NotaBene
User Guide
The window at a glance
Where everything is, and how to get from one place to another.
- 1New — the blue button makes a note, the green one a task, the orange one a recording.
- 2The sidebar — Home, your Shortcuts, Notes, Tasks, Mail, Calendar, Reminders, your notebooks, tags and people.
- 3The list — what the sidebar row holds — notes, tasks or messages.
- 4The note — the one picked in the list. Write straight into it.
- 5Search — the list beside it, or — set to Everywhere — the whole library.
- 1New — the blue button makes a note, the green one a task, the orange one a recording.
- 2The sidebar — Home, your Shortcuts, Notes, Tasks, Mail and the rest. The button at its top hides it and brings it back.
- 3The list — what the sidebar row holds — notes, tasks or messages.
- 4The note — the one picked in the list. Tap into it to write.
- 5Formatting — bold, lists, a highlight and more for what you write; the microphone records.
- 1Home — your day on one page.
- 2Shortcuts — what you use every day, in the order you put it in.
- 3Notes, Tasks, Mail… — tap a row for its list, and a note in it to open it.
- 4New — tap for a note; touch and hold for Scan, a task or a recording.
- 5Search — the whole library.
- 6Settings — and this guide, under Help.
The window has three columns. The sidebar on the left lists where things are kept: Home, your Shortcuts, Notes, Tasks, Mail, Calendar, Reminders, your notebooks, tags and people, Templates and the Trash. The list in the middle shows what the sidebar row holds — notes, tasks or messages. The note on the right is the one picked in the list.
The three buttons at the top of the sidebar make something new: the wide blue one a note, the green one a task, the orange one a recording. Right-click the blue one to start from a template.
The search field in the toolbar searches the list beside it, or — set to Everywhere — the whole library.
The iPad shows what the Mac shows: the sidebar, the list and the note, side by side. The sidebar button at its top hides the sidebar and brings it back.
The three buttons at the top of the sidebar make something new: the wide blue one a note, the green one a task, the orange one a recording.
On the iPhone each column is a screen of its own. The app opens on six tiles — Home, Notes, Tasks, Mail, Calendar and Reminders — with your Shortcuts under them and then everything else: notebooks, tags, people, Templates and the Trash, each in its own colour. Tap a tile or a row for its list, and a note in the list to open it; the arrow at the top left goes back.
The blue circle at the bottom makes a new note. Touch and hold it and the others rise above it: Scan, a task, a recording.
Make something new
NotaBene makes three things, and each has one color and one symbol on every device: a note is blue (a pencil), a task is green (a checkmark) and a recording is orange (a microphone).
- A note is a new, empty note.
- A task opens the Tasks list, with the new task's panel open and its name ready to type.
- A recording makes a note named for today's date, opens it and starts recording at once.
⌘N also makes a note.
Touch and hold the blue button to start a note from a template.
When you touch and hold the blue circle, the phone taps back and the other buttons rise: Scan nearest your thumb, then a task, then a recording. Tap anywhere else to put them away.
Scan is drawn as a blue outline rather than a filled circle, because it is another way of making a note: it opens a new note with the scanner already up, and the pages you scan land in it as one searchable PDF. On a device without a camera, Scan is not there.
On the Apple Watch, the front screen of the app starts with two rows: New Task in green, then New Note in blue. There is no orange one, because the watch takes dictation rather than recordings.
Finding your way
With no note open, the editor says No Note Selected, with a New Note button under it that makes one.
A field waiting to be filled says what it wants inside itself, in gray — Enter a URL, Add tag…, Search notes. The words step aside as soon as you type.
With several windows open, the selected note's card shows which window the arrow keys belong to: it has a colored border in the window in front and a gray border in the others.
See Also: Your day on one page · Arrange Home · Your library and sync · Keyboard shortcuts