Noteey
Noteey is an offline-first visual note-taking desktop app built on an infinite canvas, where PDFs, videos, audio, mind maps and cards live side by side. Files stay on your machine, while separate online AI tools summarise videos and documents.
What is Noteey?
Noteey is a desktop application for visual note-taking, published by Smart Lingo Co. Limited in Hong Kong and founded by Alex Lau, previously co-founder of the short video editing app Videoshow. It presents itself not as another note app but as a visual knowledge system: an infinite canvas where text, images, sticky notes, web links, PDFs, videos, audio, mind maps and freehand sketches sit in the same space instead of being scattered across separate tools. The defining choice is that it runs offline first. Projects are stored on your own device, and an account is only needed for premium features. The free tier can be used without signing up at all, with a limit of three projects, one hundred cards, and three PDFs plus three videos or audio files to annotate. Paid desktop licences lift those limits and add local import and export, custom fonts, OCR, a laser pointer and web publishing. Day to day, the work revolves around highlighting. You break a long PDF or a video down into highlight cards, spread them on a board, connect them with lines, arrows, frames and nested boards, then add properties and alternative views so the board behaves like a small personal database. Every card and block carries a unique link, which lets Noteey point at, and be pointed at from, other applications. Timestamped notes on video and audio, floating windows for juggling several documents, presentation mode and export as a portable pcanvas file round out the desktop experience. Alongside the app, the site hosts a set of free online AI utilities that are separate from the canvas: summarisers for YouTube videos, generic video, PDF, PowerPoint and Word files, a YouTube transcript generator, a subtitle downloader and an AI PDF reader. These require an internet connection, unlike the app itself. Windows and macOS builds are available today at version 1.60.1, an offline web app is in beta, and iOS and Android versions are announced but not released. The site openly compares Noteey with Heptabase, Milanote, Miro, Scrintal, Freeform and Obsidian.
What it does
- Gather text, images, sticky notes, web links, PDFs, videos, audio, mind maps and sketches on one infinite canvas
- Highlight long documents and videos and turn each highlight into a card you can rearrange
- Annotate PDFs, search inside them and review several documents at once in floating windows
- Take timestamped notes on video and audio and jump back to the exact moment later
- Add properties to cards and switch between views to use your board as a personal database
- Present a board in presentation mode, like slides on an unlimited canvas
- Export a project as a portable pcanvas file or publish a board as a web page
When to use Noteey / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Noteey is the right fit.
When to use Noteey
- Students and researchers who read long PDFs or lecture videos and want highlights turned into cards they can rearrange on a board
- Visual thinkers building a second brain who prefer an infinite canvas to a linear outline
- Privacy-minded users who want their notes on their own hard drive rather than in a vendor cloud
- Writers and creatives collecting swipe files, moodboards and story material in one workspace
- Freelancers and very small teams who would rather buy a one-off desktop licence than carry another monthly subscription
When not to use Noteey
- Teams that need real-time co-editing: nothing on the site describes shared boards or multiplayer editing
- People who work mainly from a phone or tablet, since the iOS and Android apps are still announced as coming soon
- Anyone expecting seamless cloud sync out of the box, as syncing relies on your own Google Drive or iCloud folder
- Developers looking to automate or integrate the tool, because there is no public API or developer documentation
- Organisations with a formal procurement checklist, since no DPA, subprocessor list or GDPR statement is published
How to use Noteey
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Download the Windows or macOS build from the download page, or open the beta offline web app in a browser
- Start using the free plan straight away, since no account or signup is required for it
- Create a project and drop text, images, PDFs, videos, audio files and web links onto the infinite canvas
- Highlight passages in a PDF or moments in a video to generate highlight cards automatically
- Arrange the cards on the board and connect them with lines, arrows, frames and nested boards
- Add properties to cards and create alternative views to structure the board like a database
- Open several documents side by side in floating windows to compare and annotate them
- Create an account and activate a licence key when you need premium features such as OCR or web publishing
- Set up your own Google Drive or iCloud folder if you want the same projects on several devices
- Share the result by exporting a pcanvas copy, running presentation mode, or publishing the board as a web page
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Works fully offline, with project data kept on your own device
- The free plan needs no account and no signup at all
- A one-off desktop licence is available at 99 USD, which avoids a permanent subscription
- A documented 30-day money-back guarantee with a clear request procedure
- The terms explicitly allow commercial use of the canvases you create
- Exported pcanvas files can be opened and edited by other people without restrictions
- Public changelog and roadmap, an active Discord and Reddit community, and a feature request portal
Cons
- No native cloud sync: you have to route your projects through Google Drive or iCloud yourself
- No real-time collaboration or shared team workspace is described anywhere on the site
- No mobile app yet, with iOS and Android still labelled coming soon
- The web version is listed as a benefit of paid plans while still being marked coming soon
- The terms state that all purchases are non-refundable, contradicting the published 30-day guarantee
- Nothing is published about GDPR, data processing agreements, subprocessors or AI training on submitted content
- No API, no developer documentation, and desktop installers are served from a third-party GitHub repository
Pricing & Plans
A permanent free plan is available at no cost and without an account, limited to three projects and one hundred cards. The lowest paid entry point is the Premium monthly plan at 10.00 USD per month; a one-off Desktop Pro licence is offered at 99.00 USD. A 7-day free trial is mentioned in the terms, and a 30-day money-back guarantee applies to purchases.
- 3 projects
- 100 cards
- all visual creation features
- 3 annotated PDFs
- 3 annotated videos or audio files
- 4 devices
- unlimited local projects
- web publishing up to 20 MB
- export and import of local files
- custom fonts
- OCR
- laser pointer
- third-party sync
- same benefits on 8 devices
- aimed at small teams and power users
- Desktop Pro licence
- unlimited web publishing
- unlimited YouTube transcripts
- unlimited AI summarising
- future web version
- priority support
- 90 USD per year
- billed yearly
- with the same Premium benefits
- 599 USD one-time
- presented as a final opportunity before a move to a subscription-only model
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Noteey handles your data.
GDPR overview
The GDPR is never mentioned on this website. Searching the whole set of collected pages, including the privacy policy and the terms of service, returns no occurrence of the regulation, no compliance claim and no reference to a legal basis for processing. The privacy policy, effective 22 June 2024, does grant rights that look like GDPR rights, since users may access, rectify, erase, restrict or object to the processing of their personal data and request portability by writing to admin@noteey.com. No EU representative under Article 27 is named, no data protection officer is designated, no data processing agreement is offered and no subprocessor list is published. The publisher is incorporated in Hong Kong and the terms are governed by Hong Kong law. In practice the default mode is local, so content normally never reaches the publisher's servers.
Who owns the data?
Your project files stay on your own device and the publisher states plainly that it cannot access them. Ownership of what you draw is spelled out in the terms: canvases created in the Noteey editor, including installed libraries and default fonts, are carved out of the site's intellectual property clause, and you may use or distribute them commercially or non-commercially as you see fit. Two exceptions matter. Anything you push through the Publisher service is stored on the publisher's servers for the life of your subscription. Anything you post on the site itself, such as comments or forum contributions, is treated by the terms as non-confidential and non-proprietary.
Reuse rights
Reuse is essentially unrestricted for your own creations. The terms grant an explicit exception for pcanvas files, also called scenes or diagrams, made inside the Noteey editor: you may use or distribute them any way you like, for commercial and non-commercial purposes alike, and the exception extends to the installed libraries and default fonts used in your drawings. The pricing FAQ confirms that Noteey may be used commercially. Exports are designed for reuse, since a project can be saved as a local copy that other people open and edit offline without a licence. The permission stops at the product itself: the site's own content, code, design and trademarks may not be copied or republished without written consent.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
In normal use there is no hosting question to answer: projects are written to your own device, and the beta web app keeps everything inside the browser. The pricing FAQ states that the publisher cannot access that data. Hosting only becomes relevant for the optional Publisher service, where boards you choose to publish are stored on the company's servers, and for the online AI tools, which process files remotely. For both, the site gives no hosting country and no region. The named third parties are Firebase Analytics for anonymous, aggregated usage metrics and Stripe and PayPal for payments. The publisher, Smart Lingo Co. Limited, is incorporated in Hong Kong and the terms are governed by Hong Kong law. As a technical note, the marketing site itself resolves to an Amazon Web Services address in the United States, which describes the website infrastructure and not where user data lives.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Noteey.
- The refund rules contradict each other: the terms of service say all purchases are non-refundable while the refund policy page and the pricing FAQ promise 30 days, so keep a copy of both before buying
- Nothing is published about whether files sent to the online AI summarisers are used to train models, or how long they are kept
- No hosting country or region is disclosed for the Publisher service or the AI tools, and no data processing agreement or subprocessor list exists
- Local-first storage shifts the burden of backups onto you: if your disk fails and you never set up a third-party sync folder, nothing on the vendor side will bring your boards back
- The pricing page warns that the model is switching to subscription only, so one-off licences may disappear and the value of a purchase made today may change
- Desktop installers are served from a third-party GitHub repository whose name has nothing to do with Noteey, with no security or signing information on the site
- An infinite canvas invites endless collecting: it is easy to mistake a beautifully arranged board for actual understanding, and to spend more time arranging cards than thinking about them
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Very low. You download an installer for Windows or macOS, or open the beta web app, and start working; the free plan needs neither account nor signup. Paid plans add one step, activating a licence key. The only fiddly part is multi-device use, since there is no native sync and you have to place your projects in your own Google Drive or iCloud folder. The online AI tools require nothing beyond pasting a link or dropping a file.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Noteey
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Noteey.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an account to use Noteey?
Where are my notes stored?
Can I sync my projects between several computers?
Is there a mobile app?
How much does Noteey cost?
Can I get a refund?
Can I use Noteey and my boards commercially?
Is Noteey GDPR compliant?
Do the AI summarisers work offline?
Which platforms are supported today?
Should you pick Noteey?
Noteey is a real, shipping product rather than a promise: versioned Windows and macOS builds, a fully priced six-tier line-up, an identified Hong Kong publisher with a postal address, and legal pages that actually name the product. Its distinguishing choice is unusual in this category and clearly assumed, since the canvas runs on your own machine, the free tier works without an account, and the publisher states that it cannot reach your files. For a student breaking down lecture videos, a researcher living inside PDFs, or a writer hoarding visual references, that combination is genuinely attractive, and the option of a one-off licence instead of a subscription makes it more so. The reservations are mostly documentary and organisational. Cross-device syncing is left to your own Google Drive or iCloud folder, there is no real-time collaboration, the mobile apps and the full web version are still announced rather than delivered, and the terms of service flatly contradict the published 30-day refund guarantee. Nothing is said about the GDPR, about data processing agreements, or about what happens to a file dropped into the online AI summarisers, which is a notable gap for a tool that markets privacy as its main argument. The pricing page also warns that the model is moving to subscription only, so today's one-off licences may not last. Read as a personal thinking tool from a small independent team, Noteey holds up well and the free plan makes the evaluation cheap. Read as software for a company with a procurement checklist, the missing compliance documentation will be the sticking point long before the features are.
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
- Opens in a new window.