How can we help?

BindNotes is a handwritten notebook app for iPad, iPhone, and Mac. What makes it different: you can lasso any strokes on a page and create a tappable link to another page. The selected strokes are copied to the destination automatically. This turns a flat notebook into a connected system of ideas — like a handwritten wiki.

BindNotes runs on iPad, iPhone, and Mac. It requires iOS/iPadOS 26 or later (macOS 26 on Mac). Drawing with Apple Pencil is available on iPad. On iPhone and Mac, you can view, navigate, and organize your notebooks.

Yes — the core app is completely free with no limits on note-taking. You get unlimited notebooks, all drawing tools, page-to-page linking, headers & outline, iCloud sync, and 120 FPS rendering. BindNotes Pro is an optional one-time purchase that adds PDF import & annotation, PDF export, tags, dark templates, and color palettes. No subscription — buy once, own forever.

Switch to the lasso tool and draw a selection around any strokes on your page. A menu appears — tap Link and choose a destination page (new or existing). The selected strokes are copied to the destination, and a tappable link badge appears on your selection. Tap the badge to jump to the linked page; tap the link on the other side to jump back. Each page owns its links independently.

When you delete a page, any links that pointed to it become "dangling." BindNotes automatically detects and cleans up these orphaned links during vault reconciliation — you don't need to remove them manually. The cleanup runs when you open the app or when the vault syncs.

Yes — BindNotes maps directly onto Zettelkasten principles. Capture ideas on individual pages, then lasso and link related notes together. The page overview gives you a visual graph of all connections in your notebook, and headers let you create hierarchical structure. It's a handwritten, iPad-native slip-box.

You can assign a header level (H1 through H5) to any page in your notebook. Headers appear as colored badges on the page, and they build a navigable outline automatically. Tap the outline to see the full structure of your notebook, drill into sections, and jump to any page. Header colors are determined by the palette you choose for the notebook.

Each notebook has a header color palette that determines how H1–H5 badges are colored. There are 6 presets: Aurora (default), Ocean, Forest, Sunset, Mono, and Chalk. You can change the palette in the notebook's style settings. You can also set a custom link color per notebook — this changes the color of link badges independently of the header palette.

When you export a notebook as PDF, BindNotes generates special outline page(s) at the very beginning of the PDF. These pages show a visual table of contents: each header is rendered as a small thumbnail of the actual handwritten header content, indented by level (H1–H5), with a page number next to it. Note: these are rendered pages within the PDF, not native PDF bookmarks in the sidebar. If your notebook has many headers, the outline may span multiple pages.

By default, your notebooks are stored in iCloud Drive/BindNotes. This means they sync automatically across all your Apple devices signed into the same iCloud account. You can see the BindNotes folder in the Files app under iCloud Drive.

Yes. Go to Settings → Storage in BindNotes and pick a different folder on your filesystem. You can choose any location accessible through the Files app — a local folder, an external drive, or even a different cloud provider's folder. BindNotes will use that location as your "vault" and store all notebooks there. To switch back to iCloud Drive, select the default iCloud Drive/BindNotes location in the same settings.

BindNotes stores notebooks as files in iCloud Drive. Apple's iCloud handles the sync — there is no BindNotes server involved. When you edit a notebook on one device, iCloud uploads the changes and your other devices download them automatically.

Important: iCloud uses a "last writer wins" strategy. If you edit the same notebook on two devices at the same time before they sync, the last save overwrites the earlier one. To avoid losing changes, make sure one device has finished syncing before opening the same notebook on another. A good practice: close the notebook on Device A, wait a moment for iCloud to sync, then open it on Device B.

Tip: For best performance, keep the iCloud Drive/BindNotes folder set to "Keep Downloaded" on each device. On iPad/iPhone, long-press the folder in the Files app and choose Keep Downloaded. On Mac, right-click the folder in Finder and select Keep Downloaded. This prevents delays from on-demand downloading when you open a notebook.

Yes — each notebook can hold up to 700 pages. This limit also applies to PDF import: you can import a PDF with up to 700 pages. When a notebook reaches the limit, you won't be able to add new pages until you delete some. For very large projects, consider splitting your work across multiple notebooks and linking between them.

The notebook thumbnail shown in the library is generated from the top half of the first page. If you want to customize how your notebook looks in the grid, put your cover art or title on the top portion of page 1. Changing the content on the first page updates the thumbnail automatically.

You can organize notebooks into nested folders — folders can contain notebooks and other folders, with no depth limit. Create, rename, and rearrange folders from the library view. Deleting a folder moves it and its contents to the Trash. You can restore trashed folders and notebooks, or empty the Trash permanently.

Tags are text labels you attach to a notebook — like "biology", "semester-2", or "project-alpha". You can add multiple tags to any notebook and then filter your library by tag to find notebooks quickly. Tags are great for cross-cutting organization that doesn't fit neatly into folders. Tags require BindNotes Pro.

BindNotes includes 10 built-in templates in two groups:

Light templates (free): Blank, Graph Paper, Dots, College Ruled, Wide Ruled.
Dark templates (Pro): Blank Dark, Graph Paper Dark, Dots Dark, College Ruled Dark, Wide Ruled Dark.

Set the template when creating a notebook or change it later in the notebook settings. The template sets the background pattern for every page.

Yes. Each notebook has its own style settings. You can choose a header color palette (Aurora, Ocean, Forest, Sunset, Mono, or Chalk) that determines how H1–H5 badges are colored. You can also set a custom link color to change the color of link badges. These settings are per-notebook, so different notebooks can have different visual styles.

Import any PDF into BindNotes as a new notebook. Each PDF page becomes a notebook page with the PDF content as the background. You can then draw, write, and annotate on top of every page — just like writing on a printed document. The PDF can have up to 700 pages. PDF import requires BindNotes Pro.

The highlighter on PDF pages lifts actual pixels from the document. When you highlight a passage, the highlighted content is captured and becomes a visible, workable element layered on top of the page. This means your highlights are real visual extractions of the text or image underneath — not just a colored overlay. You can see the highlighted content clearly even when zoomed in.

When you export a notebook, the resulting PDF includes:

• Outline pages at the start — a visual table of contents with header thumbnails and page numbers
• All your handwritten strokes and annotations
• Link badges rendered as visual indicators on the page
• The original PDF background (if the notebook was imported from a PDF)
• Highlighter annotations rendered over the content

You can export all pages or a specific page range. PDF export requires BindNotes Pro.

No. BindNotes collects no data whatsoever. No analytics, no tracking, no telemetry, no crash reporting. There is no BindNotes server — your notebooks are stored on your device or in your iCloud Drive, and we have zero access to your files. No account is required to use the app. Read the full privacy policy.

Your notebooks are regular files in the filesystem (iCloud Drive by default). You can back them up like any other files — copy the BindNotes folder to an external drive, use Time Machine, or any backup solution you prefer. Since notebooks are just files in a folder, there's nothing special about the backup process.