Smart Calc and reminder suggestions
Live math at the end of the line, and reminders you set by pressing Return.
Smart Calc and reminder suggestions both watch what you type and offer to finish the line. Either can be switched off in Settings → General → Smart Features.
Smart Calc
Write math in a note and the answer appears as faint ghost text at the end of the line:
- Plain arithmetic:
7 * 7 =or just120 / 4. - Named values and totals: write
hotel = 200,dinner = 85, thenTotal =on its own line and Notel sums what came before. - Percentages:
15% of 200works, as does adding+ 10%to a line. - Currency:
$200 + $49keeps your symbol, on the side you put it and with the spacing you gave it.
Accept a result by clicking the ghost or pressing Tab, Return, or the right arrow. Press Esc to dismiss it for that line. Accepted results stay live: change an input above and the total updates.
Dates and phone numbers are deliberately ignored, so 2024-01-01 never becomes math.
Type /smartcalc for a starter template: Item 1 = 0 and Item 2 = 0, with a Total = waiting underneath.
Reminder suggestions
Write a line with a time in it and a small ghost appears at the end: “dinner with Anna tomorrow 7pm”. It wants an actual clock signal (a digit, or am/pm) and a few words to attach the reminder to, which is why tonight on its own stays quiet while tonight at 6pm does not. Press Return and the line itself becomes the reminder: your sentence is swapped for a reminder pill reading 🔔 Tomorrow · 7:00 PM · dinner with Anna, tinted from the note’s own paper and ink rather than a fixed accent color. Hover it to see when it will fire, and delete the reminder to get your original sentence back. Click the ghost instead to adjust before saving, or press Esc to dismiss.
Notel understands phrases like tomorrow, tonight, next week, clock times like 5:30 or 3pm, and repeats like every monday, daily, or weekdays. Repeats can run by minutes, hours, days, or chosen weekdays. Monthly schedules are not supported yet; a monthly phrase is left alone.
Managing reminders
Every note has a Reminders panel, opened by the bell in the note settings panel. /remind is the quick way past it: a short list at your cursor offering In 15 minutes, In 1 hour, Tonight, Tomorrow morning, Pick date & time…, and Clear. Only Pick date & time… opens the panel itself.
Each reminder gets a row in the panel. Click its time to change it. The speaker button mutes that one reminder, which still fires and still brings the note back, just quietly. The switch turns it off altogether. Move your cursor over the row and an ✕ appears further right, and that one deletes the reminder for good.
The bell at the top of the panel silences the lot. Hover it and the tooltip reads Silence All, or Unsilence All if you have already used it. Despite the name it is not a mute: it switches every reminder in the note off.
When a reminder fires, the note returns to your desktop with a pulse, and clicking the notification opens it. There is no snooze. To be told again, give the reminder a new time, or add a fresh one if it was a one-off that has already gone.
If reminders never alert you at all, that is nearly always a macOS permission: see Reminders aren’t alerting me.