FoldNotes for macOS Golden Gate

macOS Golden Gate is out, and so is the FoldNotes update built for it. Siri now understands your notes, your tasks have voice commands — and Siri reads them out in the car — you can fold and move your outline from the keyboard, the widgets come in Apple’s new tall size, and the command-line tool keeps working under the new privacy rules. On iPhone & iPad, Siri and the tall widgets arrived with the iOS 27 update; Siri reading your tasks out and the keyboard commands follow there shortly.

Ask Siri — about your notes

On macOS Golden Gate and iOS 27, Siri knows what a FoldNotes note is. You don’t need special phrases:

• “Make a FoldNotes note called Camping trip” creates the note. A name you say is a name you chose, so FoldNotes never renames it to follow its first heading.
• “Add book the campsite to my Camping trip note” adds it to the end.
• “Open my note about camping” and “Search FoldNotes for campsite”.
• Siri sees what’s on screen. With a note open, “add call Mum to this” knows which note you mean.

Siri reads what FoldNotes has already indexed, so asking about a note never waits for iCloud to download it. One thing to do after updating: run Reindex Spotlight once (Settings ▸ Export & Maintenance on iPhone and iPad; the File menu on the Mac), so Siri can find the notes you saved before this version. Your <!-- comments --> stay private from Siri, just as they do from Spotlight. If you’d rather Siri and Spotlight didn’t see your notes at all, turn off Show Notes in Spotlight and Siri in FoldNotes’ Settings, under Privacy. Your Shortcuts and “FoldNotes …” phrases keep working.

Tasks by voice — and in Shortcuts

Say a task the way you’d say it to a person: “For the road trip next week I need to get the tyres checked. Add a task to FoldNotes for next Thursday.” Siri works out the task, the due date and where it goes, and can keep the conversation going: “add it to my Work list”, “flag it”, “move it to Friday”, “mark it done”. A list in FoldNotes is a project; with no list the task goes to the end of today’s daily note. Say “FoldNotes”, or the Reminders app will take it.

There are also three new actions with fixed phrases, which work on macOS 15 and iOS 18 or later too:

• “FoldNotes add a task.” Siri asks what, and it goes to the end of today’s daily note. In Shortcuts you can pick a note, a due date, a priority, and a project.
• “What’s due tomorrow in FoldNotes?” Or today, this week, overdue, or the next few days. Siri reads out every task, up to ten, and then how many more. “What’s due today” means today’s tasks; ask “What’s overdue in FoldNotes?” for the rest. The due times are the same as everywhere else in FoldNotes: a task due today becomes overdue at 5 PM.
• “FoldNotes complete a task.” Say which one, by name. A task reminder notification can be marked done by asking Siri, too.

In the car, or with AirPods in, there’s no screen to show a list, so Siri reads your tasks out properly: the words you wrote, without the due: and other details on the line, and the day said as a word — today, tomorrow, Friday. Adding a task repeats what Siri heard, and a search reads the first few note titles. Siri also answers to “Fold Notes” said as two words.

Tasks in notes you’ve trashed or archived are left out: not in the daily note’s Overdue list, the Tasks widget, reminders, or anything Siri tells you.

Your existing shortcuts are untouched. The Siri versions of Create Note, Append and Open work behind the scenes, so the Shortcuts app doesn’t show you two of each.

Your outline, from the keyboard

If you like to keep your hands on the keys, FoldNotes now folds and rearranges an outline without the mouse:

• ⌘9 folds the row the cursor is on, ⌘0 unfolds it one level, and ⌃⌘9 / ⌃⌘0 (or ⌥⌘9 / ⌥⌘0) fold or unfold the row and everything inside it. Plain Text has moved from ⌘0 to ⌘7 to make room.
• ⌃⌘↑ and ⌃⌘↓ move the row, or every line you’ve selected, with everything indented under it. A heading moves with its whole section and keeps its level; a list item takes its level from where it lands. ⌃⌘→ and ⌃⌘← indent and outdent.
• Move To… (⌘\) sends the rows to any heading you pick from a list. Return moves them and takes the cursor along; Control-Return leaves the cursor where it was.

Moves and folds slide into place, undo included, and each press is one ⌘Z. The same keys work on iPad with a keyboard in the iPhone & iPad update.

Tall widgets

Tasks and Recent Notes come in the new Extra Large Portrait size on the Mac, iPhone and iPad: a column tall enough to see the day’s tasks, or your recent notes, at a glance.

Tip for the Mac: if the new size isn’t offered in the widget gallery after updating, log out and back in. macOS can keep the previous version of a widget running.

The command line on macOS Golden Gate

macOS Golden Gate asks you to allow each app separately before it can read another app’s private data. The fn command-line tool now works either way. When Terminal (or Claude, or your editor) hasn’t been allowed, fn reads your note files directly. It’s a second or two slower, and it prints a one-line note saying how to make it instant. Everything else is unchanged. Access & Speed on macOS Golden Gate explains the one setting.

New in fn, and in the FoldNotes MCP server for Claude and other AI tools:

• fn tasks list --due-tomorrow and --days 7
• fn tasks add "Ring the plumber" with no note: it goes to today’s daily note
• fn tasks complete "Ring the plumber", found by name. If two notes have the same task, fn asks which rather than guessing.
• fn tags rename work/clients clients renames a tag in every note, with its sub-tags, icons and manual order.
• Rename, delete and restore are now safe while FoldNotes has that note open.

Also in this update

• Rename a tag from the sidebar, on the Mac and on iPhone & iPad.
• The Preview window follows your editor. Keep it open beside your note and it switches when you switch notes. ⌘+ and ⌘− zoom the Preview when it’s in front.
• Version History is in the right-click menu of the notes list and the editor.
• Database views: a Multi Select property written as a YAML list filters correctly, and an empty filter line no longer hides every note.
• Full screen on macOS Golden Gate no longer hides the first lines of your note behind a pale band when the toolbar is tucked away.
• Importing from Obsidian: indented lists no longer turn into tags.
• “This week” means the next seven days, everywhere — queries and database views used the calendar week — and the built-in Due This Week now includes overdue tasks. A new rule, before N days from today, gives you a date that moves with the calendar.

This is the last beta before FoldNotes 1.0. If anything in it doesn’t behave, now is the best time to tell me.

Availability

On the Mac, choose Check for Updates in FoldNotes. On iPhone and iPad, Siri and the tall widgets are already in the current version on the App Store; the next update, with Siri reading your tasks out and the keyboard commands, follows shortly. The full list is in the release notes.

I’d love to hear how Siri gets on with your notes: @[email protected].