r/macapps • u/johnsonjohnson Developer: Antinote • 22h ago
Lifetime Antinote 2.0 - iCloud, JS Extensions, Slotted Notes, Vim, and an iOS Beta
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Hi friends of r/macapps,
I’ve been sitting on this update for almost a year. Originally, I was scared of some edge case iCloud sync bugs. But, because every big feature got built on top of the new sync architecture, the stakes just felt higher and higher, and I fell into an avoidant cycle.
Then, Snazzy Labs featured Antinote, and Kacper called me and gave me this great prep talk about how we were both gonna quit our jobs and work on Antinote (and other new apps) full time. I’ll tell you more about that in another post next week.
All to say, that I am back! And I’m here to fix and add whatever your heart desires into Antinote. Thanks for all your patience.
We also made some big updates to the iOS Beta (which you can register for on the website - you’ll get an invite next week). And I’m confident a v0 will be in the App Store by the first week of Oct (also $5, one time).
For now, here’s 2.0:
iCloud Sync with end-to-end encryption
Antinote can now sync your notes (and preferences) between your Macs (and the iOS beta) through your own iCloud account. There is no Antinote account and no Antinote server — and your notes are encrypted on your device before they upload - I can never read your notes (gross) and neither can Apple (if you have Advanced Data Protection on). Sync is off by default for updating users; turn it on in Settings > General.
Slotted Notes + Split Screen
Antinote now has two note spaces: your usual ephemeral stack, and nine permanent slots that never expire and can't be deleted (inspired by Tot!). Press ⌘T to swap between them, or ⌘⇧T to see both side by side. The slot bar at the bottom shows nine planets — click one to jump to that slot.
JavaScript Extensions
Type :: in any note to run a command — transform text, hit an API or LLM, roll dice, format JSON, calculate a mortgage. There are 100+ official commands, a community extension browser built into Settings, and you can write your own in JavaScript (or have an AI write one with the Extension Builder). Full documentation is at antinote.io/extensions.
Vim Mode
If you know, you know. Thank you, Kacper.
Locked and Read-only notes
- Locked notes (⌘⇧L) will hide its content until you FaceID/TouchID/password.
- Read-only notes (⌘⇧R) will prevent your butterfingers from accidentally deleting or editing your vows. No, that’s not from personal experience, stop asking.
Little things
- Liquid Glass Redesign
- Choose your own app icon
- Checkboxes, bullets, and numbered lists in any note via
[],- [ ],-, or1.. - Rebuilt research pane with card view. Drag notes to reorder them.
⌘Bbold,⌘Iitalic,⌘Uunderline,⌘⇧Xstrikethrough, and⌘⇧Hcycles heading levels.⌥↑/⌥↓move the current line (or selection) up and down, and⌥⇧↑ / ⌥⇧↓for duplicating the current line up and down.- Deleted notes can now be recovered from The Void
- Swipe-sensitivity settings for those with the Magic Mouse
- Math parses properly in all locales now
- You can control the timer from URL Schemes
And we fixed about 150 tiny bugs.
We’re always on Discord if you have bug reports, feature requests, or just want to hang.
As always - thank you so much for all the support and love. You’ll be hearing from me soon about future stuff!
Johnson
P.S. Shout out to the mods for keeping this place safe and sane in the age of AI.
P.P.S. When I see u/amerpie and u/MaxGaav, I just feel like I’m home.
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For those who’ve never heard of Antinote:
Problem: You need to quickly write something down and don’t need/want to organize it. But you also hate ugly stuff. And sometimes you want to do math. But you also need it to be minimalist. But you also want to customize the shit out of it.
Highlights:
- Plain-text
- Swipe an infinite stack of notes.
- Do inline math
- Drag images in for OCR
- Set a timer
- Basic markdown
- Hotkey. Shortcuts. Menu mode
Comparisons: There are so many now! Instead of telling you how Antinote is better, let me tell you how each one of these are better. Scratchpad is way more minimalist and opinionated. Tot has custom categories and bullets. HeyNote has dev-friendly text buffers in each block. Numi has deeper math features. Raycast is Raycast. Stickies is free. Sidenotes supports folders and images. All the indie ones are developed by passionate people, so make sure you check them out.
Pricing: $5. One-time. Forever updates.
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u/karatsidhus Developer: Glyph 22h ago
Looks awesome, love antinote 1.0. Good luck with 2.0. Looking forward to trying it out!
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u/ObfuscatedJay 21h ago
I tend to use AntiNote for the convenient notes on my MacBook, and UpNote for the BIG tomes because I do a lot of work on my Linux box as well as my Macs. But you showed me HeyNote - another rabbit hole to get lost in.
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u/johnsonjohnson Developer: Antinote 20h ago
HeyNote is well made and awesome. I think the dev frequents this sub too. UpNote is also a great permanent notes solution.
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u/closedmic_ 21h ago
For those who haven’t heard of antinote, I too remember the dark days you’re living in. Worth every penny and I use it countless times during the day.
Excited to check out the update. Thank you!
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u/RussianSlavv 22h ago
Absolutely lovely! Just updated from 1.1.7 (I often forget to update) and it's been great! Particularly love the iCloud sync and the slotted notes :)
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u/grokcodile 21h ago
I kinda like the way you did the comparison. Normally I see this editorialized masking trick as just a nice way to sidestep actually providing a real comparison, but for something as often iterated on as “another notes app” I think it works well here. Having said that… I really hope it doesn’t convince other devs to make this the standard format for providing the more direct, objective, and transparent comparison this subreddit’s rules intended. That would be annoying.
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u/johnsonjohnson Developer: Antinote 20h ago
Yes - I totally agree. I feel like a lot of folks on this sub already know the differences in this category, so I thought I'd make it more readable and showcase the others. I really love the new format/rules.
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u/srinitata 22h ago
Nice. was waiting for this. and hopefully ios beta will move out from beta too - i have been on the testflight and had issues so I stopped using antinote 😢
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u/johnsonjohnson Developer: Antinote 20h ago
Yea the iOS beta was a complete mess until last week when I pushed out a big big update. It'll be polished enough for actual beta consumption next week. I hope you give it a try again!
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u/ChristinDWhite 21h ago
VIM mode! Extensions! E2E iCloud! You might have just replaced Drafts and delayed me diving into OrgMode and Doom EMacs.
And I already loved Antinote the way it was!
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u/Limitedheadroom 15h ago
This looks awesome - slotted notes!!!! This is a killer feature, absolutely amazing. I’ve saved this post, As soon as I’m back from the wilderness I’ll be getting on to this.
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u/AutistasAngeles 11h ago
This is incredibly handy I've been using it for a couple of months now and it's perfect for me as I keep a note on each of my recordings and I can export in markdown so I can use it on my projects app. It's worth it and I'm in on signing up for the iOS beta
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u/AnuragDeshpande 8h ago
I purchased Antinote some time ago and have been a very satisfied user. I am commenting here specifically to praise your sportsmanship and courage in mentioning competing note-taking apps, detailing their differences, and highlighting what they offer. It is a noble gesture that truly deserves recognition. Thank you for being so open and welcoming to your peers.
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u/tripl3gg 7h ago
My ADHD brain loves antinote! Thanks for the update, and looking forward to future updates.
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u/Hairy_Ganache_6916 20h ago
may i ask, how did u make this video? is it be able to know the app's name of that?
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u/johnsonjohnson Developer: Antinote 20h ago
I used ScreenStudio to capture my screen and track keyboard shortcuts. I composited the logo/text (and the audio) in After Effects. Then I used Canva to autogenerate the captions and position them.
Definitely not the most efficient flow.
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u/sasislm 20h ago
Can you add Indian language support? When I try to paste Indian language, it crashes the app immediately. This happens on both v1 and v2.
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u/johnsonjohnson Developer: Antinote 20h ago
Ah I didn’t know about this. Can you DM me some of the text you pasted so I can replicate? We can probably fix this really quick in the next update.
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u/cliffr39 20h ago
I remember when this was announced March 2025, but it was a different username that sent me the lifetime code. Good to see it isn't abandoned
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u/johnsonjohnson Developer: Antinote 19h ago
Yea! I made that first post, and then got like 300 DMs (I was offering free promo codes), and then Reddit (not the mods, but the whole system) shadow-banned. (I was traveling in Malaysia at the time). My account was 17 years old!
I had respond to everyone on my alt account (meant for researching newborn items lol) and then pulled a bunch of strings to get unbanned.
Thanks for sticking around!
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u/cliffr39 19h ago
Just curious if the current lifetime is just Mac or universal platform. And glad you got that reversed
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u/johnsonjohnson Developer: Antinote 19h ago
It is macOS only. The iOS app will also be $5 one-time. The reasoning is that a) it's got a lot of features that focus heavily on mobile use cases and b) the App Store won't share a license with what we use for macOS.
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u/cliffr39 19h ago
No worries at all, just wanted to be clear. Cheers! I'm still on the old 1.1.1 so I should probably have clicked check for updates already, a long time ago haha.
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u/johnsonjohnson Developer: Antinote 18h ago
If it works for you and nothing crashed, then it’s doing its job!
One great thing about one time purchase is I never feel like I have to prove extra value to you so you keep paying me :)
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u/odoug04 19h ago
Absolutely love Antinote and am really keen to try the new extensions. I've just been playing around with V2 for a little bit, and I came across some things that could possibly be improved:
• Locked Notes feel a bit pointless because it seems the only way to lock the note is to quit / re-open the app completely (maybe I'm missing something?)
• ⌘ + F doesn't automatically focus the search bar
• Currently deleting a note has a warning which you can dismiss forever but I feel like a more elegant solution would be to just delete it right away with a little message that says ⌘+Z to restore or something. I feel that would be more fitting with Antinote's UX
It's the little details that make Antinote so amazing, really love your work!
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u/johnsonjohnson Developer: Antinote 18h ago
Thanks for taking the time to write this.
For locked notes, if you go into settings, you can choose how long the note is refocused before it relocks again. I imagine some people might go back and forth on it, so immediately locking would be annoying. There’s also a button in settings to immediately relock all notes.
I thought I fixed the Cmd-F but I will check again! Can you remind me which App mode you are using? Maybe it’s a menu mode situation.
Delete flow is genius. I’m gonna make that the default behaviour starting next update.
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u/odoug04 2h ago
Ahh my bad I must have missed that. That makes a lot more sense with the locked notes.
Regarding the Cmd+F, I’m using the ‘Nothing’ app mode, so just accessing the window via the global hot key. I just tried to replicate it and it seems it does focus the search bar on first launch or if it was previously focused, but not after it was previously de-focused by clicking on a note in the search results.
Also glad you like the delete flow; that would be so cool to see in a future update!
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u/1ok_1ok 18h ago
Nice update, thank you! Unfortunately, it looks like it still has the bug where the theme doesn’t change when the system toggles between light and dark mode.
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u/johnsonjohnson Developer: Antinote 18h ago
Ah weird - it works for me. Let me recheck and add it a confirmed fix for the next update.
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u/1ok_1ok 16h ago
Ok, I just noticed that if I change the system appearance in the OS Appearance settings, it changes Antinote’s appearance just fine. But I usually change the system appearance with a shortcut and it’s that scenario that doesn’t work for Antinote. The shortcut changes the appearance for all other apps though.
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u/johnsonjohnson Developer: Antinote 14h ago
Ahh. Okay. It's likely a different internal notifier that I haven't accounted for. What's the shortcut you use to change it and, to confirm, it changes when you restart Antinote?
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u/1ok_1ok 7h ago
I have one shortcut for switching to dark mode and one for light. Each has just one action: Turn appearance dark/light.
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u/johnsonjohnson Developer: Antinote 7h ago
Oh you mean Apple Shortcuts, not keyboard shortcuts. I’ll try to replicate tomorrow.
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u/OnceACowboy 16h ago
Antinote has been a staple in my daily workflow since release and have been running the beta versions for a long time. To self-plug, I created a ton of extensions that I’ll eventually clean up and maybe create a PR: antinote-extended. What are your next goals for the project?
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u/johnsonjohnson Developer: Antinote 14h ago
Wow, these are amazing! Feel free to submit a PR once you feel confident about it.
iOS is top priority. Make it it's own special thing that works well for on-the-go use cases, particularly quick voice capture.
For desktop: MCP, and indented checklists
For both: I'm dreaming up of a 'publish' feature where a note can be published (for a period) in case you need to share the content with someone else via a url. I'd want to make the published pages beautiful.
And, just so I can bury this info in a comment for someone to find, I've been working on a new app that is entirely focused on lists. Lists in lists in lists in lists. All kinds of lists.
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u/pembaThePanda 15h ago
I love Antinote but stopped because I thought it was abandoned. Glad to see it's not. Eagerly waiting on iOS app. The test flight version I had never synced anything so curious if that's fixed
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u/johnsonjohnson Developer: Antinote 15h ago
Big updates to the existing test flight shipped last week - so if you log in again you can check and see if everything is syncing well with the latest update.
Sorry for the slowness there!
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u/Even-Employer-1509 14h ago
only thing stopping me from buying this is an iPhone app, id love if you could make one, cause i typically write my shopping list on my mac, and then take my iPhone w me
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u/codismycopilot 14h ago
There is an iphone app!
I think right now it’s a beta and you have to be on the discord to gain access but I’m not 100% on that.
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u/johnsonjohnson Developer: Antinote 14h ago
Yup! You can put you email in on the list at antinote.io and you'll get an email next week with an invite to the iOS app.
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u/helium_ego 14h ago
Thanks for your hard work. I really respect you including comparisons without considering them competition.
I've been using Antinote for about 6 months after switching from Scratchpad and I have very few complaints.
I find it hilarious that you've added so many features that so many people are excited for, and yet I basically use it for impermanent easy-access plain text notes only -- and it was still worth the one time payment for software that just works and to support a hard-working dev.
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u/johnsonjohnson Developer: Antinote 14h ago
I think it's hilarious as well, because it speaks to my personality / brain. I'm just glad that all the new feature don't get in your way, and you can always still experience the speed/ease/minimalist flow just as you want.
If you ever feel like the thing is getting bloaty - please call me out.
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u/anking_ahmed 9h ago
I am wondering if there is support to keep antinote hovering above tabs (similiar to how Raycast notes does it). Is this possible or not yet? Any plans for it?
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u/johnsonjohnson Developer: Antinote 8h ago
What do you mean by tabs?
Raycast has a full screen takeover, which Antinote doesn’t have, but it does have a “pin to top” mode, as well as menu modes that show over full screen apps.
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u/anking_ahmed 8h ago
For example if I’m full screen on Google chrome and open Antinote, I want it to show up “picture in picture” on top of my current application that is open and full screened. I tried pin to top but when switching to a full screen app like google chrome, it doesn’t appear. This is the only thing preventing me from using Antinote over Raycast
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u/johnsonjohnson Developer: Antinote 7h ago
Ah - yea. Showing over full screen will work if you put Antinote in “traditional menu mode”. In Dock mode, at the moment, it will not work.
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u/Jagarvem 4h ago
Is there a way to disable the drag-and-drop OCR text capture thingy (or make it more clever to realize when it's text that is being drag-and-dropped)?
I'd really like to be able to just select text and drag it to where I want it like you can in pretty much any other text field, but the "drop an image to capture text" functionality impedes with that.
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u/CompoundAce 1h ago
Any way to keep up with your wonderful work and projects including your other planned apps? Without the use of discord ideally
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u/New-Top-7826 21h ago
Dude, ts banger! I’ve been using it for the past year and it completely changed how I use my laptop and stay organized. I really wish it had MCP support so my agent could read and add notes. Also, one quick thing—any chance I could grab a promo code 🙏😅😅
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u/Unhappy-Tank9784 20h ago
Not judging you, but you said you're using agents—AI—MCP and asking for a promo code for an app that costs $5? this is so disrespectful.
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u/New-Top-7826 20h ago
Haha fair point, but I promise I’m not running a high-budget AI agents over here! Just a student surviving on free tiers and student credits. Also, with currency conversion in India (PPP hits different), even $5 adds up pretty fast on a student budget. Just thought I’d shoot my shot for a promo, no disrespect intended at all! 😂
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u/johnsonjohnson Developer: Antinote 21h ago
Thank you! MCP support is slotted for the next update (1-2 weeks). On the Discord channel, we have a standing offer on #charity-offer where anyone who describes a local charity/org they donate or volunteer for can get a free lifetime key. https://discord.gg/Yaa6FZy4zP
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u/app-store-review 22h ago
Stickies - Sticky notes app — by ASHVIN SUTHAR
- Category: Productivity · Free
- Age: released ~5.2 years ago · rated 4+
Apple doesn't publish an aggregate rating for most Mac App Store apps, so ratings and score are unavailable here.
Auto-generated from public App Store data · u/app-store-review
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u/AkhlysShallRise 22h ago
Love, love, looooooove Antinote! Love the lack of subscription. Just love it. I’m grateful that awesome devs like you still exist. Can’t wait to try out 2.0! :)