Start creating documents with styles, attachments, tables and checklists, or drop any kind of document into Notebooks. File them in as many nested books as you need to structure your projects and details. Add task lists or simple checklists, divide large projects into nested sub projects, which makes them easier to handle, cross-reference into your reference library – which may be any book or document in Notebooks – and Notebooks for Mac may soon become the central repository for everything you want to keep close at hand.
Notebooks for Mac provides all the tools you need to concentrate on your work and be productive – on your Mac. Formatted documents, plain text and Markdown, the fullscreen modes, dark mode, multiple tabbed windows, breadcrumbing navigation, smart books, word count or the option to compile multiple fragments into a single document or eBook are just a few examples.
Of course you can synchronize the contents of Notebooks between your iPad, iPhone and your Mac, so you can seamlessly work on your documents on any device.
Notebooks for Mac 2 is a major update from Notebooks 1.4 with countless improvements and innovations. We rebuilt it from scratch with the goal to better integrate it with macOS, make it future proof and much extend its functionality. – Notebooks 2 is a paid upgrade for users of Notebooks 1.x.
New in Notebooks for Mac 2.4
Improved iCloud Drive Support: you can now use iCloud to sync your documents between iPad, iPhone (Notebooks 11 for iPad and iPhone) and your Mac.
Solarized user interface style, as an alternative to the macOS standard colors.
Colorized syntax highlighting for Markdown.
Create flowcharts using Mermaid in Markdown.
New editing functions in plain text (move lines up and down, sort selected, etc.)
Performance improvements and corrections.
What is New in Notebooks for Mac 2
Notebooks 2 is now Mac native, so it fully integrates into the macOS environment, looks and works like Mac app.
Open documents in separate windows or tabs. Notebooks remembers open windows and tabs between restarts.
View and edit external documents by dropping them onto Notebooks‘ icon.
Convenient document only and full screen modes with options to change the window’s background color.
Each window shows a bread crumbing navigation at its top, which makes it easy to quickly navigate to any other document without using outline or document list.
Support for Context tags including automatic extraction from documents.
Smart books for Recent Items and Recently Modified items.
Formatted documents now provide
table support to create and edit tables,
indented checklists with clickable checkboxes
a Table of Contents which you can add at any position in a document and which updates as you edit the text,
a wider selection of document styles
Plain text documents can
display line numbers,
highlight the currently edited line,
pin the current line to a specific position,
sort selected lines,
apply bottom overscrolling, etc.
Markdown support has been improved, too
Click a formatted Markdown document to immediately start editing at that position.
MultiMarkdown is available as an alternative Markdown converter.
Markdown checklists (- [ ]) are supported with Notebooks’ default Markdown converter. The checkboxes can be toggled from the formatted view.
Wiki style links[[]]with auto expanding file paths for setting the target.
Allow Notebooks to automatically extract tasks from the contents of your documents.
Import documents or snippets through the Share… menu or one of Notebooks’ Services.
Compile documents and books to create a single editable document, an eBook or a PDF document.
Option to hide Notebooks’ plist files in Finder.
Import documents from Evernote with just a few clicks.
There is much more to discover in Notebooks 2. A look at the Version History reveals the changes in detail. Meanwhile we are working on and extending in app help and documentation.
Notebooks 2 requires macOS 10.11 or later, and for best experience, Spotlight search should be enabled on the drive that is holding your documents.
FAQ – Notebooks for Mac 2
“Notebooks has been Compromised” – What has Happened?
You might see this message when you are using an app like CleanMyMac with the option to cleanUniversal Binaries. This process strips part of Notebooks' binary, so Notebooks has the impression that the app has been tampered with. - Yes, we pay attention to this 😉
To resolve this issue we recommend to
download and install Notebooks from our website again and
turn off the option to clean universal binaries in CleanMyMac.
Synchronize Documents Between Notebooks on your Mac and iPad or iPhone
If you don't want to use external services like Dropbox or WebDAV servers for synchronization, you can synchronize documents between Notebooks on your Mac and iPad or iPhone directly. Notebooks for Mac has a WebDAV server built in for that purpose. This way, your documents never leave your own network. - This is how to set up synchronization between Notebooks on your Mac and an iPad:
In Notebooks for Mac, open Preferences > Notebooks Server and start the server; a WebDAV server is now running on your Mac. When macOS asks you to allow incoming traffic for Notebooks, please agree. Now with the server running, Notebooks displays all the details necessary to connect from Notebooks on iOS.
In Notebooks on your iPad or iPhone, open Settings > Sync and activate WebDAV; then open the WebDAV settings and enter the details presented in Notebooks for Mac. You can leave the start directory empty, but you might consider activating Sync Moves and Deletes and Sync System Files.
When you now open a book’s action menu, you find an option Sync <name of your server> which allows you to trigger a sync of the current book and its contents with Notebooks on your Mac – provided Notebooks for Mac is running and your devices are connected to the same wireless network.
Synchronize Notebooks for Mac with iPad and iPhone via Dropbox
If you use Notebooks on an iPad or iPhone and synchronize its contents to Dropbox, it is easy to pick up and work on the same documents with Notebooks for Mac.
If you have not already done so, download and install the Dropbox client for Mac, a free download from the Dropbox website. This app automatically and continuously synchronizes the contents of your Dropbox (and with it the documents you sync from Notebooks on an iPad or iPhone) with a folder on your Mac.
Select the Dropbox folder you use for synchronization from your iPad or iPhone as home folder for Notebooks on your Mac. By default, this folder is Dropbox/Notebooks, located in your user home.
With this setup, Notebooks for Mac displays the books and documents from your Dropbox sync folder and saves all changes and modifications to that folder. The Dropbox client on your Mac then syncs these documents to Dropbox, from where they find their way into Notebooks on your iPad or iPhone.
One of the benefits of Dropbox compared to other services is its history of changes, reaching back at least 30 days. If something ever should go wrong, there is always an easy way to restore the original documents.
Should you purchase Notebooks from the Mac App Store or from us directly?
The versions of Notebooks available from the Mac App Store and from our website are mostly identical, but due to the Mac App Store requirements there are a few minor differences. Apps sold through the Mac App Store need to adhere to macOS Sandboxing. This mechanism ensures that applications only access documents and folders that the user has explicitly selected. This selection is made when choosing a Notebooks Home.
Symbolic Links
The Mac App Store version Notebooks is not allowed to follow and resolve symbolic links if the link's target is outside of Notebooks' home folder or resides on a different partition. Folders seem empty and Notebooks displays their titles in a lighter color.
If you rely on hard links in Notebooks, we would recommend to download and use the versions available directly from our website.
Webarchives created in Notebooks don't open in Safari
Another side effect of Sandboxing: certain files created by applications are quarantined by macOS. When you double click to open them in Finder, macOS displays a warning and refuses to open them. – In the case of Notebooks, webarchives may be affected (they are created when you copy some formatted text and then choose New from Pasteboard).
To open these webarchives from Finder, right click on them, choose Open with > Safari, choose Open and enter your password. This removes the quarantine flag from the file, and from now on you can open it as usual.
If you are not afraid of using Terminal, you can use the following command which does not require your password:
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine <path/to/the/file>
License
While you can install the Mac App Store version of Notebooks an all Macs linked to your Apple ID, you can activate the license purchased directly from us on up to five Macs. When that quota has been used up you need to deactivate Notebooks on one Mac to activate it on another one.
If you receive a coupon code for Notebooks for Mac 2.0, you can redeem it when purchasing a license directly from us. You can get a license either from within the trial version of Notebooks 2.0 or through our web form. The process is identical in both cases.
On the screen which asks you to select the payment method, click Add Coupon and enter the code. The total sum then reflects the applied discount.
In some cases, Notebooks for Mac may encounter an issue and get stuck during startup. This may happen because the selected home contains a huge number of new documents which need to be scanned, or the previously opened document causes problems and leads to a crash. - Here are a few tips how to resolve these situations:
Press the cmd key immediately after launching Notebooks. This keeps Notebooks from opening the previously viewed document.
Hold the alt or option key during launch, and Notebooks ignores the currently selected Notebooks Home. Instead it asks you to select a folder as Notebooks Home. With this you can fix situations in which Notebooks freezes or gets stuck during launch. Even reselecting the current Home is fine.
If that still does not help, you may consider resetting Notebooks' preferences. For that, close Notebooks, launch the Terminal application and enter the following command
defaults delete com.aschmid.notebooks2
After typing <return>, launch Notebooks, select your Notebooks Home folder and you should be set.
Notebooks for Mac 2 provides a combined full text search and document filter in the footer of the document list (the second column).
Filter the Current List
As you start entering text in that field, Notebooks filters the currently displayed list and displays only the documents containing the given word or phrase in their title. This is handy when you look for a specific document in a long list: enter a few characters that are contained in its title to quickly turn up that document.
The filter is available in regular books, but also in most of the smart books (even recent items and recently modified.) It operates on the list of currently displayed documents, so it does not look at the contents of nested books.
To clear the filter and return to the regular list, just clear the text field.
Full Text Search
If you type return after entering the text, Notebooks starts a full text search. The scope of the search is by default limited to the current book (and the hierarchy below), but a checkbox right next to the search field allows you to change the scope to all books (that checkbox shows up as soon as Notebooks displays search results.)
The search results appear as a list of documents, similar to the contents of a regular book. Notebooks does not display any preview for the search results, but displays the documents' paths instead.
To clear the list of search results just clear the search field.
If you have been using Evernote as your note management solution and want to move your notes into Notebooks, you can do so with a few simple steps:
Export your Evernote notes in .enex format.
Move the resulting file into Notebooks. You can do so by dragging it into a book in Notebooks' outline or document list.
Select the file in Notebooks.
Notebooks displays some status info and an import button In the right window. Click that button to extract your notes contained in the enex file and add them to Notebooks.
Wait until the process has finished and you are done. You can now continue to work on your documents directly in Notebooks.
Once you purchase a license to unlock Notebooks 2, you can use it as long as you want, the license is "yours". There are no monthly or annual recurring fees.
Unlock the trial version of Notebooks by purchasing a license directly from within Notebooks 2.
Purchase a license from this site and unlock Notebooks 2.
These are perpetual licenses which do not expire. There are no recurring fees.
With the release of Notebooks 2, Notebooks 1 has been discontinued; you can still use Notebooks 1 as long as you want, but it will not receive any updates.
When you first launch Notebooks 2.0 and it asks you for its Notebooks Home (the folder where its expects your documents), just point it to the same folder you are using as Notebooks Home in Notebooks 1.x.
Notebooks for Mac stores its documents are regular files in folders on your Mac. Since Notebooks 2 and Notebooks 1.x are compatible, a migration process is not necessary. You can even run Notebooks 1.x and Notebooks 2.0 side by side without any issues.
