Understory: Zettelkasten Notes

Understory is a Markdown notes app for the Mac. Inspired by Niklas Luhmann's Zettelkasten system, it's the notes app that gets better with each additional note. Notes can be linked and structured in an outline, making it ideal for discovering and forming new connections between related ideas.

The app is free to use and has note count limits per notebook. A one-time purchase (no subscriptions) removes the note count limits.

You can create local Project Notebooks that are made up of ordinary Markdown .md files in a folder. A Personal Notebook stored in your iCloud is also available, allowing you to sync your notes between Macs.

NOTES INSIDE NOTES

Any note can be filed under any other. Open a note and you arrive in the tree it lives in, with its neighbors already around it, rather than on a page about it. A note can sit in several trees at once, or in none at all. There is no master outline everything has to hang from.

LINK AND BACKLINK

Create a link to a note using wiki-style format and the other note automatically shows a backlink back. Anchors are also supported, allowing you to link directly to a place in another note.

FIND IT AGAIN

Results appear as you type. Jump straight to a note by name, narrow the list in front of you, or type a tag or a date into the address bar the way you would type a URL. Drag in images, PDFs and anything else — they attach to notes, embed inline, and collect in an asset library of their own.

YOUR NOTES, YOUR FILES

Your Personal Notebook syncs across your Macs through your own iCloud account, with nothing of yours on our servers. A Project Notebook is a folder you choose: one .md file per note, readable by any text editor, backed up by whatever you already use. Hand the folder to someone and you have handed over the notebook.

Every note keeps its earlier versions, so you can read what it said last month and bring it back. Deleted notes go to a trash, and anything else you change can be undone.

FREE TO TRY

100 notes in your Personal Notebook, 20 in each Project Notebook. Unlimited is a single purchase — not a subscription, and nothing else is held back. Sync, revisions, attachments, backups and export are all there from the first launch.

iCloud sync requires an iCloud account.