Welcome to Zab Notes

Zab Notes keeps your notes and your projects in one place. You write notes, plan work on Kanban boards, map ideas, draw, chart, schedule, keep track of your business and personal money, and link it all together, on a computer, a tablet or (for capture and notes) a phone.

Everything you write is encrypted on your device before it is sent to us, so we store your library but cannot read it. That choice shapes a few things about how the app works; What we give and what it costs explains them plainly.

New here? Open Help → Quick Start Guide in the app for a short guided tour, then come back to these topics whenever you need them. Use the search box above to find anything on this page.

Creating your account and signing in

1. Choose Get started on the home page and enter a username, your email address and a password. Agree to the Terms and Privacy Policy.
2. You are shown your 24-word recovery key once. Write it down or store it in a password manager. It is the only way back into your library if you forget your password. We cannot reset it for you.
3. Open the confirmation email and press the button on the page it opens. Until you do, the account can’t be used. An account that isn’t confirmed within 7 days is removed, and you can simply sign up again.
4. Sign in with your email and password. On a new device or browser tab you may be asked for your password again: that unlocks your library’s key in that tab.

Lost the confirmation email? Check spam or promotions, then sign in: the "Check your email" screen lets you resend it or correct the address.

Finding your way around

• Menu bar (top): File, Edit, Format, View, Insert, Tools and Help, like a desktop program. Most editing commands need a note to be open.
• Activity bar (left edge): one icon per workspace — Notes, Kanban Boards, Mind Maps, Drawings, Charts, Calendar, Node Clusters, Projects, Project Planner and Phone Capture.
• Side panel: the folders and items of the workspace you are in. Drag its edge to resize it, or collapse it with View → Toggle Sidebar.
• Avatar (top right): Account & Security, Theme Settings, dark/light, your picture, installing the app, About Zab Notes (with the app's name and release), and Sign Out.
• Dashboard: Quick Actions to start anything, recent notes, favourites, board progress and an activity heatmap. Its widgets can be resized and arranged, and layouts saved. The ReFresh button reloads the app cleanly if it ever looks stuck.

Right-click almost anything (note cards, events, cards, folders, the editor) for the actions that apply to it.

Writing notes

• New note: Ctrl+N, File → New Note, or the Dashboard. If you have saved templates, you can start from one (Blank note is first).
• Saving is automatic. Notes save a moment after you stop typing (the delay is in Theme Settings). Ctrl+S saves everything at once.
• Find notes: type in the search box above the note list, or use Edit → Search Notes. Search runs on your device, because the server can’t read your notes.
• Sort and favourite: Tools → Sort Notes; star a note (right-click → Favorite) to keep it near the top and on the Dashboard.
• Duplicate, print, delete: File menu, or right-click the note card.

Formatting and inserting

• Text: the toolbar and the Format menu (bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, superscript/subscript, colours, alignment, indent). About 300 fonts, with your recent and favourite fonts at the top of the list, sizes from 8 to 256 px, headings and saved styles.
• Insert menu (Ctrl+Shift+I for the visual menu): date/time, horizontal rule, images, tables, text boxes, shapes, lines, callouts, code blocks, quotes, checklists and lists.
• Images: insert, then resize, crop, rotate and round the corners. Choose inline, free-floating or snapping placement.
• Draw on a note: Ctrl+Shift+D.
• Groups: a heading with a triangle in front of it that opens and closes the lines under it. Select some lines (or put the cursor on a line or a heading), then the Group button in the toolbar, Format → Group or right-click → Group, and choose the heading size (Heading 1 to 4). Several selected lines get a new heading "Group" above them, ready to type over; a heading takes the lines down to the next heading of its size or larger; any other line becomes the heading. Click the triangle, or press Ctrl+Enter on the heading, to close the group (the triangle points right) or open it (it points down). Enter at the end of an open group heading starts a line inside it; Enter on an empty last line steps out of the group, like a list; Enter on a closed group heading starts a line after the group. Groups can sit inside groups. A group stays open or closed when you come back to the note, and opens by itself when Find or the table of contents takes you inside it. To ungroup, put the cursor in the group (or on its heading) and choose Ungroup in the same menus: the heading and the lines stay, the triangle goes. Tables, pictures and videos inside a group stay visible when it is closed. Exports, prints and shared links show every line.
• Folds: select some lines, right-click → Fold Selection to tuck a copy of them into a box you can open and close (read-only inside; Groups keep the lines editable).
• Find & Replace: Ctrl+F / Ctrl+H.
• Spelling: misspelled words are underlined as you type; Tools → Check Spelling (F7) walks through them. English (US) and English (UK) are available under Tools → Spelling Language.
• Views: Focus, Reading and Typewriter modes, zoom, table of contents, word count, line numbers, an editor grid and background patterns (View menu and Theme Settings).
• Wrap Text (View menu): By Words keeps words whole and breaks a word only when it is longer than the line; By Letters fills every line and breaks anywhere. Your choice applies to every note. A long pasted line always wraps inside the note, so the buttons beside the title never move off screen. Pasted text often joins its words with no-break spaces, which never wrap; they become ordinary spaces when you paste and when you open a note (code blocks keep theirs).

Folders, tags and smart folders

• Folders can be nested and coloured. Drag a note card onto a folder to move it (on a tablet, press and hold the card first).
• The Images folder is created for you and receives photos sent from Phone Capture. It can be recoloured but not renamed, moved or deleted.
• Saving pictures: right-click a folder → Download Images… saves every picture in its notes, each named after its note and in the format it was added in. Chrome, Edge and the desktop app ask for a folder once; other browsers download them one by one. In a note, right-click a picture → Download Image. Notes behind the vault lock are skipped.
• Tags group notes across folders; Smart Folders are saved searches that stay up to date.
• Colour legend (Tools → Colour Legend…): write down what each colour means, per workspace or per board, so colours carry meaning.

Version history, Trash and getting text back

• Version history: View → Version History, or right-click a note card → Version History. Preview any earlier version and restore it. Up to 150 versions are kept per note; beyond that, older ones are thinned out while the largest and the last good copy before a big deletion are kept.
• Recover banner: if a note opens empty but has saved content in its history, a banner offers to restore it in one click.
• Protection against blank saves: the app refuses to save an empty note over saved text unless you emptied it yourself.
• Trash: deleted notes wait in Trash for 30 days, then are deleted for good with their history. Restore them from Trash before then.

Exporting, printing, sharing and importing

• One note: File → Export → HTML, Markdown or PDF (Ctrl+Shift+E), or File → Print.
• Everything: File → Offline Folder… (Chrome or Edge) writes your whole library, readable, to a folder you choose and keeps it updated. See Your library in a folder.
• Sharing: Share Note (the note’s menu) makes a link anyone can open, with no account. Your browser encrypts a copy of the note with a new key, and that key is part of the link (after the #), so our server can’t read shared notes either. The copy follows your edits; Stop Sharing ends the link for everyone. Whoever has the whole link can read the note, so pass it on as carefully as the note itself. Notes behind the vault lock can’t be shared, and pictures sent from Phone Capture don’t appear on the shared page.
• Import: File → Import… turns one Markdown, HTML or plain-text file into a note. Folders and tags aren’t carried over, and whole libraries from other apps can’t be imported yet.

Locking a note in the vault

Everything is already encrypted. The vault adds a second lock to notes you want sealed even while you are signed in, with its own vault password.

• Lock: open the note and click the lock in the toolbar, or right-click the card → Encrypt Note. The first time, you create your vault password and confirm it with a code sent to your email.
• Open: click the note and enter the vault password. One unlock opens every vault note for the session; the vault locks again after the time set in Theme Settings → Vault Auto-Lock.
• Remove: right-click the card → Remove Encryption (with the vault unlocked).
• Forgotten vault password: vault notes can’t be opened without it. The vault can only be reset when no note is locked in it.
• Vault notes can’t be opened, created or changed offline.

Templates and Quick Capture

• Save as Template (File menu) keeps the open note as a starting point; New from Template starts a note from one.
• Quick Capture (Ctrl+Shift+N) opens a small box to jot something down without leaving what you are doing.

Calendar

• Views: Month, Week and Day. Click a day or an hour (or + Event) to add an event; right-click for more choices, including all-day events.
• Events have a title, description, start and end, all-day, colour, a repeat (daily, weekly, monthly or yearly) and a reminder.
• Move an event by dragging it. Times snap to 5 minutes; hold Alt for exact minutes, and adjust the time in the confirmation before it is saved. Right-click to copy, cut and paste events between days.
• Reminders show as a notification and a message whenever Zab Notes is open, in any workspace and any window, even minimised. Each one shows once, even with several windows open. Allow notifications when your browser asks.
• Import an .ics file from another calendar. Its events become your own, encrypted like the rest; importing the same file again skips the events already there.
• Notes appear on the day they were created ("Created: …"); click one to open the note.
• Money (the last button beside Month, Week and Day) shows your business and personal money on a calendar of its own: see Money.

Money (in the Calendar)

Your business’s money and your own, out and in, on a calendar: what is due, what came in, what is left. In the Calendar, press Money; ← Calendar goes back. The Calendar opens on Money again if that’s where you left it.

• Two pockets, never mixed: Business (orange) and Personal (purple). Tick either off to hide it. Personal left is personal money in minus personal money out; the business’s in minus out is shown beside it, never subtracted from it.
• Adding: + Business or + Personal (or click a day), then choose Coming up or repeats (a bill, rent, a paycheck: once, weekly, every 2 weeks, monthly, quarterly, twice a year or yearly, with an optional stop date) or Already happened (a purchase, a sale, a deposit). Each has money out or in, a category, a name, who it was paid to or by, the amount and notes. Mark it Automatic for autopay or direct deposit, and an estimate when the amount varies.
• Mark paid / Mark received records what actually happened (the amount and day can differ) and moves the item on to its next date. Items past their date and not marked are listed at the top; an automatic one has probably gone through already, so marking it just records it.
• Moving: drag an item to another day; a box says what will change before anything is saved. A repeating item moves as a whole (a bill on the 15th dragged to the 17th is due on the 17th from then on); to record a one-time late payment, use Mark paid with the real date instead. A bill on the 31st falls on the last day of shorter months and back on the 31st after.
• Week, Month and Year: totals on top (out, paid, still due, money in, what’s left, overdue); in the month each week’s figures sit to the left of its row; underneath, money out and in by day, week or month, and money out by category. Every chart has Show the numbers.
• Business items / Personal items list everything that comes up or repeats, with what it comes to in an average month.
• Encrypted, amounts included: every name, amount, date and category is encrypted on your device. Our server keeps sealed items it can’t read or add up; your device does all the arithmetic.
• Offline: once Money has been opened online on a device, it opens there offline too, and what you add, mark or move offline syncs when you reconnect.
• Limits for now: amounts are in US dollars; categories are a fixed list per pocket; Money isn’t in File → Offline Folder yet; there are no bank imports, receipts, accounts or reports for an accountant yet.

Showing another calendar (calendar links)

Show a calendar you keep elsewhere next to your own, read-only. In the Calendar, choose Calendar links, paste the calendar’s link, give it a name and colour, and press Subscribe.

• Your Zabulan calendar: make the link in Zabulan under Admin → Calendar → Share → Generate feed URL. It is shown once, so copy it straight away.
• Read-only: its events have their own colour and a dashed edge. Click one for its details. They can’t be edited, moved, deleted or copied into your calendar.
• Show or hide each one from the bar under the calendar’s header; Refresh reads them again. They are also read each time you open the Calendar.
• Private by design: your device reads the link straight from that calendar’s server; our server never sees those events. The link itself is stored encrypted.
• Treat the link like a password. Anyone who has it can read that calendar. If it leaks, revoke it where it was made and add a new one.
• Which calendars work: in a web browser, only calendars whose servers let a browser read them, such as Zabulan. Most iCloud, Google and Outlook links don’t, and the app says This calendar can’t be read from your browser.
• Offline, the last copy your device read is shown, with the time it was read.

Mind maps

• An endless canvas: add shapes, type in them, and join them with connectors (straight, curved or squiggly, with arrow size and tapering).
• Pan by dragging the background or holding H; zoom with the wheel or a pinch.
• Right-click → Layer to bring shapes forward or back; turn on the grid and snapping in the toolbar.
• Works with touch and Apple Pencil.

Drawings

• Pressure-sensitive pens and brushes, a true eraser, shapes, polylines, layers you can lock, hide and reorder, rulers and guides, and a measuring tool with real-world units. Zoom goes to 1000%.
• Apple Pencil pressure and tilt are supported on iPad.
• Offline: drawings can be large, so each device chooses which to keep (the download icon in the Drawings side panel): only drawings you open (the default), all of them, or ones you pick.

Charts

Pie, bar, line and donut charts, with several series. Enter the data in the chart’s table, and export it as CSV, TSV or JSON.

Project Planner

A Gantt-style timeline: tasks in lanes, milestones, progress and colours. Zoom continuously from decades down to hours; rename lanes by double-clicking them. Works with touch and Apple Pencil.

Projects

• Each project holds its status, priority, health, dates, progress, budget and amount spent, plus milestones, tasks, risks, stakeholders and a running log.
• Link notes, boards, maps, drawings, charts, planner documents, events and captures to a project with Link to….
• The Calendar button in Milestones puts each milestone on your calendar, and moves it there if you change the date and press it again.

Node Clusters

• Every item and the links between them, as a living graph. Choose Classic, Nebula or Neural (with true 3D cells), and group, filter and search.
• Double-click a node to view it (notes can be edited right there). Hold Ctrl (Cmd on a Mac), click one node, then another, to link them.
• Thousands of items make it heavy: filter by type, or lower 3D Detail and turn off Ambient Drift.

Phone Capture

Take a photo, pick an image, record audio, or jot a quick note or checklist, wherever you are. Captures wait in Phone Capture; Send to Notes turns one into a note (photos go to the Images folder). Click the eye on a photo, or right-click it, to view it larger.

Linking items together

Open any item and choose Link to…, then pick another item. Links go both ways and show as connections in Node Clusters and in a project’s overview.

Calculator

Tools → Calculator, or Alt+C (not on a Mac). On a computer it opens in a window of its own that you can move anywhere on screen, even outside the app; in Chrome, Edge and the desktop app it stays on top of other windows. Back into the app docks it again, and it stays docked until you choose Open in its own window. It converts between 19 kinds of units, works out board feet for lumber (with cost and waste), and keeps a history.

If your browser blocks pop-up windows, the calculator opens inside the page instead.

Timer

Click the timer display to choose a stopwatch, a countdown or Pomodoro, and save profiles (for example per client or project).

Dictation

Press the microphone button and speak; your words are typed into the open note. Dictation uses your browser’s own speech recognition: most browsers send the audio to their maker’s speech service (Google for Chrome, Microsoft for Edge, Apple for Safari) to turn it into text. It doesn’t pass through our servers. Not every browser offers it.

Themes and settings

• Dark or light: View → Toggle Dark/Light, or the avatar menu.
• Theme Settings (View menu or avatar menu): choose one of the built-in themes, or make your own in Quick, Colour Mixer or Advanced mode. Every generated theme keeps text readable.
• Settings in the same window: auto-save delay, confirm deletes, word count, line numbers, avatar size, density, date/time format, vault auto-lock, editor font size and line height, and background patterns.

More windows, and installing the app

• Open in new window: right-click a tool in the activity bar. Changes in one window appear in the others straight away.
• Install as a web app: in Chrome or Edge, use the install icon in the address bar (or avatar menu → Install Web App); on iPhone and iPad, Safari → Share → Add to Home Screen. It opens in its own window and is called Zab Notes Web on a computer, but it is still your browser underneath, with the same abilities and limits.
• Which one am I using? The title bar (or the browser tab) gives the full name, with the release: Zab Notes Desktop Z1.12.1, Zab Notes Web Z1.12.1 or Zab Notes Mobile Z1.12.1. Hover the app on the Windows taskbar to see the same. Help → About says it too (on a phone or tablet: avatar menu → About Zab Notes) and lists what each one can do (see Desktop, web and mobile).
• Getting the desktop app (Windows): sign in to the web app on a Windows computer, then avatar menu → Get the Desktop App. The download page is for signed-in members. The installer isn't signed yet, so Windows says "Windows protected your PC": choose More info → Run anyway. From version Z1.11.0 the desktop app updates itself: when a new version is out it downloads it in the background, checks that it is ours, and asks "Restart now / Later". Restart now saves your work first; the app closes and opens again in a few seconds. Later keeps you working, and avatar menu → Restart to Update finishes it whenever you like. Updates come through the app, so Windows doesn't warn about them. An older desktop app shows Update the Desktop App in its avatar menu instead: install that version once by hand.
• Switching between the desktop app and the web app: in the desktop app, File → Open in Web App opens Zab Notes Web in its own window, if it is installed on this computer (from Chrome or Edge: avatar menu → Install Web App). If it isn't, the desktop app says so and asks before opening a tab in your browser, where you may need to sign in. In the web app on Windows, File → Open in Desktop App starts the desktop app, or brings it forward; it appears once you have signed in to the desktop app, and your browser asks once whether it may open it. Help → About has the same button. Neither one closes the window you are in. Phones and tablets have no desktop app, so they don't offer it.
• Using both: the desktop app and the web app are separate programs; open whichever you like. They show the same library, because it lives in your account, but each signs in on its own and keeps its own offline copy. Changes made in one show up in the other when it next loads or syncs, not instantly, so avoid editing the same note in both at the same time.

Desktop, web and mobile

All three run the same Zab Notes, from your account, with the same release. What each is good at, and what it gives up, depends on where it runs:

The desktop app is for Windows. Members download it from inside the web app on a Windows computer: avatar menu → Get the Desktop App.

Working without a connection

Once you have signed in on a device, Zab Notes keeps an encrypted copy of your library there, and every workspace keeps working offline: notes, boards, mind maps, drawings, charts, the planner, projects and the calendar, including creating, editing and deleting.

• A badge in the corner says you are offline and how many changes are waiting. They are sent by themselves when the connection returns.
• If a note was changed elsewhere meanwhile, your offline edit is kept as a version instead of overwriting the other one.
• Needs a connection: vault notes, moving notes between folders, favourites and tags, uploading images and audio, cloud images, and changing a calendar link.
• Signing out clears that device’s copy.

Your library in a folder

File → Offline Folder… (Chrome or Edge on a computer) writes your library to a folder you choose: every note as HTML and Markdown, and every map, drawing, chart, planner document, project and board as JSON, plus your folders and tags. It keeps the folder updated; File → Write Offline Folder Now writes it at once.

These files are readable — that is the point — so keep the folder somewhere private. Cloud images and audio and calendar events aren’t included yet.

Phones, tablets and browsers

• Phones get Capture and Notes (search, read and edit). The other workspaces need a tablet or computer screen.
• iPad and tablets get everything, with touch and Apple Pencil support.
• Browsers: current Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox and Brave. Drawing and Node Clusters need a modern browser.
• Use as many devices as you like; sign in on each.
• What a phone or tablet can and can't do compared with a computer: Desktop, web and mobile.

How your library is encrypted

• Everything you write is encrypted on your device before it is sent (XChaCha20-Poly1305). We store only the encrypted result.
• The key comes from your password (through Argon2id) and is also kept wrapped by your 24-word recovery key. Your password is never sent to us.
• So nobody at Zabulan LLC, and nobody who compels us, can read your library. It also means we can’t reset your password: the recovery key is the only way back.
• Each browser tab holds the key while you work; a new tab may ask for your password once to unlock it.

What stays readable to us

The words you write are always encrypted. A few details are not, because the server has to sort, filter or schedule by them:

• your email address, account and billing records, when you sign in, how much you store, and your folder and tag structure;
• when calendar events start and end, whether they are all-day, how they repeat, their reminders and colours;
• a project’s status, priority, health, dates, progress, budget and amount spent, and the dates and marks inside its milestones, tasks and risks;
• colours, order, favourites, and when things were created or changed;
• files you upload (images and audio), which are stored as uploaded.

The Privacy Policy has the complete list.

Passwords, two-step sign-in and your account

All of these are in the avatar menu → Account & Security:

• Change password (you need the current one), or make a new recovery key if you have lost the old words.
• Two-step sign-in: scan the QR code with an authenticator app. Keep the ten recovery codes; each signs you in once without your phone.
• Change email: a link is sent to the new address; the change happens when you open it.
• Delete my account: enter your password and type DELETE. Everything goes at once. Export first if you want a copy.

Forgot your password? On the sign-in page choose "Forgot your password? Use your recovery key", then enter the emailed code and your 24 words. This also turns two-step sign-in off, so you can set it up again.

Plans and billing

Paid plans aren’t switched on yet: nobody is being charged, and accounts keep working after the trial. This is how plans will work.

• Monthly: $10 a month, every update included, starting with a free 30-day trial.
• Perpetual license: $100 once, for version Z1. Later versions are offered as an optional $10 upgrade; without it you keep your version, with security and bug fixes.
• Custom edition: Zab Notes under your own name and domain, from $1,000, quoted individually.
• Refunds: on request within 30 days of a purchase.
• Manage: avatar menu → Account & Security → Plan & billing → Manage billing (cancel, change card, invoices). Card details go to Stripe and never reach us.

The pricing page has the details.

Your data is yours

• What you create belongs to you. Export single notes or your whole library at any time, including during the trial.
• If a trial or plan ends, nothing is deleted straight away: your library is kept for at least 90 days, and the app offers Export my library right away.
• Deleting your account removes everything at once; encrypted backup copies age out within about six months.

What we give, and what it costs

Some of the best things about Zab Notes come with a price you should know about.

Known limits

• Version history: up to 150 versions per note.
• Trash: 30 days, then deleted for good.
• Import: one Markdown, HTML or text file at a time; no import of whole libraries from other apps yet.
• Folder export: doesn’t include cloud images, audio or calendar events yet.
• Sharing: share links are read-only and one note each; there are no shared notebooks between members, and each account is private to its owner.
• Calendar: repeats are daily, weekly, monthly or yearly; reminders only appear while Zab Notes is open somewhere (there is no reminder while it is closed); Google Calendar sync isn’t available.
• Calendar links: read-only. A calendar published in UTC (as Zabulan’s is) keeps repeating events at the same UTC time, so they move by an hour when daylight saving starts or ends.
• Kanban: the progress bar counts the last column as done.
• Very large notes (past roughly 50,000 characters) get sluggish; split them into linked notes.
• Storage: included under fair use, with no fixed size promised.
• No public API yet.

Keyboard shortcuts

On a Mac, use Cmd where these say Ctrl.

In this Help window: / starts a search, Esc clears it.

Signing in

I forgot my password.

Use your 24-word recovery key from the sign-in page ("Forgot your password? Use your recovery key"). Without the password and the words, nobody can open the library.

I lost the phone with my authenticator app.

Use one of your ten recovery codes. Lost those too? Recover the account with your 24 words; that turns two-step sign-in off.

The confirmation email never came.

Check spam and promotions, then sign in: you can resend it or correct the address from there.

When the app misbehaves

A new tab asks for my password.

Each tab unlocks your library’s key once. That is expected, and it never sends your password to us.

It’s slow or looks stuck.

Press ReFresh on the Dashboard, or reload the page. Very large notes and huge Node Clusters graphs are the usual causes.

A note opened empty.

If it has saved content, a Recover banner appears; one click restores it. Otherwise look in View → Version History.

"Changed elsewhere … saved as a version".

You edited a note offline while it changed on another device. Nothing is lost: your offline edit is in its Version History.

The Calculator or Help opened inside the page.

Your browser blocked the new window. Allow pop-ups for this site to get separate windows. In the desktop app, install version 1.2.1 or later; earlier versions can't open separate windows.

Calendar link messages

This calendar can’t be read from your browser.

Its server doesn’t let a browser read it. This is true of most iCloud, Google and Outlook links; nothing on your side changes it.

This link was revoked or isn’t valid.

The link was turned off where it was made, or mistyped. Make a new link there and add it again.

Refreshed too often.

The calendar’s server limits how often it can be read. Wait a few minutes, then press Refresh.

This link didn’t return a calendar.

The link opens a web page rather than a calendar file. Copy the calendar’s subscription (ICS) link instead.

Offline · showing the copy read …

You are offline; the events shown are the last ones your device read, at the time given.

Contacting us

• Support: the form on the Support page, or email contact@zabulan.com.
• Reporting a bug: say what you were doing, what you expected and what happened, plus your browser. A screenshot helps.
• Security issues: security@zabulan.com.
• Your version: Help → About Zab Notes in the app. This is Zab Notes Z1.12.1.