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FoldNotes for iPhone & iPad Is Here

FoldNotes for iPhone and iPad is on the App Store today, and it’s free.

It has been a long road to this post. FoldNotes started on the Mac as an answer to a specific frustration: outliners that own your data, and markdown editors that treat structure as decoration. Folding sits between the two — your notes stay plain markdown files you could open in any editor, but you can collapse a section you’re not working on and let the rest of the document breathe.

Build 32: Zen Mode, Themed Previews, and a Preview You Can Work In

Build 32 is a big one. It’s three features I’ve wanted for a long time, plus the quiet plumbing that makes them feel like one app instead of three.

Distraction-Free — Zen Mode

Some days you want the outline, the affordances, the task counts — the whole workshop. Other days you just want the words.

Zen Mode (⌃⌘Z) strips the editor back to calm text: muted Markdown syntax, a faded interface, no toolbar, and an unobtrusive word count in the corner. What it doesn’t do is take anything away. Folding, hoisting, and drag-to-reorder all still work; the outline stays scannable. Serenity and structure.

Build 20: A Live Task Board, External Files, and the Road to Release

Build 20 is the biggest update FoldNotes has had — and it’s the one where the app started feeling finished to me. Here’s what’s new, and where the release stands.

The Task Board is now live. All of it.

The Task Board has been updating live for checkbox clicks and / commands since Build 17. Build 20 finishes the job: every way you change a task now updates its card instantly — editing in the task editor (due date, priority, text, comments), even on notes that aren’t open, and simply typing on a task line, which updates the card as you pause. No save cycle, no refresh.

Introducing FoldNotes

I started building FoldNotes over 5 years ago because I couldn’t find a notes app that worked the way I think.

I take a lot of notes. Meeting notes, project plans, research, daily logs. And every time I captured a task during a meeting or while reading, I had to choose: keep it in context where it makes sense, or move it to a task manager where I’ll actually see it again. Neither option was good. Tasks ripped out of their notes lose meaning. Tasks buried in notes get forgotten.