Attachments, images, and video
What happens when you drop big files into a note, and where the limits are.
Drop images, video, PDFs, audio, or any file straight into a note. Notel asks before it re-encodes anything heavy: images and PDFs over 5 MB, video over 150 MB.
Images
Images over 5 MB get a choice: Shrink and Attach (re-encoded to about 1 MB) or Attach as Zip (the original bytes, untouched, as a file chip). Animated GIFs cannot be shrunk without losing their animation, so Notel offers the zip route instead.
Under 5 MB there is no prompt, and what happens next comes down to the format rather than to where the file came from. JPEG, PNG, and GIF are stored exactly as you gave them, pasted screenshots included. HEIC, TIFF, WebP, and everything else are re-encoded on the way in without asking. They will look the same, but the bytes are no longer the originals, so attach the file as a file chip rather than as an image when the original matters.
Video
Videos up to 150 MB embed as they are. Past that Notel shows you the size and offers to re-encode to 720p, targeting 150 MB, with progress as it goes. Up to 300 MB you also get a Keep Original button, so shrinking is your call rather than something that just happens. Source files over 1 GB are too large to bring in; trim those first. Shrinking works down through quality presets until the result fits, and stops trying after about four minutes.
PDFs and other files
A PDF over 5 MB is offered a shrink that re-renders its pages at lower resolution. The file gets much lighter, but the text stops being selectable, so keep the original if that matters. Other files attach unchanged up to 25 MB each, while a zip, or a folder you drop in for Notel to zip, can run to 300 MB. That figure is also the ceiling for all the zips in one note put together.
Captions
By default, dropping an image or video opens a small caption field underneath it, ready to type. To turn this off, switch off Add Captions to Media in Settings → Advanced.
The limits
A note holds up to 10 file, audio, or video attachments and about 600 MB of attachment media. Inline images are managed separately from both limits; only images you choose to shrink are re-encoded toward 1 MB. Note Info (in the note settings panel) shows what is taking the space: click a row to Quick Look it, or, if it is a file chip, to reveal it in Finder. Right-click any row for Show in Note.
Reclaiming space
Settings → Advanced → Attachment Storage shows what all your notes’ media weighs. When files are sitting there that no note references anymore, it separates those out and offers Clean up unused files, which moves them to the Trash rather than deleting them. With nothing orphaned you just get the total.