Notebooks for Mac – Your Desktop Companion

 
Notebooks for Mac allows you to share files with the mobile versions of Notebooks on the iPad and iPhone, so you can conveniently work on your documents from your desktop, but also on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch when you are on your way. The synchronization between the devices currently supports Dropbox and many WebDAV servers (Dropbox surely is the most convenient option).  
 
Notebooks for Mac currently is in public beta, which means that you can download and try it out for free. The download package contains a read me file which should help you get started, but we will provide more documentation soon.

If you already use Dropbox to sync Notebooks from your iPhone or iPad you will have a jump start, because NB/Mac is set up to use the Dropbox/Notebooks folder by default.

You are welcome to email your questions or post your comments.

Download Notebooks for Mac 1.0 Beta 10

Notebooks has been reviewed at appstorm and rated 8/10, although it is still in beta. We are pretty proud of that! – The review serves as a nice introduction to Notebooks/Mac for those who are new.

Getting Started

When you first start Notebooks it checks for the presence of the “Dropbox/Notebooks” folder on your system. If you are already syncing your iPhone or iPad versions of Notebooks with Dropbox you have a jump start and Notebooks immediately presents all your books and documents. All changes you make in Notebooks on your computer are saved in that folder und thus be synced back to Dropbox and further to your iPhone or iPad. (As Dropbox maintains a version history of all changes, so even if something should go wrong, there is always an easy way to restore the original documents.)

If that Dropbox folder is not present, Notebooks asks you to select a start directory, which may even be your home directory. You can choose any folder you want.

Notebooks does not import your documents into a database; instead, it displays the contents of the selected start directory and presents folders as books. Notes and documents you create or change in Notebooks are stored in that folder. This means that your documents are always accessible from Finder and never locked into Notebooks.
Items you delete in Notebooks are deleted from your hard drive as well (in fact, they are moved to the Trash).

In case you do not yet have a Dropbox account and want to create one, you can use the following referral link and get a few extra MB of free space: http://db.tt/LWTD7Dw

If you use a WebDAV service for synchronization, all you need to do is mount that server in Finder and point Notebooks to that folder.

You can just as well use Notebooks without the iPhone or iPad counterpart and point it at to your Documents folder, for example. You may discover an interesting Finder replacement.

New in Beta 10 (May 6, 2013)

Additions

  • Option to set font and font size for tree and list views
  • Use “Open With…” from Finder to add documents to Notebooks (use alt-cmd to add any document)
  • “Insert Timestamp” from context menu (it is just one format at the moment, more to come)
  • “Copy Link” from context menu
  • When inserting photos, Notebooks by default opens the folder that was used last time
  • Settings: use TAB or four spaces to indent lists
  • Remembers size and number of visible columns between restarts
  • “Native” Fullscreen Mode

Fixes

  • Markdown conversion now correctly handles closing “#”
  • Titles starting with “_” are not longer ignored
  • Renaming PDF documents in list view works reliably
  • Email and link to website available from Help menu

New in 1.0 Beta 9 (Feb 28, 2013)

  • FIX: deleting multiple selected books no longer accidentally permanently deletes them
  • Lists in plain text: type return on empty line to outdent instead of terminate list
  • Lists in formatted documents: use TAB key to indent, type return on empty line to outdent
  • Keyboard shortcut: cmd-del to delete currently selected (most selected) item(s)
  • Markdown: support for MultiMarkdown definition lists
  • Markdown: new setting in preferences to disable Notebooks convenience method of converting each newline to a line break. When this option is off you need to add two spaces at the end of a line to enforce a line break: This is less convenient, but it is Markdown standard.
  • Search
    • Multiple search terms are now AND combined
    • To search for a phrase, put it in quotes (e.g. “Notebooks for Mac”)
    • When entering search term, hits in current document are immediately highlighted.
    • Type return after entering search term to search current book or all books
    • Toggle the search scope between current book /whole hierarchy
  • Replace
    • Click on loupe icon in the search field to toggle between search and replace in document
  • Formatted Documents: HTML source is now editable
  • Drag & drop images into formatted documents
  • Drag & drop images into plain text (inserts the corresponding Markdown code)
  • Updated style sheets to better support printing
  • Performance improvements

Changes in 1.0 Beta 8

  • Search for documents
  • Toggle the number of visible colums
    • cmd-1 … document only
    • cmd-2 … treeview or list and document (typing cmd-2 repeatedly toggles tree and listview!)
    • cmd-3 … treeview, list and document
  • Improved layout of tree view
  • Alternative icons for default theme

Changes in 1.0 Beta 7.2

  • Fixes crash on startup
  • Performance improvements
  • Interface refinements
  • Recent Items available from the File menu