← JOTT

What Jott actually changes

You already know what a notes app is. So rather than explain the idea, here are three ordinary things people use notes apps for — how each one goes in the apps you're probably using now, and how it goes in Jott. After those: the few ideas the whole app is built out of, and the handful of things Jott does that the others can't.

Capture now. Curate later.

The cooking log

You made something for dinner and it came out well. The oven temperature, the twenty minutes on a wire rack, the cornstarch trick — in four months you will want exactly those details and remember none of them. This isn't recipe collecting. It's writing down what you did, on the night you did it.

How it goes today

Obsidian Real power once it's in there — but first, a decision. New note or append to the daily one? What's it called? Which folder? You're standing in the kitchen with greasy hands making filing decisions, and most nights you'll skip it.
Google Keep Fast to write, and search works. But dinners pile up as cards among the reminders and the hardware-store lists, and Keep has no idea they're a series. Two hundred of them is just clutter with good search.
Apple Notes Usually becomes one long note you append to, which means scrolling to the bottom every night, or a folder of notes you have to name. Either way the dates are whatever you remembered to type.

How it goes in Jott

  1. Say it while you clean up. Open Jott and describe what you did. Use the microphone on your phone's keyboard if your hands are wet — run-on sentences are completely fine, and punctuation doesn't matter here. Detail is what you'll want later, so spend the extra ten seconds on why it worked.
    [[Cooking]] Crinkle-cut sweet potato fries — soaked 30 min in cold water, dried them properly, dusted with cornstarch, canola, wire rack over a sheet pan, 425 convection for 20. Best yet: crispier than when I tried it on the sheet pan itself, and they held while the burgers finished. Salt them the second they come out, not before.
  2. Lead it with [[Cooking]] — or don't, and add that later. On a phone, tap Subject — the link button on the bar above the keyboard — and start typing "Cooking", then pick it out of the list. At a computer, type [[, which opens the same picker. Nothing needs creating first: the subject exists because you referred to it.

    The bar above your keyboard while you're writing — left to right: Format, List, Subject, then the ✓ that commits.

    And none of this has to happen tonight. Capturing it raw and putting the subject on it next week is a completely ordinary way to use Jott — the deadline is on writing the thing down, never on filing it.

  3. Commit it and forget it. On a phone, tap ✓ on that same bar. At a computer it's Ctrl+Enter (⌘+Enter on a Mac); plain Enter makes a new line. No title, no folder, no deciding where it belongs — and it's stamped with tonight's date because that's simply when you wrote it. More on committing.
  4. Four months later, ask. Two ways in, and they're the same thing underneath. Search [[Cooking]] and every dinner you've logged comes back, newest first — or search sweet potato and land on the night it worked (the rest of the search syntax). If it's a thread you keep returning to, put [[Cooking]] in the Tree instead and it's one click in the sidebar from then on.

You never wrote a recipe, and you ended up with a cookbook. That's the whole argument in one workflow: the effort stayed at ten seconds a night, and the thing that got built was never something you'd have sat down to write on purpose. Give it a few weeks and you can point an AI assistant at your jotts and ask across all of them at once — what have I done with pork loin that actually worked?

The shared grocery list

The list two people add to all week and one of them walks around a store holding. It has to be trivial to add to from the couch, and usable with one hand and a cart in aisle six.

How it goes today

Google Keep Genuinely good at this, and the honest benchmark — shared, checkboxes, checked items drop to the bottom. The catch is that it's one note forever: you clear it and start again, so there's no such thing as last week's list, and the checked pile grows into the hundreds.
Apple Notes Shared checklists work well, with an option to sort checked items down. Same shape of problem: it's a document you maintain and reset, and it lives apart from everything else you write.
Obsidian Markdown checkboxes are easy, but sharing a live list with a partner means both of you in Obsidian with sync set up — and realistically, nobody is opening a vault one-handed in the frozen aisle.

How it goes in Jott

  1. Write the list, grouped how your store is laid out. On a phone, tap List and then Checkbox — checkboxes live one level in, next to bullets, numbering and the indent arrows. At a computer it's Ctrl+Shift+9 (⌘+Shift+9 on a Mac). Type the items in whatever order they occur to you and group them later; the aisle order is worth having by the third or fourth list, not the first.

    The same bar after you tap List — back, bullets, numbering, Checkbox, then outdent and indent for nesting.

    • Meat
      • [ ] 2 lb chicken thighs — not breasts
      • [ ] Pork loin, whatever's on offer
    • Dairy
      • [ ] 2% milk, the big one
      • [ ] The good butter if they have it
    • Produce
      • [ ] Limes ×4
      • [ ] Bagged spinach, not the box
  2. Share it by mentioning them. Type @ and pick the person. That is the share — there's no separate dialog, and nothing about the list stops being end-to-end encrypted because two people can now read it. You both add to it all week from whichever device is nearest. How sharing works.
  3. In the store, go fullscreen and pick "Checked at bottom". Checked items drop out and collect at the end, so what's on screen is what's still in front of you. Strike through and Show all are there for lists you'd rather keep whole.
  4. Next week, don't start over. Open last week's, hit ⋮, choose Duplicate as fresh checklist. Same list, every box cleared — the groupings, the brands, the thing you always forget. Last week's stays where it is, checked, with its own date.
  5. Keep them all. Lead each one with [[Grocery list]] (subjects) and pin that subject to the Tree. Every list you've ever made, newest first, one click from the parking lot.

The difference isn't the checkboxes — it's that the list isn't a special object. It's an ordinary jott, so it keeps a date, joins a subject, and stacks up as a history instead of being one note you reset every Sunday. Which means a question like how often do we actually buy the expensive butter has an answer.

A thought on a walk

Halfway round the block something lands — the fix for the thing at work, a name for the dog, why last night's argument was actually about something else. You have about fifteen seconds of willingness to get your phone out. The real competition here isn't another notes app; it's texting yourself, and it's forgetting.

How it goes today

Google Keep The widget and voice note are quick, and credit where it's due. But it lands as another card in an undifferentiated pile — fast in, no idea what it belongs to.
Apple Notes Quick Note from Control Centre is fast too, then you're left with an untitled note to file later. "Later" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Obsidian Cold start on a phone, then choose a file to put it in. By the time the vault opens the thought has usually gone.

How it goes in Jott

  1. On iPhone, put the Jott widget on your home screen. Long-press the home screen → + → Jott. Tapping it opens straight into a composer with the cursor already blinking: it deliberately skips loading the rest of the app, because the seconds are the whole point. (The widget is iPhone-only today.)
  2. At a computer, the global hotkey: Ctrl+Alt+Enter. ⌘+⌥+Enter on a Mac. From any app, Jott comes to the front with the composer focused, whatever you were doing. Press it again and it commits what you typed and gets out of the way. Both shortcuts are rebindable.
  3. Say it badly. Talk into it with the keyboard mic, or type half a sentence. Typos are fine. It'll be on your other devices when you're back at a desk — and that's where you add the subject you now realise it belonged to, if you want one at all.

Capture now, curate later, in one motion. The tidying is optional and it happens whenever. The only part with a deadline is the fifteen seconds.

Subjects and [[links]]

A subject is any name you write in double brackets — [[Cooking]], [[Diary]], [[Anna]], [[Kitchen reno]]. It is the one organising idea in Jott, and very nearly the whole of it.

  • Writing one is creating it. There's no "new tag" step and nothing to set up first. The first time you type [[Cooking]] the subject exists; every time after that you're adding to it. Nothing is moved or filed — the jott stays exactly where it was, in the stream, and now it also answers to a name.
  • How to write one. At a computer, type [[ and a picker opens — keep typing to narrow it, press Enter to take one. On a phone, the Subject button on the bar above the keyboard — the link icon — inserts the [[ for you and opens the identical picker; it's the same mechanism, not a mobile substitute. Taking an existing subject off the list rather than retyping it is what stops [[Cooking]] quietly becoming [[cooking]] and [[Cooking ]].
  • They can be anything. A recurring thread, a project, a person, a place, a mood you keep noticing. There's no type system underneath and no hierarchy to design: a subject is a name that jotts point at.
  • You don't need one. A jott with no subject is a perfectly good jott and search will still find it. Adding the subject weeks later — once you know what the thing turned out to be — is the intended way to work, not a fallback for when you forget. That's the "curate later" half of the whole idea.
  • Where they show up. The Subjects page lists every one you've used. The sidebar keeps Recent Subjects and Most Used Subjects up to date without you maintaining anything, and the ones you live in can be pinned to the Tree.

See also: Finding it again · The Tree

Capturing and committing

There's a composer waiting at the top of the app. You type into it and commit; the jott gets today's date and joins the stream. That's the entire loop, and it's worth knowing the three ways to close it.

  • On a phone, ✓ on the action bar. The bar above your keyboard ends in a checkmark, and that's the commit. There's no keyboard shortcut to learn because there's no keyboard to learn it on.
  • At a computer, Ctrl+Enter (⌘+Enter on a Mac). Plain Enter makes a new line.
  • The global hotkey — Ctrl+Alt+Enter (⌘+⌥+Enter on a Mac). From anywhere on the desktop, in any app, Jott comes to the front with the cursor in the composer, whatever you were doing; press it again to commit and get out of the way. On iPhone, the home screen widget is the equivalent — it opens straight into a composer without loading the rest of the app.
  • All of these are rebindable in Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts, including swapping Enter and Ctrl+Enter if the default never stops feeling wrong.
  • There is no title, no folder and no save button. The date isn't something you type — it's simply when you wrote it. For the first several entries the empty composer suggests things to write; that thins out and stops on its own once you've found your own reasons for opening it.

See also: Subjects and [[links]] · A thought on a walk

The Tree

The top section of the sidebar, labelled Tree. It's the one place in Jott where you're allowed to file things — and it's entirely optional, always after the fact, and never where the jotts actually live.

  • Pin a subject. Right-click any subject — in the sidebar, or on the Subjects page — and choose Add to Tree, or drag it in. Now [[Cooking]] is one click away instead of one search away.
  • Pin a single jott. The ⋮ menu on any jott has Add to Tree too — useful for the grocery list you're actually shopping from, or the one note you're living in this week.
  • Folders and saved searches. The + on the Tree header makes a New Directory to group things under, or a New Smart Filter — a search you've saved, which re-runs every time you open it rather than holding a fixed list.
  • Drag to rearrange and nest. Order and nesting are yours; the Tree is a view you build, not a structure the jotts belong to. Removing something from it never deletes anything.
  • Under it, three lists that maintain themselves: Recent Subjects, Most Used Subjects and Recent Jotts. Most people need the Tree far less than they expect, because these three cover the day to day.

See also: Subjects and [[links]] · Finding it again

Sharing

Sharing a jott is mentioning someone in it. Type @, pick the person, and they have it — there's no separate dialog, no permissions screen and no link to send.

  • It works on any jott, not just lists. A grocery list, a plan, a half-thought you want a second opinion on: all the same mechanism.
  • You both edit it. Changes flow both ways and land on whichever device each of you is holding. Two people typing in the same list at once is expected, not a conflict to resolve.
  • It stays end-to-end encrypted. Sharing doesn't hand the server a readable copy — the jott's key is re-wrapped for the person you shared with, and the server carries sealed bytes to them exactly as it does to your own other devices. How that works.
  • They need a Jott account, which during the alpha means an invite. There's nothing to send them once they have one — the mention is the whole act.

See also: The shared grocery list · Nobody can read them but you

Sync is built in, and first-class

Not an add-on. Not a second product to install and configure. Not a folder you point at a file-syncing service and hope. Sign in on another device and your jotts are there, because that is simply how the app works.

  • Nothing to set up. No vault to choose, no sync provider to pick, no conflict settings to reason about. The second device asks you to sign in and then it has everything.
  • It crosses ecosystems. A Windows laptop and an iPhone on one account — which is exactly the combination Apple Notes and Google Keep can't serve, because each of those is really a feature of somebody's platform rather than a product of its own.
  • It moves jotts, not files. Writing on a phone with one bar of signal syncs the entry you just wrote rather than reconciling a whole vault. Offline you carry on writing, and the devices catch each other up when they reconnect.
  • It's end-to-end encrypted, which built-in sync usually is not — the server carries sealed bytes between your devices and cannot read one. How that works.
  • Sharing rides on the same machinery. Mentioning someone puts a jott on their devices the same way it is already on yours — there's no second system for "shared" things. Sharing.

See also: It keeps working without us · A thought on a walk

Nobody can read them but you

Your jotts are end-to-end encrypted. They're sealed on your device before they leave it, and the sync server moves them between your devices without ever being able to read one. The keys stay with you — which is a promise with a consequence attached, so it's worth understanding the two secrets involved.

  • Your sign-in proves who you are. It's how the sync server knows which sealed bundles are yours and who may send you things. Email link or Google sign-in — that's all it does.
  • Your encryption password unlocks the jotts themselves. It never leaves your device and the server never sees it. Two different secrets doing two different jobs, deliberately: the server can be completely compromised and your entries are still unreadable.
  • Remember your encryption password. Nobody can reset the encryption password for you, because nobody else has anything to reset it with. While Jott is in alpha there's no self-serve recovery either — so pick something you'll have in six months, and if it does slip your mind, message me rather than guessing at it.
  • Sharing doesn't weaken it. A jott you share is re-sealed for that person, not decrypted for the server. Sharing.

It keeps working without us

Jott is local-first. Your jotts live in a database on your own device and the app reads and writes them there — syncing is something that happens afterwards, not the thing standing between you and your notes.

  • Offline is not a mode. On a plane, in a basement, with the server down: you write, you search, you read everything you have. When the connection comes back the devices catch each other up.
  • Nothing lives only on the server. The copy on your device is the real one. If the sync server disappeared tomorrow, the app on your laptop would open your jotts as usual.
  • Backups you control. Settings → Backup & Restore keeps automatic backups, lets you take one yourself, and takes another before it restores so a restore can itself be undone. Backups you make by hand are never cleaned up automatically.

See also: Nothing is watching you

Nothing is watching you

Not "we take your privacy seriously". A specific list of things that are absent, which you can hold me to.

  • No analytics and no product telemetry. No Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Amplitude or PostHog. The app ships with no analytics library of any kind, so there is no usage stream to leak, sell or subpoena.
  • No crash reporting. No Sentry, no Crashlytics. If something breaks I only find out because you tell me — which is a real cost, knowingly paid.
  • No ads, no ad identifiers, and nothing sold or shared with data brokers or anyone else.
  • No training AI models on your notes. I can't read them, and I wouldn't do this if I could.
  • Feedback is the one thing that leaves, and only when you send it. Diagnostic logs ride along by default and you can untick them; your database is never attached unless you tick it yourself.

The full detail is in the privacy policy, which is written to be read rather than to be survived

Your assistant can read them

Capture now, curate later — but somebody still has to do the curating. On a computer you can hand that job to an AI assistant and point it at everything you've ever jotted.

  • Connect it in Settings → MCP. One click hooks up Claude Desktop or Claude Code. From then on you can ask questions across the whole corpus at once: what have I done with pork loin that actually worked, what was I worried about this time last year, pull together everything I've said about the kitchen.
  • It runs on your machine. The assistant launches Jott locally and talks to it directly — your jotts aren't uploaded anywhere for this to work.
  • It's off until you turn it on, and it's a desktop feature today, because that's where those assistants run.
  • This is the argument for capturing raw. Two hundred scruffy dated entries are worth more to something that can read all of them at once than twenty polished pages are — and you didn't have to write the twenty pages.

See also: The cooking log

While Jott is in alpha

  • On Windows, the installer isn't signed yet. Windows shows a blue "Windows protected your PC" box with no obvious way past it. Click More info, which reveals a Run anyway button. A signing certificate is on the list; it needs paperwork rather than code.
  • On iPhone, Jott arrives through TestFlight — Apple's beta app. You'll get an invitation from Apple; install TestFlight first, then Jott through it.
  • Tell me what's wrong with it. There's Send feedback… in the menu at the top of the app — it carries the app version and, unless you untick it, the diagnostic logs that turn "it did something weird" into something I can actually find. The friction you notice in week one is the friction I can no longer see.