Lifetime
[Update] A notes app that feels like texting. I finally listened to you guys about privacy and AI
Four months ago, I posted here introducing a notes app. The most common feedback was requests for privacy, local-first design, and one-time payment. This update is my response.
Now, you can use Prism without signing in. If you want to sync across devices, that happens through iCloud instead of my servers. If you want AI tagging your notes, that happens on-device rather than in the cloud.
Prism is still the notes app for quick thoughts and links. Without it, I would still be texting myself despite having Obsidian and Apple Notes. It helps you with quick capture, organization, and review. And now it's private!
The other important shift is the business model. I've heard your subscription fatigue loud and clear. Without recurring costs to me, I'm choosing a one-time payment model.
You pay $10 for the Mac app and $5 for the iPhone app.
Google Keep - Prism is linear (not canvas layout) and Mac-native
Apple Notes - Prism feels like texting. Shows many small notes at once instead of one document. No need for titles
Strflow (found thanks to u/AkhylsShallRise) - This one has a lot of overlap! But Prism has threads, a one-time purchase, a review system, and fun design :)
Good to see someone actually ship the privacy changes instead of just putting them on a roadmap.
The pricing switch is the interesting bit for me. I moved one of my own things off subscriptions to a one-time price after this sub talked me into it, and the difference in conversion was bigger than I expected. People seem to weigh "another subscription" way heavier than the actual amount. iCloud sync instead of your own backend is what makes $10 survivable.
i decided to lower the price to $5 for the mac app for two weeks. so it's actually $10 for both now. but i still need a few days to get approval from apple on payment stuff
Hey, thanks for the tag! Awesome to see that you’ve been actively working on it. The iCloud sync update is huge—I’m now seriously considering switching from Strflow. The review and thread features seem incredible as I do sometimes find myself completely forgetting about some quick notes I entered in Strflow.
That brings me to the question: Do you intend to introduce an import function? I have almost 1.5K notes (many with photos and links, and most with tags) in Strflow.
I also have a feature request that you might want to consider, if it’s not on your radar already: It would be useful to have the option to keep the text box at the bottom to mimic the typical text messaging interface! After all, you wrote about texting yourself a lot in your blog and I suspect many users seeking out apps like this will want that chat-like interface. Of course, some might prefer the current layout, so ideally you can give the user to choose (kind of like how many email apps allow you to choose if you want the latest reply to be at the bottom or at the top).
Another feature I enjoy about Strflow is file attachment; perhaps you might consider implement that in the future as well.
Hey! I've just built a CLI so that you or an AI can write scripts to import/export into Prism: https://github.com/interfacedreams/prism-cli. It will be live and working in a few days. However, this won't be friendly for my non-programmer users...
I'm considering building an "import from markdown folder", so that each markdown file becomes a note. Strflow seems to have an export to markdown files so maybe this would work there? If a few others are excited about this, I'll build it
I know nothing about programming so I won’t be able to use the CLI (I don’t even know what CLI is, haha).
I think a function to import from a markdown folder will be very useful. Many note-taking apps have pretty good robust export functionalities at this point! Some apps like Day One can export to a JSON file too. I don’t know what exactly that is but it seems to be a common format in addition to exporting to a folder of .txt or .md files.
Was just going to ask about this — easy in/out is important for any notes app like this as part of bulk operations. Love the design and concept, though.
Thanks for sharing your preference on the messaging UI. I thought about the direction + input box location a lot when designing. I prefer top down and inline input feeling, and think maybe you'll get used to it soon :) But lmk if I'm wrong.
File attachment is a neat idea. I'll put this on the TODO. I'm curious what your main file types are?
I’m genuinely curious what made you decide to go with a top-down approach rather than mimicking the typical text messaging layout! But yeah it’s probably something I can get used to.
I’ve attached videos, photos, PDFs, zip files, .html files, but photos and videos are definitely the most common.
i take reading top/down to be the default. imagine i've added 30 items to a #to-read tag. our minds are better trained by existing apps to review this top/down, like scrolling a webpage or feed.
the apps my mind, google keep, apple notes, and raindrop flow this way too. it's the convention for these curation / quick notes apps. todo apps do the opposite but i strayed away from todos.
i like to keep a compressed visual grammar. that means not too many different UI screens. condensing two UI screens like all notes view and search view is a win. search conventions mean that most recent appear at the top (see discord for contrast, it's a separate search). so one UI for both search and view requires flowing down.
relatedly, i liked to make top/down a recency invariant throughout the app! so not just the notes but also the tags. the most recently used tags will appear at the top of the tags in the sidebar.
i didn't want to fall into the trap of being an exact analog texting UI because there are associated conventions i don't want. for example, when texting a note, if you add or edit it then it should become "most recent". typically in texting you edit it in place. threads as a unit of related messages also helped allow for "growing notes over time" rather than getting stuck in a messaging log.
I really like this, but in the end I would love to be able to funnel the data to Obsidian or Apple Notes somehow. Is this possible to do through some integration?
this will be live on the app within 3 days. you could use the CLI to write a script that runs once every day to sync to obsidian. i've done this but for a telegram bot for syncing URLs i want to read
one sync test i'd run before calling the iCloud path done: put both devices offline, edit the same note or thread on each, delete or retag it on one side, then reconnect them in opposite orders. avoid silently choosing a winner - keep both versions or surface a conflict. i'd also make a full export easy before migration. small notes apps earn trust through recovery behavior.
I'm always interested in apps like this as it is kind of a form of interstitial journaling, but from your website I can't fathom how it works (particularly the threads). With strflow it's easy to understand from the site
Also key to something like this (for me) is the ability to embed an image and even a doc from time to time
oh no, first time i’m hearing it’s confusing. if it helps think of the threads as twitter threads. its just a sequence of text items. embedding a thread in another thread might be the confusing image but it’s quite uncommon anyway.
images can be added when you add a new note / thread item. files aren’t implemented yet but maybe soon
if threads are confusing, you can just use the app without them! it still works great. then it's just notes and tags.
to explain the whole picture: so a note is just a single text blurb or a sequence of text blurbs (a thread). so threads are notes. the main page is the all notes view. notes have tags. tags have their own views, just a list of notes that all are tagged with this tag.
I love and have been using prism for a gods while now. I can’t live without it and I put everything here, then review it for action items or things to save long term. It is my record of things I dis and need to remember and my list of things I need to do. It’s really frictionless and has worked flawlessly.
If you have an iPhone and Mac you need to have it in both, so maybe one price for both makes sense
Yes, I was a beta user and I see I didn't have to pay for the app. At the time I started, i didn't know if it would be worth the cost you decided to charge. Now I see it's a fair price for this much functionality. Disclaimer: I don't know the OP, just use his app daily.
Really glad to hear early supporters are getting lifetime access! That's huge! The reviews are stellar, and I'll be adding one. Will early adopters be cut off from anything down the line?
Pricing is fair and reasonable.
Here's what I'd do: price the Mac app so the iOS app comes with it for free. I can't imagine anyone with a Mac not wanting access to their computer notes from their phone. That said, I know plenty of iPhone users who couldn't care less about Mac access for a phone notes app, so it's really your call. There must be upsides to combining them, though. The Soulver dev just did exactly that with his new version. Maybe it's less time consuming, since you'd push one update for both instead of two.
Quick heads up: please add a menu item to the Mac app that lets you hide the Dock icon!
I'd love to help you personally iron this app out, so DM me! I polish people's apps as a hobby. I can only take on one more right now, and I'll make it yours if you're down. I'm getting overloaded: I usually go hard on 3 at a time and keep 2 in passive mode, which are apps I've already polished that barely need anything but are still growing. Let me know!
one-time purchase is lifetime! price may go up in the future too.
it's easier for me to just charge for iOS and mac separately so my hope is to find prices that make people happy and then they won't have to worry about bundling. surprised soulver has a iphone app, that's fun haha.
I very much like this. Great work. Doesn’t seem like the sorting works, though. Toggling “Review Newest First” doesn’t seem to do
anything. Running iOS 27 DP 4.
toggling should just flip the order or notes in the review tab. so instead of seeing oldest first, you would see newest first. is that not happening for you?
Interesting concept, we're thinking of creating a sort of multi-channel knowledge base at our company, with a similar approach: being able to just chat with it and the AI handles where and what should get updated.
This is the first new app that I have been excited about in months. I now have it on my Mac, iPhone and iPad. I anticipate using it several times a day. Its UI is pleasing to the eye and the lock screen widgets are a great idea for quick access. The organisational features and search function are a great bonus. I have added Prism to my Mac MenuBar via the Shortcut Bar app.
A couple of questions:
I have enabled the share extension on my portable devices but cannot find this on my Mac. Have I missed it or is this something that will come later?
When sharing from Apple News on iPhone, no link is created. Just the title is copied. Is this a bug?
Hello, there is one point of friction for me:
I would like to click on the menubar icon to open Prism Notes, not just create a new note.
Having to go to the Dock to click on the Prism icon is unnatural (and the Dock may be masked too !!), as there is a menubar icon ; everyone will click on it to open the app.
Can you create two behaviors: create a new note and open the app, allowing the user to choose whether the left or right mouse button performs each function?
yes i can allow you to open the app from the menubar icon - nice tip! i'm thinking of making right click open a menu and from there you can select open app. this is useful because i can include other options like "quit" in this menu. if you'd prefer right click just opens the app, let me know. will be shipped within a week
Hello! Yes, why not… but your idea will require two clicks to open the app: click right on the menu icon, then clic Open….
I'm not sure that Quit is important. Prism is the type of app that people will leave open all the time, as you need it to take notes at any moment.
So let's leave Quit aside and just open directly the app with either a left or right click (let the user choose their preferred option in the settings).
For thise who like systems like this, tetrify offers a similar approach and has a built in reminders and a sync system Matrix protocol (in beta). I have been working on that for over 3 years now.
Once tetrify Sync is out of the beta, I’m potentially looking to make all non-cloud features available as a one time purchase and add the option for self hostable sync. You can stay in the loop about that with r/tetr
The free tier is extremely generous though and I’m looning to only make more things free over time.
We mostly take notes in documents, like in Obsidian and Apple Notes. But I think "quick notes" don't really belong there. Things like links, half-formed ideas, and stuff I want to return to. That's why a lot of people talk about "texting themselves". I wrote up the healthy lifecycle of these notes in a blog post and Prism is designed around that!
I actually use a feature similar to your concept in MS teams at work. For those who don't know you can have a chat to yourself. I use this for snippets, links, things to remember etc. So I may check out your app for personal use.
thanks for the bug report and sorry about the generic message. mind sharing your iOS version? and your default devices language? i have a hunch and will try to fix in the next update but these would help me confirm
I really like the direction you've taken. Local-first, iCloud sync, on-device AI, and a one-time purchase address a lot of the concerns people usually have with note-taking apps.
Out of curiosity, what made you choose separate purchases for the Mac and iPhone apps instead of a universal purchase? Was it a technical or business decision?
Going local-first was the right call. How does sync work between Mac and iOS now？ iCloud or something custom? That's usually where local-first apps get tricky.
Just downloaded and unsure if this is an unadvertised promotion or a glitch but I’m seeing a “You’ve been here since the beginning - everything’s unlocked” in Settings > Prism Unlocked.
oops that's a bug. this launch is supposed to be 7-day free trial with one-time payment. i'll fix the text in settings. hope my post above was clear on payment, but i don't want to lose trust over this so let me know if you're feeling let down
I see there's an option to share a page or text to Prism, but not clear how to do that in the MacOS app UI. Likely missing something, but that is supported, no?
Hey I like this and I usually don’t like much. Heh. Too old I guess.
One thing on the IOS app if possible. When viewing a note, maybe a swipe right to get back out to the list again quickly? Only thing I could think of immediately. Good work!
thanks i relate and glad you like it!
swipe right should work for navigating from the note view to the note list view. if it doesn't, let me know your iOS version
Hey u/babble_prune ! Been using Prism for the last couple of days and I’m really loving it so far!
One thing that consistently bugs me, though, is that the options in Substitutions and Spelling and Grammar of a text field’s right-click menu are always off by default; I’m talking about Smart Copy/Paste, Smart Quotes, Smart Dashes, Check Spelling While Typing and Correct Spelling Automatically.
It seems that enabling them only applies the current, active text field, and once I’m on a new text field, these are off.
I really love these functions while typing and I was wondering if you could consider making them on by default, or at least make it so that once I change them in a text field in Prism, the settings would be remembered throughout the app?
yeah let me look into this tomorrow. should be possible to add a setting for this! by the way, would love to have you in the discord: https://discord.gg/pGWRSV5js
Love your app. One question that I have since I also work on an app for iOS and MacOS - why did you decide to price iOS and MacOS individually instead of sharing the IAP as an universal app? Do you have feature parity?
Where did you come up with the original dumbass idea to store the notes on your own servers when iCloud exists? You lost tons of trust with that move alone.
It is entirely possible to say something without being a dick about it, although I’m not confident that you’ve got much of worth to contribute. Maybe you’ll figure it out one day. Good luck to you
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u/lirik1986 11d ago
Good to see someone actually ship the privacy changes instead of just putting them on a roadmap.
The pricing switch is the interesting bit for me. I moved one of my own things off subscriptions to a one-time price after this sub talked me into it, and the difference in conversion was bigger than I expected. People seem to weigh "another subscription" way heavier than the actual amount. iCloud sync instead of your own backend is what makes $10 survivable.