Every setting, explained
Open Settings from the menu bar icon, from any note’s settings panel (the gear at the bottom), or with ⌘,. Eight tabs, left to right.
Note Design
What every new note wears, with a live preview note.
- 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, 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: sync notes across your Macs. Notel saves a local backup before the first sync.
Appearance
- Menu bar icon: pick the glyph. Notel always lives in the menu bar.
- Dock icon: choose its color, or hide the Dock icon entirely and let Notel be 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, pick the corner it grows from, and set Auto-hide Spring to Never, 3s, 5s, 15s, or 30s. Auto-hide only applies when Show Spring on Mouseover is on; with mouseover off it is greyed out.
Displays
With more than one screen connected, each display gets a row showing how many notes and bubbles live there, plus a Gather notes here button. The Behavior card can return notes to their display automatically when it reconnects.
Shortcuts
Recordable shortcuts for Peek Note, Fan (also triggered by double-tapping a modifier key, Option by default), New Note, and a global New Note that works in any app. 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: the plain-text copies of deleted notes, covered in Deleted notes and Archives.
About
Version info, Check for Updates…, acknowledgements, feedback, the Notel Tour, and Log Out… (signs this Mac out of your license; your notes stay). At the very bottom, a hold-to-confirm Reset Notel… erases all local data and relaunches.