For Mac · macOS 14 and later
Highlight it. Know it.
The highlighter, reinvented so you never do the same work twice. Everything you mark while reading turns itself into flashcards, recall sessions, quizzes and exams, instead of sitting on the page doing nothing.
Free during the public beta · no account · macOS 14 or later
How it works
A highlighter that means something
In every other app a highlight is a colour. In Cocoa it is a name, and a name is something the computer can work with.
- Formulas
- Terminology
- Dates
- On the Exam
- Step one
Name your pens
Formulas. Terminology. Dates. On the Exam. Whatever your course actually needs. Each folder can carry its own set, so red means formulas in Finance and dates in History.
- Step two
Mark as you read
Select and click a pen, or press ⌃1 through ⌃9. Hold a pen down and every sweep marks. Nothing about this is slower than highlighting on paper.
- Step three
It is already studied
Every mark gathers into a list by pen. Flashcards come from what you marked. Recall schedules the hard ones. Quizzes and exams draw from the same marks. You never type a card.
The study engine
The night before, the work is done
Open the Formulas collection for a course and every formula you marked all semester is on one page, each one a click away from the sentence it came from. Export it as a PDF and print it.
Start a recall session and Cocoa schedules what you keep getting wrong. Generate a quiz and answer it. Generate an exam and it marks you at the end. All of it is built from marks you already made while reading, plus any questions you want to write yourself.
Files and slides
A sentence that opens the slide it came from
Drop the lecture deck into the note. Select the words you wrote about slide 14, choose Link to a File, and pick that page. From then on, clicking those words opens slide 14 beside your writing.
PowerPoint, Keynote, Pages and Numbers are converted to PDF automatically so any page can be linked. Files are copied next to the note, so the two always travel together.
Your notes are files
Open the folder. There they are.
Cocoa writes plain Markdown into a folder you choose. Keep it on this Mac, or in iCloud Drive so the same notes appear on every Mac you own. There is no account and no server. The App Store privacy label reads Data Not Collected, because nothing is.
Even the highlights live in the file. A mark is an ordinary HTML tag in the text, so your highlighting survives in any other editor, and any assistant that reads Markdown can read your notes.
## Weighted average cost of capital
The firm discounts every project at its WACC, so the number below
decides which projects clear the bar.
<mark class="formulas">WACC = (E/V · Re) + (D/V · Rd · (1 − Tc))</mark>
Tc is the <mark class="terminology">marginal tax rate</mark>, not the average one.This is your note, opened in TextEdit. Nothing is hidden in a database.
Paper on screen
A notebook, not a scroll
A note is a paginated document with real pages: ruled, squared, dotted or blank stock in a choice of paper colours, page numbers, a page count, dog-ears to fold a corner, thumbnails down the side. Printing comes out one to one with the screen.
It is a native Mac app written in Swift, with menus, keyboard shortcuts, Services, Spotlight, Shortcuts, AppleScript, Quick Look, Handoff, and a capture window a hotkey away. Not a website in a wrapper.
Where things stand
It is in beta, and it needs testers
Cocoa Notes is a public TestFlight beta, built by one person. It is finished enough to take a semester of real notes in, which is what it is being used for. It has not been through hundreds of hands yet, and that is exactly what it needs.
Testing means using it for your actual coursework and telling me what confused you. The app collects no telemetry whatsoever, so nothing reaches me unless you write it down. A two-line email about something small is genuinely the most useful thing you can send.
What is true today
Free right now
Every feature is unlocked during the beta, including the whole study engine. No payment, no card, no account.
It will not stay free
At launch the notebook stays free. Cocoa Pro, the study engine, becomes a one-time $19.99 purchase. No subscription, ever.
Nothing is locked in either way
Your notes are plain Markdown files in a folder you chose, from the first minute. If the beta ends, or the price puts you off, or you simply stop using it, the notes are still there and still readable in any editor.
iPad is coming
An iPad version is planned. There is no date and nothing to show yet, so treat it as a direction, not a shipping promise.
What helps most
- Use it for one real course, not a test folder.
- Tell me the three things that confused you first.
- Say when something was slower than doing it by hand.
- Send the screenshot. It is always faster than the description.
Not on a Mac right now?
Send a blank email and you get one message when the app launches, and one if the iPad version ever becomes real. Nothing else, no list, no newsletter. It goes to an inbox I read myself.
Tell me when it launchesOne person, one inbox. Reply to unsubscribe, or just say hello.
Price
Free now. One payment later, or none at all.
Everything is unlocked during the beta. At launch the notebook stays free and only the study engine is paid, once rather than monthly.
Cocoa Notes
Free
Forever, with no account
- Unlimited notes, folders and pages
- All paper styles, pictures, tables, files panel
- Search, capture, Shortcuts, AppleScript, Spotlight
- Import, export, daily backups, version history
- Two highlighter pens, and every collection
- Three sentence-to-slide links
Cocoa Pro
$19.99
At launch · one-time purchase, not a subscription
- Everything in the free version
- Unlimited pens and per-folder pen sets
- Unlimited flashcard sets
- Recall scheduling, quizzes and exams
- Export any collection as PDF, Markdown or print
- Unlimited sentence-to-slide links
- The write-with-AI prompt pack
Unlocked for everyone while the beta lasts. Launch price $9.99 for the first six weeks, then $19.99.
Before you download
What Cocoa Notes is not
Volunteered up front, so nothing about it surprises you after you have paid.
Mac only, for now
macOS 14 or later. There is no iPad, iPhone or Windows version today. An iPad version is planned, but there is no date and nothing built yet.
Typed, not handwritten
No Apple Pencil, no handwriting recognition. You can add pictures, scans and photos from an iPhone.
Sync means iCloud Drive
Keep the notes folder in iCloud Drive and every Mac you own sees the same notes. There is no Cocoa sync service.
One person at a time
No shared editing or collaboration. You can export and send a file like any other document.
No AI inside the app
The AI feature is a set of prompts you copy into ChatGPT, Claude or anything else. Cocoa sends nothing anywhere.
Test it before everyone else
Cocoa Notes is in public beta on TestFlight. Everything is unlocked and free while the beta lasts, and what testers report is what gets fixed before launch.
Free during the beta · requires macOS 14 or later · Apple silicon and Intel