Skein Notes

Your notes are plain Markdown files in a folder you choose. Capture in a tap, search everything, open your vault on the Mac. No account, no sync service, no lock-in.

Skein is a notes app for people who want to keep their own files.

Your vault is a folder of plain Markdown on your device or in iCloud Drive. Skein reads and writes those files directly — the same folder you open in Skein for Mac, or in any other editor. Nothing is locked in a database, and there is no service in the middle.

Write it down before you lose it

The app opens on a capture field. Type the thought and send it; the first line becomes the note's title and Skein files it where you told it to. No dialog, no folder picker, no naming a file before you have written anything.

Find it again

Search matches titles the moment you start typing and searches inside every note once the index is ready, ranked, with the matching lines and their line numbers — tap one and land on it. The Vault filters by name, by #tag or by folder in one field, and tags are real: tap one anywhere in the app to see everything carrying it.

Real Markdown, properly

Headings, lists, task lists, tables, footnotes, code blocks, callouts, ==highlights== and [[wikilinks]] — read cleanly and edited as text. A keyboard bar puts the things you actually reach for above the keys, including arrows that move by character and by word, and you can choose which of them appear. Type / for a command, #for a tag it already knows.

Canvas

Open a JSON Canvas board, move cards, connect them, colour them and write on them. The same file, the same format Obsidian writes, so a board made on the Mac opens here and back again.

It keeps your writing safe

Skein keeps earlier versions of a note as you edit, so you can go back to what you wrote this morning. When the same note has been changed in two places, Skein keeps both and asks — it never picks a winner quietly.

Also

Share text from any app straight into your vault. Four themes, including one for reading at night. Dynamic Type throughout, and full VoiceOver support.

Skein does not have an account, a subscription for the basics, a server, or telemetry. Your notes never leave your device except through iCloud Drive, which is yours.

Skein for Mac is a separate app on the same purchase.