Every setting, explained
A tour of all eight Settings tabs, card by card.
Open Settings from the menu bar icon, from any note’s settings panel (the gear at the bottom), from the gear in the Fan, from the foot of the Library’s sidebar, or with ⌘,. Eight tabs, left to right.
Note Design
What every new note wears, with a live preview note that doubles as the size control: drag its corner and new notes open at those dimensions.
- Appearance: light/dark/auto paper, the default color (classics, Random, Custom, or a full theme), and an optional custom text color.
- Text: default font (System, Rounded, Serif, Mono, or any installed font via More Fonts…), bold/italic/underline, text size (8 to 50 pt), and list style.
- Opacity: note and text opacity, linked or separate.
- Title Bar: hide the title or divider, always show the title, alignment, and the close-button style.
The reset arrow puts the design back to factory, size included, leaving your color choice alone.
General
- Startup: launch Notel at login.
- Dock: what clicking the Dock icon does (peek your last note, or open the Library).
- Smart Features: four switches, one per feature. Auto Stack (drag a note onto another to stack), live calculations (Smart Calc), reminder suggestions while typing, and slash commands.
- Spotlight: index notes so macOS search finds them.
- iCloud (Coming soon): sync notes across your Macs. Notel saves a local backup before the first sync. This card appears only in builds that include iCloud.
Appearance
- System: pick the menu bar glyph (Notel always lives in the menu bar), and choose the Dock icon’s color or hide it entirely to make Notel a menu-bar-only app.
- Title Bar: put every note’s close button on the left or the right.
Fan
- Hide open notes while the Fan is up, fading them back afterwards.
- Spring & Bubbles: turn the Spring on or off, tuck it away with Show Spring on Mouseover, keep a floating Fan bubble on screen, set Bubble Spring Position to the bottom left or the bottom right, and set Auto-hide Spring to Never, 2s, 5s, 15s, or 30s. Everything under the first switch greys out while the Spring is off, and Auto-hide needs Show Spring on Mouseover on as well.
Displays
Every connected screen gets a row showing how many notes and bubbles live there. With a second screen attached, each row also carries a Gather notes here button; on a single display the tab simply says you have one. The Behavior card can return notes to their display automatically when it reconnects.
Shortcuts
Recordable shortcuts for Peek Note (⌥` by default), the Fan (⌥F, also triggered by double-tapping a modifier key, Option by default), New Note (⌘N), and a global New Note that works in any app (⌥⌘N). If a new shortcut collides with an old one, the old one is cleared and Notel tells you. Restore Defaults brings the stock set back.
Advanced
- Design: include themes in random colors, tint scroll bars to the note color, and auto-add caption fields to dropped media.
- Maintenance: delete all blank notes, and Export/Import note data, the full backup zip covered in Where your notes live.
- Attachment Storage: see what attachments weigh, open the folder, and clean up unused files.
- Archives: Auto archive note on delete, which is on out of the box, an Open archives folder button, and the plain-text copies themselves, covered in Deleted notes and Archives.
About
Version info, Check for Updates… with a Check automatically switch beside it and the date of the last check, acknowledgements, feedback, and the Notel Tour. The license row reads Register Notel… during a trial or License… after registration; inside the latter, Unregister This Mac… frees the Mac from your license while leaving its notes in place. At the very bottom, a hold-to-confirm Reset Notel… erases all local data and relaunches.