Notes that file as you write
One field, always ready. Write the line, send it, and it files itself where you left off.
One payment. No subscription, no account, no server.
Capture
Most notes apps make you choose a document before they let you write. By the time you have found the right note, the thought has changed shape.
Control Centre, the Lock Screen and the Action Button, so a note can be written before the screen is properly on.
The same field sits above your notebooks and your timeline, so a thought that arrives mid-page does not cost you your place on it.
A meeting is not one paragraph. Each line can be found, moved or answered from on its own.
Sometimes your hands are busy. Some of what you want to keep is printed on a sign, or already on a page somebody sent you. And sometimes the quickest way in is not opening the app at all.
Each pause closes a note, and you watch them stack up as you talk. Nothing is saved until you stop, so you can tap any of them away first.
Hold the camera over anything printed and the text arrives in the field, ready to send. A notice at a bus stop, in a language you do not read.
Send one in and each thing on the page becomes its own note rather than one block. You see all seven first, and tap to drop the ones you did not want.
Hold the app on the home screen and go straight to writing, the timeline, the topics or a question. The field is open before the app has finished appearing.
Filing
Name a notebook with @ or a subject with # as
you type, or say nothing and it follows you. Either way the filing
happens inside the sentence, never as a step after it.
Change a topic and every note that ever used it follows, across every notebook.
A note knows its own date separately from the day it was typed, so a screenshot taken on Friday can refill your Tuesday.
A quiet break appears where you stopped writing and started again.
Finding
Nobody remembers where they put a thought. They remember something about it. So there is no single way back in: six lead to the same note.
Once it is written
A note is the beginning of something more often than it is the end of it. So the things inside one stay live: the time, the task, the notebook you mentioned halfway through a sentence.
"Standup moved to 9:30" carries a time, so the time is underlined. Tap it and the calendar offers to take it, with the day already worked out.
Send one to Reminders and it keeps a thread back. Tick it off there and it quietly closes here, which is the only thing the two ever say to each other.
A notebook or a subject written inside a sentence is a way through to it, months later, from the middle of the line you wrote it in.
The one way out that leaves
Five of those routes stay on your phone. This is the one that does not, so it is the one that shows you everything first.
My own notes from Notebook A, Aug 23 to Sep 26. Fragments written during conversations, not prose. Below are my own notes, oldest first. Tell me what has been going on, in about 150 words. Use only what is in the notes. Where you are unsure, say so rather than filling it in. --- notes --- Sep 19 - Wrote the support role description properly. - Say the salary in the post.
People become Person A, notebooks become Notebook A, and the key stays on your phone. It is never part of what you copy.
The whole text, not a description of it. This is the one screen that prepares your writing to leave.
It builds the text and puts it on the clipboard. Where it goes next is entirely your decision.
Everywhere you already are
Write on the phone, read on the iPad. Through your own iCloud: your storage, not ours.
Jot a line or ask a question out loud. Every note is findable from the home screen.
Take everything out whenever you like. No lock-in and no format to escape.
Where it differs
Most notes apps are good at holding a document you made. Promptly is built for the line you have not decided anything about yet.
| Capability | Promptly | Apple Notes | OneNote | Notion | Drafts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Write before choosing a document | |||||
| Files itself by notebook, day and topic | |||||
| One subject threaded across every notebook | |||||
| Answers from your own notes, on device | |||||
| Hand a subject to any AI, names redacted | |||||
| Works fully without an account | |||||
| Sync through your own iCloud | |||||
| Paid once, not monthly |
In fairness. These are not all trying to be the same thing, and each beats Promptly at something. Apple Notes is free and already on the phone. OneNote is better at handwriting and a shared page. Notion does databases and a whole team; Promptly does no collaboration at all. Drafts is the closest in spirit and has far deeper automation. Pick the one that matches the job. The column above is only the job Promptly is for.
Compared as at September 2026, on each app's own free or standard tier. All names belong to their owners.
Already have years of notes in one of them? Bringing them across
Coming from Apple Notes
Two ways in, depending on how much there is. Both show you what they found before anything is written, and neither touches the note they read.
One note
Open a note in Apple Notes, tap Share, choose Promptly. It arrives as separate notes rather than one block: dates and subjects read out of the note's own structure, including nested bullets, rather than guessed at.
Nothing to install. On the phone you already have.
A whole folder
A small command-line program that reads Apple Notes on your Mac and writes one file. AirDrop it to your phone, then Settings › Import from file.
Download for Mac122 KB · Universal, Apple silicon and Intel · macOS 14+
macOS will refuse it the first time. It is not
notarised, so Gatekeeper stops it until you say otherwise:
right-click the file in Finder and choose Open, or
run xattr -d com.apple.quarantine notes-importer once.
The same note is in the README inside the download.
It asks macOS for permission to read Notes the first time it runs. That is how it reads them, and it is the only permission it wants. It makes no network connection of any kind.
Privacy
No account. No server. No analytics. Answers are worked out on your phone by the model that comes with iOS. Turn on aeroplane mode and the whole app still works.
Notes sync through your own iCloud. Nothing is collected by us, because there is no us to collect it.
The intelligence is a switch. The calendar is a switch. And everything you have ever written leaves in one tap, as plain text, whether you are leaving or not.
Return sends the note or starts a new line. Notes sent seconds apart join up, or stay apart. Each is a switch, because neither answer is right for everybody.
Topics, headings and answers come from the model already on your phone. Each one is an offer, and nothing is written unless you choose it.
Export is plain JSON and imports back into Promptly on any device. Deleted notes wait thirty days in the trash before they are gone for good.
Promptly Pro
Capture, filing, notebooks, topics, timeline, asking, exporting, syncing and making a prompt are the free app, and stay that way. Pro adds the layer that connects notes to people and days: a face on the notebooks you keep for people, a brief before a meeting, and an old note surfacing quietly as you write a new one about the same thing.
iPhone, iPad and Mac. Apple Watch app included.
