change can still go through.
• A connected agent (MCP) can make a subpage, list a page's subpages, and move a note into another page when you ask it to. When it reads or searches your notes, it gets their saved words, including table cells and the picture descriptions you wrote. It can also list the notes shared with you or by you and who is in each one, and it cannot rewrite a shared note's words. Where Tables is on, it can read a table's properties and rows and change them, and it cannot flatten a table by rewriting the note's words (What your agent can do).

Nightly filing, when it is on for your account, adds the filed words directly to the destination note as ordinary content. It does not add a maintenance label, filing header, summary receipt, or Earlier heading. Existing filing labels are hidden in the editor and list previews, while the filed words remain editable. An agent's byline does not appear in the note or its list row.

On iPhone and Mac, a note with filing history has Changes by Kept in its ⋯ menu. Each entry records when the filing happened and the blocks it added, with Undo for that change. Undo removes unchanged filed blocks while preserving later edits; a change that cannot safely be undone says so. A note without filing history has no Changes by Kept entry. The original writing stays in the day's note. Editing a filed copy is an ordinary edit. A device that has not received a copy keeps it alongside edits retaining an existing line; replacing every line stays as saved. Filing leaves shared notes and notes containing tables alone. The server records each copy's source, time and original blocks. Older apps keep working without opening filing history, and a connected agent cannot yet list those copies. Stored historical labels may remain until cleanup. Filing still respects your Intelligence choices and filing limits. Kept can continue to file, summarize, and organize when you ask.

Retained writing in shared notes

Your shared-note edits are kept on this device before Kept tries to deliver them. _Kept on this device. Not delivered yet._ confirms local recovery, not receipt by another person. If Kept cannot keep an edit, keep the note open and try again.

When typed words cannot be matched safely to the current note, typing and remote updates stay held while you review. Your draft or Your full draft lets you inspect earlier chosen writing and original unplaced words. Copy full draft copies their words. Use latest version on a shared link, or Use note version in a member note, makes an explicit choice in the existing editor. Undo returns that choice to review; Redo restores it. A later conflict does not replace an older unresolved draft. See Review earlier writing for the candidate's availability and limits.

An edit-link receipt can instead confirm Your edit was saved and replaced newer words. That edit reached the shared note, and the receipt stays through refreshes until a later save without a replacement. The owner sees Replaced by a collaborator with the displaced words and can Restore them as a new change. Dismiss hides that replacement notice on this device. See Review words replaced by a collaborator for the candidate's availability and limits.

Ordinary sign-out preserves retained edits in account-scoped local storage. On return, Kept checks current access before showing shared recovery. View-only access hides the edit proposal; confirmed loss of access removes that grant's recovery from view and starts local removal. A temporary connection failure does not discard it. Private child pages appear as Private page without private titles or bodies. See Your account before explicitly discarding local work.

Edit a note together

Availability: Editing a note together is arriving gradually while we finish it. If your share sheet shows only Publish and Export, it is not on for your account yet. Publish and Export work as before either way.

Invite people into a note and you write it together, live, on iPhone and Mac. Everyone sees the others' cursors with their first names, and what anyone types reaches everyone else in about a quarter of a second. How that looks while you write is in Writing together.

Invite. In a note you own, open Share, type email addresses under Invite people, and choose Invite. Kept tries to email each person, but the email may not arrive; copy the invite link and send it yourself when one is offered. When Kept has the saved binding details, each manual link and its copied confirmation say who can join: the verified invited email, the selected Kept account, or anyone with an older bearer link. If those details are unavailable, Kept asks you to send it only to the intended person. Keep bearer links private. The email uses your first name, such as _Sam invited you to a note in Kept_, the note's title, and an Open the note button. The email never carries the note's words. An invitation works once and expires after 14 days. Send again sends a fresh one, once a day and up to three times, and Cancel invite ends it. A note holds up to 100 people, counting invitations not yet accepted, and Kept limits how many invitations one account sends in a day. An invitation that bounced reads Didn't arrive. Every invitation email has a link to stop note invitations from Kept.

Restricted invitations open only for the verified invited email or the account the owner selected. A forwarded restricted link does not let another account join. The invitation in Shared with you follows the same identity: an account-bound invitation appears for the selected account, even when its email was delivered to another address. Owning the delivery address alone does not reveal the note. If an invitation does not open, ask the owner to invite the email your Kept account uses. Sign in with Apple may use a private relay address. Kept does not silently link the addresses. An older invitation keeps its original bearer access; the first account to redeem that link joins. Keep those links private. While the identity update is being installed, newly issued invitations can still use this older recorded mode. Cancel an older invitation and send a restricted one after the update to change that access.

If this note cannot be shared, the sheet says so. Daily invitation limits say to try tomorrow; an invite already sent today also waits until tomorrow. An invite sent three times cannot be sent again. A temporary connection or sign-in service failure keeps Share available to retry.

Before inviting. Kept finishes syncing the note first. If it still has changes to sync, the invitation waits and the sheet explains why. Your words stay in the note. If one of the note's changes could not sync at all, the sheet asks you to review that change before sharing. A note stays marked as shared after Kept restarts and on your other devices, so its checkboxes stay a shared checklist. Once shared, the note shows Shared beside Share when nobody else is present; live avatars take its place when people join. If you have not set a display name, your owner row reads You.

If an invitation could not be emailed, its row reads Email not sent. The sheet offers a link you can copy and send yourself. Trying Send again never invalidates the link you already copied when no email leaves Kept. Anyone who opens an invite link can join the note, so send it only to the intended person. If the link is no longer available in the sheet, cancel the invitation and invite again to get a link you can send. When today's sends are used up, the resend item reads Email not sent · try tomorrow, without claiming that an email was sent.

Join. Someone who already uses Kept also finds the invitation at the top of Notes: Sam invited you · Open. Someone new opens the email's link, gets Kept for iPhone or Mac, and makes a free account with the address the invitation went to; Kept then offers Open note. If they sign up with a different address, such as Hide My Email, they go back to the invitation page and tap Open in Kept. Shared notes need Kept 1.9.2 or later on iPhone or Mac. There is no web editor for them.

Pictures in a shared note currently show for the owner only.

What everyone in the note can do. Edit the note's words, tick its checkboxes, see who is there, copy its link, export or print it, and leave. People in a shared note can edit a table's rows, properties, and views, though a row's page keeps its own sharing (Share a table). Only the owner invites or removes people, publishes, renames, moves, or deletes the note, or adds pages to it, and Kept's editing and organizing AI actions stay off for the people it was shared with. Notes shared with you sit under Shared with me at the top of Notes, with who shared each one and when it last changed. They stay out of your own notes, your search, your assistant, and your plan.

Questions about a note

Questions about a single note are limited to its owner and active collaborators who can comment or edit, with Cloud AI consent from both the owner and the person asking. A published view, comment, or edit link alone never gives access to Kept's AI. Note questions are not currently offered in the iPhone or Mac sharing interface or as an MCP tool.

A shared checklist, not a shared task. A checkbox in a shared note belongs to everyone in it: anyone can add one, change it, or tick it, and everyone sees it at once. Checkboxes in a shared note do not become tasks for anyone. Every shared checkbox has the same plain checklist appearance. A checkbox the owner had already made into a task keeps its stored link without showing a task chip, and ticking it in the shared note changes only the note; the task stays as the owner left it. When you return to Kept on iPhone or Mac, it checks which notes you shared on another device before applying task updates to their checkboxes. You can keep typing while it checks. Sharing a task itself, so it shows in someone else's Tasks or Today, is not in Kept yet.

Pages and daily notes. Sharing a note shares that note only. The pages inside it stay yours: people in the note see each page's card as Not shared with you. A daily note can't be shared: its Share tab reads _Daily notes stay yours. Publish or export this one instead._

Older versions. Editing a shared note takes Kept 1.9.2 or later. If you open a note you shared in an older version of Kept, you can read it, but what you change there is not applied to the shared note; Kept offers Keep a copy for it, so your words are not lost and nobody else's are overwritten.

Remove, leave, delete. Remove from note takes someone out at once: they lose the note, and the words they wrote stay. Leave note does the same for you. If you had edits that had not reached the note yet, Keep your unsent edits saves the words you typed as a private note of your own; it never copies the rest of the note. Deleting a shared note asks Delete for everyone? and says who will lose it. The people in it then see that the owner deleted it, with the same offer to keep their unsent words.

Offline. Owners and invited editors can keep writing in a shared note on iPhone and Mac, with or without Tables enabled. _Offline · saving your edits on this iPhone_ (or _this Mac_) means the latest edits are still being kept locally. _Offline · your edits are saved on this iPhone_ (or _this Mac_) appears only after those edits receive a durable local receipt. It does not mean they reached the shared note. After restarting, Kept resumes sending retained shared edits when a connection returns, even if you do not reopen that note. A lost server response is reconciled so the same edit lands once. If Kept cannot save locally, it says Couldn't save your edits on this iPhone (or this Mac) and asks you to keep the note open and try again. If Your unsent edits is also shown, the storage warning stays visible alongside that draft and its Keep a copy and Discard actions. An earlier receipt never marks later typing as saved. You can keep typing while earlier shared edits wait to send. Newer local saves do not add a connection retry delay. If Kept cannot place words safely, it keeps them under Your unsent edits, with Keep a copy. Recovery belongs to the signed-in account; another account cannot read or send it.

Copy link copies the note's own link. It opens the note for the people in it: the page behind it leads with Open in Kept, and if Kept is not installed it offers the iPhone and Mac downloads. If the note isn't yours, the page says to ask the owner to invite you, and it says the same thing for every link, so it never reveals whether a note exists.

Next: Writing in the editor.

When note organization is enabled for your account, Undo restores the prior automatic tags as well as the prior folder when those choices have not changed since Apply. A later tag decision stays yours even when it leaves the same visible tags. If you deleted the previous folder, the note stays in its current folder; Undo still restores safe tags and the other notes in the receipt, and reports the missing folder.

When automatic filing is enabled, its receipts group changes by destination. Undo for one destination restores only that group for up to 30 days; the other destinations stay filed. Changes you made afterward are kept. Pulling back a move records that choice, so the same destination is not applied to that note again. If you then undo the whole receipt, Kept restores the remaining safe changes and still reports any changes it could not restore in an earlier destination. Retrying either Undo keeps the same restored and conflicted counts.

Start with a blank page

Write a note on Today, the + while you are in Notes, and New note each open Notes with one blank page and the caret in its title, ready for your first words. On a keyboard, Command N in Notes does the same. A newly opened empty subpage also starts in its title. Pages that already have words open for reading.

On iPhone, VoiceOver announces the Notes + as New note and explains that the blank page opens with its title ready to type. On other main pages the same dock announces Capture. Touch and hold still offers the quick log choices.

Notes on a Duo spread

In the open landscape view the note list stays on the left and the selected note fills the larger right page. Rows use the list's width for titles and previews. Share and note actions live in the dock; its Search is the single Quick Find door. A partial fold splits the pages at the hinge and leaves the crease empty. Upright while flat uses a list followed by a full-page note. An upright crease puts the retained note above the hinge and the list below it. The lower list stays above the dock when the keyboard opens or closes. The editor stays mounted while folding so the live document, caret and Undo can continue.

The Duo library uses the same quiet rows on the cover, upright and on the spread: a title, then a short edit date and preview together. Daily notes use that same row treatment, with Today beside their preview. Upright keeps one list-scope caret; the Notes title is a heading. An empty right page centres its quiet prompt within the whole detail page. An arrival preview opens the last note for the scene, or the most recently edited note, without taking the keyboard. You can choose a note while the arrival preview is appearing; it replaces the preview on that page. Using the note makes that choice carry to the cover. View options in the dock holds list scope and sorting; the note stays beside its list. An empty spread keeps one quiet sentence; Capture remains the creation door.

On a two-page Duo layout, Insert and Style replace the list page while your note stays available beside them. Folding continues the same tool session in a sheet; reopening the spread returns it to the context page with its destination and search intact. Close returns to the same writing position.

With a hardware keyboard on a Duo spread, Up and Down browse notes without moving the caret into the page. Return resumes writing at the saved caret. Escape while writing returns focus to the list and keeps the selected note in view. A quick browse does not change Recently opened; pausing on a note or choosing it records the open. While you browse with arrows, Recently opened keeps its row order steady, so Up reverses a Down step. The scene keeps its library row and scroll position through layout changes.

On Duo pages, the note’s own title scrolls with its writing. A compact title keeps the name in view after the full title passes the header, and disappears when you scroll back. Ordinary iPhone keeps its existing header.

On iPhone Duo, folding and reopening the Notes library keeps its reading position, including the Daily notes door above the first note. A note keeps its larger display title on the cover when Tags are shown; the smaller running title appears only after you scroll into the document. The writing canvas hides the home indicator like the library. In Share → Export, the scope heading and explanation have room inside their card, aligned with the export controls.

Opening a note from its row on the Duo cover or spread lays out its table cells as the writing page receives its width. A fold is not needed to reveal the table; wider tables scroll sideways within the page.

On the Duo cover, choosing a note can keep its source visible briefly while the note prepares at its final text width. The hold ends within450ms, or sooner when the pose changes, preparation fails or you go back. If the body has not arrived, the page shows its existing preview, loading state or retry action. Spread selection and automatic previews show the native page directly, keeping the list and dock live through an unfold. A prepared cover page uses a crossfade with Reduce Motion. Writing on the cover keeps that same note selected when you unfold. When a note starts with a table (with only headings or empty paragraphs before it), every iPhone Notes list, including the Duo cover and spread, previews its first nonempty data row, skipping column labels and separating cells with middle dots. If that table has no filled record, the preview keeps the writing after it. Notes that begin with prose keep their opening words as the preview, even when a table follows. Stored note titles stay intact; an untitled table note uses its leading text block as its title. Share keeps priority in the dock while the keyboard is open. On ordinary iPhone, the Notes background continues through the home-indicator area.

The retained list and writing page move into their new positions as you fold or unfold. An open note moves to its right page while the list arrives; its title stays with its words throughout. The first wide canvas uses the two-page arrangement even while the system is finishing its posture update. Reduce Motion changes the arrangement in place, and the same document stays mounted.

The Notes list follows the shell's settled hinge position. Moving through a partial fold on the way to flat keeps the flat list width; a deliberate pause adopts the creased layout. A published page width applies immediately, so the list does not take a second width after landing. The first spread frame also uses the shell's settled top band, so the title and first row do not arrive late.

On Duo, a note’s to-dos use the app’s rounded-square checkbox on the writing keyline, without dashed outlines around their words. Checking a row still updates the same authored to-do. In dark appearance, the table header lifts subtly above the writing page. Ordinary iPhone keeps its existing note row and editor presentation.

On the Duo cover, tables fit their columns to the available writing width using whole-word measurements and wrapped cells. A table that needs more room keeps its rounded edge inside the page, with a trailing fade and horizontal scroll indicator; it never ends at the dock boundary. During a Duo library visit, opening and returning from an unedited note keeps the list order and reading position. Back leaves an already visible source row in place and only scrolls to reveal it if it has left the viewport. Recent still records opens locally for the next visit; reading alone does not save the document or change its edit date. Ordinary iPhone keeps its existing recency ordering.

The keyboard’s New page shortcut asks for a page title before creating a subpage and its link. Cancel or dismiss leaves the parent and note library unchanged. A missing page reference can be tapped to select it, then removed with Delete or Backspace; deleting that reference keeps the rest of the note and can be undone.

Typing consecutive pipe-delimited rows with Return builds one table. A Markdown header separator immediately after its header is consumed instead of becoming data, and the cells appear while you write. The next line remains ready for typing. On the Duo cover, focusing a newly added table row makes room above the keyboard toolbar and keeps the large title scrolled away.

On ordinary iPhone as well as Duo, Notes has one visible list-scope caret, short ages such as5m rather than minutes and seconds, and rounded-square note checkboxes without dashed pending outlines or tinted word chips. Indent and Outdent use whole keyboard-toolbar glyphs with their full accessibility names. Dark note table headers sit subtly above the page ground on both device types. The phone’s existing library cards, daily badge and recency sort remain. Embedded Today and task-description editors retain their own presentation.