Where your notes live (and backups)
Notel is local-first: everything you create (notes, folders, attachments, recordings, settings) is stored on your Mac. Nothing leaves it unless you export, sync, back up, or share it yourself.
The automatic snapshots around iCloud sync
Turning on iCloud sync makes Notel snapshot your notes locally first, before anything is uploaded or merged. There are two of them, and they do different jobs:
- A permanent snapshot, taken the very first time sync is ever switched on. It is never refreshed and never pruned, so it always holds the shape your notes were in before Notel touched the cloud at all.
- A fresh, timestamped snapshot, taken every later time you switch sync on. Notel keeps the three most recent of these and prunes the rest.
Both cover the same ground: your notes, your preferences, your rich-text sidecars, and your attachments. The first is a gate rather than a courtesy: if it cannot be written, Notel refuses to merge cloud data at all, so a sync never runs without a recoverable copy behind it.
Restoring one of those snapshots
There is no restore button in Settings. Recovery is a Finder job: quit Notel, open ~/Library/Application Support/Notel/, and copy the contents of the snapshot you want out of Backups/ and back over the live files. Take a duplicate of the whole folder before you start.
If that sounds fiddly, it is meant to be rare. Discord can walk you through it.
Your own backups
Because storage is local, Time Machine (or any Mac backup tool) already protects your notes. You can also export individual notes as Markdown, PDF, PNG, or .notelnote files whenever you want a portable copy; see Exporting and sharing notes.
The full-library backup zip
Settings → Advanced → Export/Import note data writes one zip containing every note, your settings, all attachments, and your archives, with a README inside explaining how to restore it. This is the way to move to a new Mac.
Importing is a replace, not a merge: Notel backs up your current data first, swaps in the backup, and relaunches. Unzip the file in Finder first and choose the “Notel” folder inside it when asked. If the folder is not a Notel backup, nothing is touched.
Limits
- Notel holds up to 150 notes. If you hit the ceiling, Notel offers to delete blank notes.
- A single note holds up to 10,000 characters.