fresh off the notepad

What's new

Every version, newest first, in plain English.

To update, download the newest installer and run it over the one you have. Your notes, stacks, themes and settings stay right where they are.

Version 1.5.5

November 7, 2026

Tables you can shape.

• Drag a column's border to resize it. While you write in a table on Windows or a Mac, point at the line between two columns and the pointer turns into a resize arrow. Drag, and the column keeps the width you leave it at. Ctrl+Z puts it back.
• The widths stick. Cards, full view, exports and your other devices draw the table at the widths you set, the iPhone and iPad included. A table you never resize looks just as it did.

If you sync more than one device

• Update every device. A note with a resized table is saved in a newer format, and so is a Vault note when Vault sync is on. A device still on 1.5.4 or older stops syncing a stack that holds one and says it needs a newer PopNotes, rather than quietly drop your column widths. Every other stack keeps syncing as before.
• No going back. Once 1.5.5 has opened your notes, an older PopNotes won't open them. It asks you to update instead.

Version 1.5.4

November 7, 2026

Notes in the Vault can be edited again.

• Edit a note without taking it out of the Vault. With the Vault unlocked, press Edit on a sealed note (or double-click it) and change it right there. Every save stays sealed: nothing you type is ever stored in plain text, and the spell checker never sees it. Locking the Vault closes the edit at once. For now this is text only: a sealed note with a picture still needs taking out of the Vault to edit.

Version 1.5.3

November 3, 2026

Vault housekeeping on the Mac and iPhone.

• The Mac's Vault now locks notes with Apple's own encryption, as the iPhone and iPad's already does. It's the same AES-256-GCM, so your sealed notes open exactly as before, on every device.
• A clearer word on iPhone and iPad about copied secrets. Settings now says a copied secret stays on that device and clears after a minute.

Version 1.5.2

November 3, 2026

A tidier Settings you can search, and a polish pass on every theme.

• Settings comes in four groups. Look & write, Your notes, Safe & synced, and PopNotes, so each setting is where you'd look for it.
• Search settings. Press Ctrl+F (⌘F on the Mac) and type what you're after. PopNotes finds the row by its name, its help, or the word you'd use instead: dark finds Mode, startup finds Launch at login, password finds the Vault's passphrase.
• Some settings moved to where you'd look for them. The hotkeys are in Keys; Enter pops and Click to edit are in Writing (it was called Editor); card labels and dates are in Appearance; Keep deleted notes is in Archive & Trash; and Claude has a section of its own.
• Settings reopens on the section you last used.
• Every theme got a polish pass. Each one pops a new note in its own way and answers when you point at or press a button. Neon and Grunge's Settings and Import, and the bright capture pads in Airmail, Legal pad and Snapshot dark, are easier to read now.
• Small fixes. Paper swatches no longer spill out of a card in grid view, and pins on the first row are no longer cut off.

Version 1.5.1

November 3, 2026

Ready for the Microsoft Store.

• PopNotes is ready for the Microsoft Store, for Windows 11, signed by Microsoft and kept up to date by the Store, once Microsoft has reviewed it. It keeps your notes in the same folder as the download does, so they stay put if you ever uninstall it, and its launch at login works through Windows' own Startup apps list. The download stays on this site too.
• A clearer word when Windows won't start PopNotes at sign-in. If it's switched off in Settings > Apps > Startup, PopNotes now says so.

Version 1.5.0

November 2, 2026

Eight new themes, a new icon, and a stack that can live on two drives.

• Eight new themes. Index, Fieldwork, Bauhaus, Porcelain, Airmail, Neon, Vector and Grunge, each in light and dark. That makes thirty. Find them in Settings > Appearance > Get more themes.
• Pop! Every theme now animates a new note. They were always meant to, and they finally do. Comic bursts, Neon flickers on, Airmail stamps it. Turn on reduced motion in Windows or macOS and they stay still.
• A new icon. A stack of notes, mid-pop.
• A stack can sync to Google Drive, OneDrive, or both. Pick it in Settings > Sync. With both, a device on either drive sees the same notes.
• Sealing reaches further. A seal or an unseal now reaches a folder a note used to be in, and a change you made while a stack's sync was off goes out when it comes back on.

Version 1.4.4

November 1, 2026

A Vault fix.

• A sealed note's text no longer stays behind in a conflict copy. If a note changed on two devices and you sealed it soon after, a plain conflict copy could keep showing its text, on your devices and your drive. Now that copy is sealed too, the next time a device opens the Vault.

Version 1.4.3

November 1, 2026

A fix for Windows PCs that couldn't start PopNotes.

• PopNotes starts on a fresh PC. It relied on a Microsoft component that many PCs have but some don't, and without it PopNotes stopped with a "MSVCP140.dll was not found" error before it opened. It now carries its own copy.

Version 1.4.2

October 31, 2026

Faster sync, a way into notes sealed on another device, and two fixes for OneDrive.

• Sync keeps up. PopNotes syncs when you bring it to the front, and every minute while it stays there. Behind other windows it still syncs every five minutes.
• Less waiting when nothing changed. A sync now reads your other devices' shared files only when they've moved, so a quiet run makes far fewer trips to your drive.
• Sync now, one click away. The "Synced 2 minutes ago" words in the status bar are a button now, and a synced stack's tab has Sync now at the top of its right-click menu. Handy for "I just wrote that on my other computer."
• Open a note sealed with another device's passphrase. If two of your devices set up their Vaults separately, a note sealed on one could stay shut on the other, with no way in. Its card now says so. Type that passphrase once, in the card or in Settings > Vault, and every note sealed with it opens.
• OneDrive could refuse to make a stack's folder. On some accounts, a stack newly synced to OneDrive stopped with an error when it went to make its folder. It now makes each folder a way OneDrive accepts.
• OneDrive could refuse to delete. A delete on OneDrive could fail and stop that stack with "Couldn't sync this stack." Deletes go through now.
• A cleaner backup after sealing. Sealing two notes in the same second could leave the first one's plain text in that day's backup. Now it goes too.
• Checklists tick where they sit. Click a box on a card and it ticks, with no edit started. Clicking the text still edits.

Version 1.4.1

October 23, 2026

• Clicking a note's header keeps you editing. While you edit a note, a click on its header (or anywhere on the card that isn't a button) no longer ends the edit or leaves the toolbar asleep. A click on the header puts the cursor at the start of the note.
• No more blank lines when you copy. Text copied out of PopNotes, from a card or while editing, pastes with one line per line instead of a blank line between each. A blank line you put there on purpose still comes along.

Version 1.4.0

October 20, 2026

Copy words straight out of your pictures.

• Open a picture large. Click a picture on a card, press v on a focused card, or use View while you edit, and the picture fills the window. The arrow keys step through a note's pictures.
• Select the words right on the picture. Drag across the text in a screenshot, receipt or label and press Ctrl+C, or use Copy all for everything. The words are read on your PC, as Search's are, and never for notes in the Vault.
• A one-time reread. The first time 1.4.0 starts, it reads your pictures again in the background to learn where each word sits. Search keeps working while it does.

Version 1.3.0

October 20, 2026

The one where your screenshots learn to read.

Find things faster

• Search reads your pictures. PopNotes reads the words in the pictures you keep in notes, on your own PC with Windows' built-in text recognition, so a screenshot of an error, a receipt or a label turns up in Search. Nothing leaves your PC, pictures in the Vault are never read, and Claude never sees this text. Turn it off in Settings > Smart detection.
• Search from anywhere. Set a Search hotkey in Settings > General, or pick Search… from the tray, and PopNotes opens with search ready, whatever app you're in.
• Copy without the menu. Ctrl+C copies the card you're on, or the search result you've picked. Select some text first and Ctrl+C copies just that, as always.

More keys for cards

• One key each. On a focused card, a archives it, o opens it full size, c picks a paper color, t tags it, and m moves it to another stack. Settings > Keys lists them all.
• Select all, and take back the oops. In select mode, Ctrl+A selects every note on show. While an "Archived", "Moved" or "Trashed" notice is up, Ctrl+Z undoes it.

Easier on the eyes

• Checklists show their progress. A note with a checklist says "3 of 7" at the bottom of its card.
• A comfortable line length. On a wide window, a card's text stops at a readable width instead of running edge to edge.
• Windows High Contrast works. The note you're editing, pressed buttons, the active tab and switches stay visible in every theme.
• Color dots don't vanish. A dot the same color as the box behind it now has a thin edge.
• Less to read. Cards in grid view show a short date, and the capture box no longer tells you three times which key pops a note.

Under the hood

• Lighter. A smaller download, fewer wake-ups while PopNotes sits in the tray, and saving a note no longer redraws every card on screen.
• Reminders on time. A new to-do's reminder could be set late, after some unrelated change. It's set right away now.

Before you update

• No going back. Once 1.3.0 has opened your notes, an older PopNotes won't open them. It asks you to update rather than risk changing them. Syncing with a PC still on 1.1 keeps working.

Version 1.1.1

October 16, 2026

• The fold button is easy to find. A collapsible block now has a small arrow button before its title, and an open block shows a line down its side, so you can see where it starts and ends.
• Blocks without a title look right. A block whose title you left empty now says "Untitled". Before, its first line could slide up into the title's place, so it looked as if your text had been replaced.

Version 1.1.0

October 16, 2026

The one where long notes learn to fold.

Collapsible blocks

• Fold the long part away. A new toolbar button makes a block with a one-line title and a body that tucks underneath it. Select some text first and it all goes into the block; click it with nothing selected for an empty one.
• Folded stays folded. Fold a block while you edit and it stays that way on the card, in full view and on your other PCs.
• Peek without changing anything. On a card, click a block's title to open or shut it while you read. That doesn't count as an edit, so nothing gets saved or synced.
• Nothing hides from search. Search, and Claude if you've connected it, read a folded block's text like any other. Exports show every block open.
• Every theme, light and dark. Blocks pick up each theme's own colors.

If you sync more than one PC

• Update every PC. Notes saved by 1.1.0 use a newer format, so a PC still on 1.0 stops syncing those stacks and says it needs a newer PopNotes. Older versions would quietly flatten collapsible blocks, so it waits for the update instead.
• No going back. Once 1.1.0 has opened your notes, an older PopNotes won't open them. It asks you to update rather than risk changing them.

Version 1.0.1

October 15, 2026

• Click anywhere on the "Pop a note" box to start typing. Before, only its top strip took the cursor, so a click on the row under it, beside the color dots, did nothing.
• Clicking the box from another app works the first time. Switching to PopNotes with a click on the box could leave the cursor somewhere else; now it stays where you clicked.

Version 1.0.0

October 13, 2026

The one with a place to think out loud. PopNotes has always been good at short thoughts. This version makes room for the long ones, and for the ones you're not sure you want to keep.

The Draft: a scratch pad that won't vanish on you

• One pad for half-finished thinking. Plan an email, shape a prompt for an AI, or work something out before you say it. The Draft isn't a note yet, so it stays out of your stacks and out of search.
• It stays until you decide. Switch apps, close the window, quit, restart your PC: the Draft is still there. It leaves only two ways, and you choose both. Pop it turns it into a note in the stack you pick. Destroy deletes it for good, after asking once.
• Always one click away. There's a Draft button at the top of the window, with a dot on it whenever a draft is waiting. Ctrl+D opens it too, and so does the tray menu.
• It never syncs. The Draft lives on this PC only. It becomes part of a stack, and of that stack's sync, only when you pop it.

Full view: the whole window for one note

• Room to write. The full view gives one note the entire window, with the same formatting toolbar. Maximize PopNotes and you have a proper page.
• Any note can open in it. Choose Open full view on a card, edit, and press Done. Everything saves as you type.
• Started small and it got big? A new button on the "Pop a note" box moves what you've typed into the Draft and opens the full view, so a quick thought can grow without a copy and paste.
• You can't get lost. A Back button always says where it goes, Esc does the same, and nothing you typed is thrown away on the way out.
• It wears your theme. The page is drawn like a note card in every theme, light and dark, and a colored note keeps its color.

Tags you can steer by

• Filter by tag from the filter row. The new Tag chip lists every tag you use. Pick one and you see just those notes. Before, you had to find a note that already wore the tag and click it there.
• Sort by tag. A new sort lines your notes up by tag, A to Z, with untagged notes at the end.

Small things

• The "Pop a note" box now shows the paper color your next note will get, as a band along its top edge. Pick Random and it shows the whole rainbow.
• Code blocks on notes are readable again in the dark modes of the Legal Pad and Snapshot themes.

Version 0.1.0

September 28, 2026

The first public version. Press a hotkey in any app, type a thought, and it becomes a note in a stack. PopNotes works out what each note is, keeps secrets in an encrypted Vault, syncs the stacks you choose through your own Google Drive or OneDrive, and comes with themes to make it yours. See everything it does.