visualOS

visualOS is an infinite, zoomable canvas for notes, rich text, Markdown documents, to-do lists, images, PDFs, freehand drawings and arrows — with boards nested inside boards to any depth.

Its defining idea is local-first data ownership: connect a folder on your disk and the canvas hierarchy mirrors onto it as real files. Every board becomes an actual folder, documents become plain Markdown files, images stay ordinary images. There is no server and no account — sync and backup happen through the user's own cloud folder (e.g. iCloud Drive or Dropbox). If you decide to use another app, your data would still be folders, Markdown and readable JSON.

Automatic rolling version history protects against sync conflicts: before anything substantial is replaced, the previous state is snapshotted (~30 states) and can be restored with one click.

The browser app is free and full-featured with no account and no note or board limits (connect-a-folder requires Chrome, Edge or Brave). A native app for iPhone, iPad and Mac (Apple Silicon) is available as a one-time purchase — no subscription. visualOS is single-user by design: a personal thinking space, not a team whiteboard.

Version 1.5 adds Apple Pencil drawing with a pen tray, shape recognition and handwriting search.

Made by Sarah Dorweiler and Gerald Reimertz, a husband-and-wife team in Nuremberg, Germany.