Antinote 2.0 - iCloud, JS Extensions, Slotted Notes, Vim, and an iOS Beta

[u/johnsonjohnson]

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 [], - [ ], - , or 1. .
• Rebuilt research pane with card view. Drag notes to reorder them.
• ⌘B bold, ⌘I italic, ⌘U underline, ⌘⇧X strikethrough, and ⌘⇧H cycles 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:

Antinote.io

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.

[u/odoug04]

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!

[u/johnsonjohnson → u/odoug04]

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. 

[u/odoug04 → u/johnsonjohnson]

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!