Tot Pocket App Reviews

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My to do pad. This has become one of my most used apps on Mac and phone. I bought all the list/ task managers but none of them got my list oriented life. This does. I have it in a widget on the Home Screen and often open and edit. I have hundred of things to do and this helps. I have three tabs for meeting noted. The colours and markdown don’t matter much to me. But the rest hits a sweet spot.

This is an excellent Mac-centric Scratchpad. This app is completely worth it if you are looking for an app with delightful touches that syncs flawlessly between your Mac and iOS devices. In my experience, the syncing works flawlessly, and seven pages is a perfect amount to work with for the transient information in my daily life. The constraint of seven pages, it turns out, is a feature. I do wish that the iOS version felt like a native citizen on iOS. The lack of action/share sheet support in an app that is supposed to be a home for your snippets of text is a head scratcher for me. As other reviews have stated, I think it would be hard to justify the expense if you are not using the Mac version. There are other less expensive iOS only solutions.

More widget options. I’d love more widget options. The current ones display a snippet of the text within a note. For security reasons, I’d like an option that is just a strip of the dots

Simply totally useful and awesome. Tot is simply one of the best ways to record notes across iPhone, iPad and Mac. My dream wishes moving forward would be lock-screen widget capability on iOS and an app for Apple TV! There’s literally no decent notes app that is also available for tvOS (syncing data across all devices) and I think the simplicity and elegance of Tot would be just perfect for people who want to review or make notes on their TV. Keep up the good work!

Great App. Use it on all my devices.. I’m able to share links and text all over. Missing Vision Pro support. Can’t be that hard. It’s already an iPad app. Why not let it run on the Vision Pro?

$20 for note taking restriction?!. Why do you limit the amount of note pages someone can have? Especially after forking you $20! I like the general idea of the app, but this restriction alone would easily keep me away from purchasing it. Otherwise, great work on interface design. I’m a visual geek and thought y’all did a great job. Two stars are purely for the design alone.

Very useful despite important missing feature. I use this app all the time. Works fantastic. Cloud sync very useful. 1 con: copying text and pasting into Tot doesn’t maintain line breaks. Otherwise flawless in my opinion.

Best app. This is probably my most used app (outside of podcasts). Very well designed and functional. Thank you for creating it, it’s amazing!!

Was so excited at first. The iOS version is so buggy it’s unusable. Content disappears, custom keys like bold, italic, bullet, etc are unresponsive. Sometimes lines of text wig out when I type and they jump back a space or insert odd characters. I thought I had found the answer to my need for a little scratchpad. Alas, my hunt continues.

Syncing unreliable to poor. I want to love this app since it so perfect in so many ways, but syncing just is not realizable or read only close to real-time. I’m not looking for real-time sync when typing on one device makes it appears on another, but within a few moments is standard nowadays. Today, too often it takes days or never syncs and just fails.

Love it!. Just what I've been looking for! A simple scratchpad for quick thoughts without the distraction of "organizing" the notes. One little nit: the app is crashing quite a bit on my iPhone 11 Pro. Once that's fixed this probably lands on my home screen. 👌

Do Not Buy This App. The MacBook app is good. This iOS is horrible. It is a frustrating glitch fest. The virtual keyboard pops up when you don’t want it and the app jumps around the page causing issues with scrolling. The app repeatedly pastes portions of text that were neither copied or pasted by the user. Problems like that explains why there is only a buy option and no trial on iOS. You have be warned. If you do buy it, you’ll be like, “well, that will teach me, that person warned me about this bad app.”

Tot vs. Apple Quick Notes. Any comments because I’m afraid that Tot may of have lost its relevance after the new iOS update of Notes?

Best app I didn’t know I needed. This app is the best fluid cheatsheet . Fantastic for keeping any lists, text or links I wanna remember or save to my phone or MacBook. Using tot with Apple widgets, I can discreetly go directly to any of the seven pages with corresponding color dots. Seven dots seven days. This is what a five star app should be. Pay a fair price… once.

Great. Just missing a couple text navigation features. For instance when you’re indebted, pressing enter should make another bullet at that same indentation, but it doesn’t do that. Also, when tapping a bullet then tapping indent, it just tabs forward instead of indenting the existing line you already started typing on. Indent is different than tab, tab is fine just label it the tab key if that’s what it’s going to be.

Always Useful, Never Bloated. The trio of Tot apps for Mac, iOS, and watchOS are some of my favorite apps. They are beautiful to look at, powerfully useful, and pretty bugless. I could go on and on about the many ways I use Tot, but I won’t. It’s worth it just to say thanks. If you’re looking for a reliable pop-up text editor to augment research, coding, or creative writing projects, give it a try!

A great tool. there’s tool is so flexible that I forget how much I can do with it. Simple, straightforward, beautiful. I use it on all my Apple devices

Love the idea, one major issue though. I really like the app. It does exactly what I need and the navigation is excellent. However, I’ve run into a major issue. Several times a day, the app icon looks like the app isn’t supported, and I can’t open it until I edit my home screen. Then it’s good for a couple minutes or hours. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason. If the dev wants more info, I can provide whatever is needed to help sort this issue out. I haven’t tracked down a way to report the issue to them yet. Until then, I’m running an “Open App” shortcut that’s saved to my home screen to use Tot.

widget fatal cpu crash daily since ios 17.2. hi, don't know if you know or if you care, but just in case- the tot widget is causing one or multiple fatal cpu resource crashes per day on iphone. i had to take the widget off. it happens no matter what page it's on, be it home screen, lock screen, or the left side swipe screen. happens with each widget also. i have an 11 pro. a bit "old" i know, but still. all my other widgets/apps work fine so i doubt that's an issue. the crash doesn't occur on my ipad (11 inch ipad pro). still love this app but would like to use the widget again. thanks

Useful for Moving Text Between Devices. I use this app so much! I copy or paste text into Tot on any device. Momentarily it is available on my iPhone, iMac, and iPad. That is such a convenience!

Nice, but needs work. Love the concept, but there are glaring issues given the price point. First off, landscape mode—seriously, do we even have to ask for this in 2020? Given the simplicity of the app, this is utter laziness. Next, sharing—it's borked. Nothing works, not even share via standard email or text. This needs serious work. Still, the app does fit a much needed niche, and I look forward to updates.

Beautiful app but..... The app has a beautiful design, but really needs standard backup or buffering functionality. Yesterday, I somehow lost a page (~2400 char) of text without warning when a copy/paste/export operation somehow went awry. The ‘undo’ function was not getting the text back either. I was frustrated and saddened to realize there was no way to revert the app content to its previous state of five minute earlier, and that it doesn’t do automatic backup. That seemed unusual for an app on an Apple platform nowadays.

Indispensable. This is the most important app on my phone, watch and Mac. Worth the price. I use it multiple times a day to keep track of my life and then archive the text elsewhere or dispose of it when done. The limitation to eight dots is a terrific feature. I have three small requests: restorable backups on iOS like on Mac, the ability to tie a Lock Screen widget to a specific dot much like you can with the Home Screen widget and also making it easier to add a link to existing text without going into markdown and needing to write out brackets and parentheses.

Quality you can expect from The Iconfactory. Simple and reliable scratchpad across all devices. Feature Request: It’d be nice if you could add a separator function so I could “sectionate” vertically. Right now I use a few dashes to keep it organized but it’d be super if I could hit a button that does it for me.

Beautiful.. A while ago I was searching for an app I can use in conjunction with the built in notes app, as like a step before. to decide if I wanted to make certain notes permanent or just needed them In the moment, and so far this had fulfilled my needs and then some. The beautiful color coded layout and the detailed interface makes it a pleasure to use. I use it all the time it helps keep my ideas organized and is an essential tool. The 20$ is worth it and I’m glad it’s going to a developer and not a big corporation. Thank you for this app!

The app I've been looking for..... ... like forever. After hearing Craig Hockenberry on the Mac Power Users podcast talk about Tot and Tot Pocket I bought them and installed them on my Mac, iPhone and iPad. This is the little app I’ve been looking for since I bought the original iPod Touch. It allows me to make quick notes (data tracking, really) during the day without any friction. Over the years I’ve bought many notes and text apps, too many to count, some came close but all failed on the friction score. I still use Notes for capturing and storing information I want to keep but Tot is the best for quick notes.

Simple, Stable, Good. Tot is a great notepad/scratchpad to use in the flow of another app. For example during lots of Zoom calls I'll have the MacOS Tot window open alongside.

Exactly what I wanted. I’d been using Tot on my Macs to store and sync notes and snippets. I was dying for something similar I could use on my phone but I didn’t think Tot was on iOS. Today I searched the App Store on the off chance it was and... here we are! Yes it’s $20 for a tiny text notes tool, but it’s worth every penny. It syncs perfectly. It has just enough features for you to jot things down and lightly organize them, but it’s not so powerful that things get in your way or feel over engineered. Perfect solution for jotting down bits of text and keeping them around for a little while.

Excellent!. Beautiful UI, simple and easy to use. I immediately put it on my home screen and I use it all day long on my iPhone & Mac. Kind of pricey if you only use it on your phone, but the companion Mac app is free (I.e., $0.00!!!), and when you factor that in, the overall price is fair for a really nice and useful utility with instant sync.

Love it. I wavered on buying the iOS version and kept looking at reviews to see if it’s worth it. Writing a review for others in the same situation. Treat yourself. I wavered for almost a year and am sorry that I waited so long. I love the Mac version and it’s more than 2x as useful once you have it on your phone too. Sync is fast. I noticed bullet features in the iOS ‘welcome’ screens that are in the Mac version too (but I had not noticed before). Try the Mac version and if you it’s handy in your workflow, you’ll want this one too.

I like, but can't keep losing data. This looked like a simple, even fun app for stashing thoughts and info I need week by week. But when I noticed something I typed went missing (replaced by what had been there previously) I realized it wasn't worth taking a chance (happened twice). Really a shame....so rarely do I spend $20! Am daring to hope this will be fixed at some point. Also disappointed that I can't write even a small phrase to accompany saved links. Kinda takes the 'simple' out of it.

Probably the only app that keeps me organized. This is hands down one of my favorite apps so far, it’s so simple to use and well designed that it’s just fun. It’s missing a few features that I’d like to see though, mostly just widgets (I reaallllly wanna be able to pin my grocery or to do lists on my Home Screen!) and the ability to draw on the iPad. Other than that, it’s my favorite notes app for sure!

Well fine then. I used this app on my Mac for many months. Found myself preferring to jot down notes here rather than my preferred notes app (Bear). Finally bought the iOS app out of boredom, to be honest. But holy cow, is this meticulously designed and a joy to use. I love its elegance and subtle beauty. Yay tot.

great little app, missing landscape view. Horizontal note taking would be nice. Other than that, great little app.

Indispensable and essential. I use 2 MacBooks, 2 iPads and an iPhone on a regular basis. I use all kinds of apps and utilities to keep my data synced and available with all my devices. Tot is one of those apps. One thing I want to request. Often, scrolling within Tot on my iPhone and iPad, I enter edit mode without wishing to do so. Kind of quick to switch to edit. Can you adjust the app so that light scrolling does not trigger the edit mode? Thanks

Syncing is broken. The most important feature of this app is syncing between devices. It used to work flawlessly. Now it seems not to. I regularly input text on my Mac and it doesn’t show up on my iPhone. I tried clicking on application support to contact the developer, and all I got was a knowledge base, so I’m leaving this negative review. I’m happy to remove it if you contact me or give me a way to contact you. I used to love this app, but it is now ruining my workflow. I use it to keep track of all of the high priority things I need to do at work so it’s kind of important that it work.

Such a Great App. I use this app on my MacBookPro and frankly I couldn't be productive without it. It's simple and clean but at the same time it's one of the most useful apps I have ever used. I use it to save snippets of information that I need to paste infrequently and to jot notes - it's just so accessible and easy to use it ends up making an immeasurable difference. It's a great app and well worth the nominal charge. I'm also happy to support the developers who have saved me so much time and aggravation as I go about my work every day. Thank you for making such a useful and wonderful app.

A good start.. but. For an app that’s sole purpose is the quick ingestion and expulsion of information, it’s certainly not easy to share anything into the app. I would have thought a share sheet or something would have been an obvious inclusion. Once through with the information i’ve jotted, I’m also surprised there is no single “clear page” icon/functionality. Instead, I have to manually futz with selecting everything and deleting it when i want to re-ready a page for notes. Those are my two biggest wishes. Repeating bullets in a list is another obvious missing tooth. The Color coded UI is a nice solution to a problem most other devs would have gotten wrong. Hopefully this app will improve or I’ll feel like a real sucker for dropping $20 on it.

Please add security features!. Love this app but I would love to see a passcode/Face ID login element that could help protect and secure notes and information. I can understand why this may not be as crucial on Mac devices, however mobile devices could really benefit from having the added security. Thanks!

Very cool and useful. Very cool note system I like Tot very much. The cost of the iOS app doesn’t concern me because I feel like I bought a Mac and iOS system for $20, not just an iOS app. The text I write syncs nicely across all my devices so it is always available. I keep the Tot icon in my dock so that I can tap it and start writing immediately. The seven page limitation works fine for me because it focuses my thoughts better than opening Apple Notes and seeing my long list. There is a share arrow right above the keyboard that lets me export out my text to wherever I need it, so that works well. There is also a sharing extension so that I can easily bring in text and links from a website or from Mail. There are options to let you append or prepend text exactly where you want it in your note and you can choose various ways to display links. Iconfactory apps have always had beautiful design and Tot looks and works great for me. Cool app that I find myself using many times a day for all my ideas and thoughts. I’m completely happy with Tot and it has already become a really helpful app that I am using a lot. Thanks.

8 scratch pads in 1!. Tot is a lovely place to brain dump until you find the right place for the info (or it’s temporary info and doesn’t need to be preserved). Thoughtful and well designed. Thanks devs!

Worth it. Yes, the price seemed ludicrous. But after using the free version on my Macbook, and after reading other reviews of the iOS version, I sprung for it. Long story short: I use it more than any other app and now cannot imagine doing without it. The clutter-free, minimalist design is a pleasure every time I use it. It’s indispensable. It’s perfect.

Flawless minimalist app!. Small, brilliant, gorgeous, clean, spirited software for those who want the very best. Indespensible, already, after just a short time, TOT is FIELD NOTES for your Apple computers. License this app and never look back. Major kudos to ICONFACTORY, as always.

Worth every penny - very useful. Thoughtfully and beautifully designed

Simplicity at its best!. What a sticky note app should be. Only the essentials, what more can you need? About time I stoped using napkins! — Simple, period! Tot.

Amazed. I almost never write reviews. I read about this app several months ago, when it first came out. I thought it sounded interesting but not worth $20, although I did download and use the free version on my MacBook Pro. I now have purchased the iOS/iPadOS version, and I must say I amazed. I expected this to be simply a place to keep scraps of writing. Well, it is, but it is so much more. It’s a simple app by design, but it’s true — that simplicity masks some amazing power. The level of attention to detail of these simple functions (one example: keyboard shortcuts on Magic Keyboard), the nearly instantaneous iCloud syncing across devices, the meticulous design, and more make Tot a joy to use. I do use it for those occasional times when I have to jot down some information, such as when I’m on a phone call and need to write down sometime. I also use it as a minimal bookmark keeper. I use it to quickly, without friction, write down an idea. Just a lovely app. I was wrong — it absolutely is worth $20.

Practically flawless place to hang out with text. If you want to just hang out with some text for a while, this is the app for it. I was a user of Drafts for years. Drafts is an extraordinary app, one of the most impressive apps on iOS. Despite adding a seemingly endless list of hidden powers in recent years, it’s probably still the quickest way to launch an app and immediately get a text field. However all that power has come at just one cost: Drafts isn’t the chillest place to just hang out with some text for a while. Tot is like your friend’s fun, recently renovated basement. Just chill out and hang with some text, buddy. I’ve been using Tot for weeks and haven’t once had the suspicion that I’m using it wrong or that I’m missing something or that some important information got lost somewhere. We’re just hanging out, dude. Me and the text. If there’s text in Tot that I want to keep permanently, I hit the share sheet and it goes off to its forever home: a text file, an email, Ulysses, OmniFocus, who knows. The rest sits in Tot for a while then goes off to do its own thing, wherever it is that text goes after you’ve had a nice time hanging out.

Line Break. Love the app, would like to see a simple visible line added to the Quick Keys. This could be used as a tool to add a visual line break. Would make it easier to go back through breaking up subjects when performing quick note taking.

Unreliable. This product is great but unreliable: I use it all the time and love it, but it’s the second time where I lose all my notes just because I changed work laptop and it has overwritten all my data once I connected it to my personal account. Hours of hard work completely lost with no possibility to version-control or backup

Missing one feature. Love the concept and prevents mindless pages of notes depending on your workflow. I wish there was a shortcut to add current date in some non-country specific format in the customizable “shortcut bar” (e.g. January 1, 2020). I have weekly recurring meetings that have a few takeaways and it’d be great to simply add to a stream of dates quickly.

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Hide the UI please. Love this app. Just wish I could hide the UI.

Doesn’t sync reliably. Doesn’t sync reliably between iPhone and MacBook

Surprisingly useful, well worth the cost. While this app seems a little expensive, for me it has been well worth every cent, I use it multiple times every day. It's a great scratchpad for text, does a brilliant job of converting rich text to Markdown on the fly and vice-versa. It's always there, super easy to use. The macOS version of Tot is FREE, so add that in to your calculations. The iOS and Mac version work seamlessly together, I've yet to have a single problem with syncing. I also use the Mac app every day, and rely on it to quickly and reliably move text between the two platforms. I love it so much it's now in my iPad dock. Wouldn't be without it.

not syncing on ipad. please fix - 5 star but nil if it doesn't syn

Can’t Live Without. Ok. So this app is crazy expensive on mobile. I have to say I don’t know why. The thing is - it’s that damned useful I’ve never regretted for a second spending the money I did. I LOVE this app. It’s only really worth it if you are all in on Apple and have desktop/iPad and iPhone. That way your notes sync seamlessly and effortlessly between. I dare say it’s bad practice - but for work I have to change my O365 password with a complex password monthly. I use Tot to keep a copy handy and it’s a lifesaver. I also have some formatted text handy that I need to copy and paste now and again. I heard about this app on TWiT and have to say wasn’t expecting much - but it’s now something I use multiple times a day and couldn’t do without. Thanks Icon Factory. This is a surprising win!

Incredibly useful little App. I’m so glad I discovered this app - it’s so handy for quickly collecting snippets of information throughout the day - either on my iPad, iPhone or Mac desktop. The iCloud syncing is really quick so I’m always up to date on either device! Being a small lightweight package it loads and runs very quickly on all my devices and is a joy to use!

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Nice program, but $$$ is a disappointment. Tot Pocket is a fantastic program that really fills a need for me, which is why I bought it despite its very high price. Tot aggregates little snippets of text I otherwise would have trouble organizing before using them in a more systematic way in another app. It is intelligent about rich text, including links. It makes it easy to take formatted text from any source and convert it instantly to plain text. Tot syncs between devices using iCloud, including Macs and other iOS/iPad OS devices. I hope the developers continue to flesh out this app and I REALLY hope they don’t turn around in 1-2 years and change the pricing model to a subscription. Users in Canada paying $30 for an app really deserve to have continued access to this as long as the app is being made.

Fantastic Scratch Pad App. I love the unique pricing model for this app. Free OSX, reasonable one time purchase price for iOS. And the simple, purposely restricted functionality is beautiful. I love that I won’t end up with a million little notes, (like when I use OSX stickies for example), or end up with random files with notes that I completely forget about. About the only one thing I’d love to see is that while the app supports a restricted version of Markdown, it doesn’t support headers with #. Even if I was just single and double, that would make me happier, as I’m an avid Markdown user, and this little thing irks me just a bit.

with cheatsheet app you can have 3 lines on a complication. bought this app cause it has an apple watch app. but you can’t edit text on the watch. doesn’t have any more benefits than cheatsheet which i already owned. at least with cheatsheet on apple watch you can display three lines of text on modular face.

Excellent, but. This is one of my most-used apps. The only shortcomings are (1) very difficult-to-see text selection highlighting; (2) lack of (on macOS) Cmd-Shift-Opt-V “paste and match style” support. Otherwise brilliant.

Very handy. Yes, there are other ways of doing this, but this is so handy, especially on the iMac. Instant sync - no wait - multiple pages. Too easy. I’m using it all the time!

Share Extension is Amazing. Wow! The share extension works in real time showing prepend and append content!

The best app for storing and accessing your thoughts.. Tot is one the most useful (and beautiful) pieces of software I have on my devices. I use it for everything from making temporary notes during meetings & calls, to late-night notes on long-term projects. It’s simply flawless.

Great, simple app that earns its way into your life. You want this in your iPhone/iPad dock. And on your Mac. It’s that good.

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Great, w/ small bug. Excellent app. There is a small bug though: after customizing the hot keys in the bottom right corner using the settings, they no longer work. (Nothing happens when I click on them.) But I can copy-paste the symbols ... @the developers - quitting the app once and then reopening permanently fixed the issue for me.

My $19.99 review. After a couple of weeks I have decided to uninstall Tot. This app ignites the debate between simplicity and limitations. While I respect that, I find that this app does not bring enough to the table to merit the cost. I’ll revert back to Apple Notes for the following reasons: —Apple Notes has a trash can; you can recover work —Apple Notes has enough formatting tools but not too many —Apple Notes supports encryption —Apple Notes syncs beautifully and quickly across all my devices at no additional cost —The gain of Tot is that it’s a quick little app to jot something quick does not exceed the overall robust feature set of Apple Notes. (And no, “robust” is not a pejorative term here. Apple Notes is a nice balance of features and simplicity.) I suppose Tot is good for MacOS when I want to copy and paste something quickly, or jot down something very quickly. For that reason the free MacOS app is fine. But here are reasons I don’t care for Tot overall: —For a simple app, the amount of menus, sub menus, “cog icons”, hiding-unhiding, keystrokes, “is that feature or bug?”-nonsense , etc is quite dizzying. Open and creating a new Text File (or Apple Note) is arguably just as easy if not easier but with a more robust and predictable experience. —I don’t want to be encumbered by a developers rigid philosophy and/or wonder if/when a feature will be implemented —I want a way to recover text later. History, trash can, something like that. —I don’t want or need to learn a bevy of new keystrokes. —One of their Knowledge Base articles explained a solution that didn’t make sense based on the UI I was looking at. Not a good sign. —Which brings me to this: iOS and MacOS are really really close to the same user experience —but not quite. And that makes things confusing. —I want the option to paste an image —I don’t care at all about markdown (and neither should you :) —$19.99 ...a little much and the reason I feel entitled to issue a 1-star review.

No search functionality on iOS/iPadOS!!!. I am not sure how such a basic feature is not available.

Why have I to buy twice on iOS and iPadOS ?. Can’t understand

The Killer App. There’s a photo techies love of the table full of technologies — cameras, fax machines, Game Boys, printed books, on and on — that were rendered obsolete by a single computer you can fit in your pocket. I can’t find that photo right now, and I don’t remember if a pad of sticky notes is on that table, but maybe that’s because people don’t think they’re obsolete. I still see sticky notes stuck to the bezels of people’s computer monitors all the time. That’s insane, though. Apps should be way better at that job, but thus far, none have been — not even Apple’s Stickies app on the Mac. But Tot by The Iconfactory has done that and much more. Tot is a notes app with an intentional, almost physical constraint: It contains exactly seven notes. They can all be infinitely long, of course, but there are seven of them, in fixed positions, each with its own fixed color. They instantly sync to all your devices. The primary mode for viewing notes is in rich text, supporting a pleasing array of fonts. (I’ve customized mine to use Apple’s New York Small, which takes some finagling on iOS but is quite possible.) Tot also allows you to dip into plain text, which translates your rich text formatting into a basic subset of Markdown, also allowing you to add links to text. In other words, while it’s ostensibly an app for dashed-off notes — “your mess,” as Tot’s help docs call it — it also makes for a quite pleasing writing environment. To wit, this text your reading began life in response to Tot developer Ged Maheux’s request that I write a review of Tot on the App Store. I realized that I would want to publish the review twice, on the Mac and on iOS, so I figured I’d write it in one place where I could easily retrieve it twice — where else but Tot? So I just opened Tot to the first note and began writing, and what effortlessly emerged was something I quickly realized I should publish on my blog. Now I’m watching the status bar at the bottom, pleasingly matched to the note’s background and highlight colors, as the word count ticks upward towards 500. That’s how natural a writing tool Tot is. If someone — let’s say my kid’s pediatrician — were to call me on the phone while I’m writing this, I may need to rapidly switch contexts and write something down. I’m used to fumbling a little bit in that situation. In Tot, the solution is absolutely natural: just jump one note over and write it down there. Tot’s design makes it seem perfectly natural to have completely disparate kinds of things in each note, and seven seems like a magic number for the most things you’d ever want to keep track of in a given day. The constraint of having exactly seven notes does something I don’t think Apple Notes will ever do, and that’s why I will continue to use both apps: Tot liberates you from ever having to remember where you put some piece of information. That’s where physical sticky notes fall down, especially if you need more than a couple. Apple Notes tries to help out with folders and search, but that still takes way too much cognitive overhead when you really need to find something. With Tot, you absolutely know where it is. Often the things you put into Tot don’t need to go anywhere when you’re done with them, but sometimes they will. In my life, Apple’s Notes is going to be the obvious destination. I treat Notes as long-term storage, so I’m going to have some folder in there where I put information from Tot that I need to keep around. I do keep random bits of info in the top-level Notes folder sometimes, so I guess that’s been my Tot until Tot came along. That demands a question, though: Why not just use Notes? Tot’s designers made some decisions that make it better for the kind of usage I’ve described above than Notes is. As far as writing notes goes, it’s a close call, but Tot built in just the right features in just the right places, whereas Notes took a more kitchen-sink approach that makes it less appealing to me, particularly in the toolbar on iPhone. Sure, sometimes I might want to add a photo in the middle of writing a note, but I’ll almost never want to doodle a picture with my meaty index finger, and Notes treats those as primary note-writing actions. Tot only has controls I will always want to use. The word and character count is also a big plus for me, as is the ability to quickly convert between rich text and Markdown. You can do that in Notes via Shortcuts, but that’s janky. On the Mac, where you can tweak the system to respond to custom keyboard shortcuts in whatever app you want, you can also get Notes to be comparable to Tot, but Tot’s already set up to appear and disappear on the Mac at your command, so there’s no need to fiddle. There’s also the undeniable loveliness of Tot, which Notes does not have. But the real reason to use Tot is the seven-note constraint. Even using the top-level folder in Notes the way I do, it’s still very hard to keep sane in there. I don’t know why it is — I’m not enough of a designer to explain it — but my hunch is that Tot’s seven dots provide two cognitive advantages. One is the color-coding, which must ingrain itself at some subconscious level while writing, because I really do find that it helps me remember what’s where, even though I’m just choosing the next open dot, not choosing a note based on color. The other is that you can always see how full you are, and once I get above three, I already start to feel like things are getting too complicated, and I need to do something. Every folder in Notes is an infinitely deep junk drawer, and yet somehow even having just two notes in there feels like too much. Consequently, these two apps fall very naturally into two different roles: Tot is for managing what’s top of mind, and Notes is for freezing information in carbonite for later retrieval.

Nice utility. Needs better Markdown support. Very nice little utility. I'm using it on both MacOS and iOS. My main beef is with the very limited markdown support. I don't want all the bell's and whistles of all the myriad "markdown" permutations, but I do need support for basic Gruber Markdown. Also, claim of "Markdown support" and "Full support for rich or plain text" is very misleading given the *very* limited subset of Markdown that is supported. No support for headings, lists, code snippets, etc.

Amazing concept, but not really plaintext. When you say plaintext, it should really mean plaintext, without any formatting. But I paste a snippet of code and all of a sudden it adds lots of extra characters, as if it was expecting markdown. So I’m stuck with using the formatted text for code snippets, which adds lots of formatting. Please add a true plaintext mode for developers.

Love it!. Limiting the scope is the genius behind this app. I love that notes are specially organized, my mind works that way. And the seamless sync to my Mac is perfect. I’m happy to find Automatic list continuation included in the latest release. Bravo. I’m thrilled.

Great in version 1.0, lots of promise for future. I’m going ahead and giving this 5 stars because I already find it 5 stars worth of useful, although see below for a couple of suggestions for the future. I’m a heavy nvALT / 1Writer user for text snippets and such (h/t Merlin Mann) and I thought at first this was like a less-functional version of those. But having used it, I can see that it has different use cases. It doesn’t replace those apps for me, but it turns out I still needed Tot in my life. For me, I like the fact that it has 7 dots, and there are 7 days in the week... so right now I am using Tot to map out my to-dos / notes for each day of the week. Previously, this job was accomplished either by a messy, rotating series of nvALT notes or a bunch of index cards, but Tot seems like a simpler and cleaner solution. You already have my money and my five stars, but here are some suggestions for the devs for future versions in case you want six stars in my heart. Apologies if these already exist and I missed them somewhere... I haven’t been using the app super-long. * Configurable number of dots * Support Control-Tab and Shift-Control-Tab for navigating between dots (or make the shortcut configurable), for those of us who immediately tried to use the web browser shortcuts * This one’s a bit weird, and I don’t feel as strongly about it... but for those of us who might use this as a week-ahead planner, maybe add an easy way to rearrange the order of the dots (e.g. when Monday’s over, it might be nice to be able to move my “Monday” dot to the end of the list) Thanks for making this!

Needs more. I’ll echo what a few others have said: needs more, smarter, text navigation features. definitely missing when adding to a list, “return” key creating a new line with a bullet also, share extension please! I’d like to copy text and notes from Drafts to this. also, a home screen widget for quick adding

Love Tot!! Best text editor out there!. Love the app!! More icon selections please!!

Great, but now sync is broken!. Apple just upgraded me to V 1.5.1 (73). One of the best programs I’ve ever used is now useless. Why? Because sync does not work. PLEASE FIX QUICKLY; I’m in the middle of writing a novel, and I use Ulysses and Tot on five devices! All the release and description refer to an Apple Watch app. Where’s that?

Widget needed. THIS IS A 5 STAR APP ***** Team. A widget is needed for taking notes fast. Please. Thanks.

I mean.... $20 for seven text views that swipe? Really?

Syncing no longer works. Syncing no longer works between instances of Tot.

Indispensable companion app!. UPDATE: The bold/italic buttons are still broken in light mode in 1.11 - please fix, for a $20 app this simple (and it’s great, I love the concept!) the basics have to be right. UPDATE: Apparently this is a quirk that only occurs when reduce transparency is on, and the devs are working on a fix. I love this app. Combined with the free mac app that lives in my menubar, this has rapidly become my everything scratchpad - to do lists, fitness diary, recipes all go here before being transferred somewhere more permanent. I love it, and while $20 is steep, it is an elegant, beautifully designed app, and I feel like I’ve got my money’s worth in not futzing around with an endless string of fragments in the Notes app. The seven dot limit is a feature, not a bug. Syncing between iOS and Mac is rock solid. I have one small feature request - in addition to syncing the note contents, would it be possible to also sync the state (which dot is open when opening the app)? If I am editing a note on Mac, I would like when I open Tot on iOS to see that note come up first (and vice-versa), for seamless handoff between platforms. The other thing I think needs to be fixed is the visual appearance of the style buttons - bold, italic etc. They do not change appearance when activated, and they definitely should - I should be able to tell looking at the button if Bold is on or off (UPDATE: this only occurs in “light” mode, they work correctly in dark mode). Also, Bold text is always the color of the “dot”, making every bold word look like a title - I’d prefer if bold text was black, perhaps with the current behavior reserved for headings? Also - it would be *very* handy to have a widget to quickly flick through my notes from the lock screen (not edit, just read). I often use Tot for shopping lists and to-dos, and having to unlock the phone to look at them is inconvenient, particularly when wearing a mask. Overall though I highly recommend this app, very useful!!

if you’re who this is for, you’ll be happy. It’s one of those weird little hyper-specific apps that surely isn’t for everyone. I am obviously but a minuscule anecdotal example, but here’s what i think is relevant about my demographic: - I use Finder and BBEdit to write. All fancier attempts to improve on that environment end up disappointing - occasionally i’ll branch out into Omnioutliner, Stickies, or even Pages when specific parts of my brain need to scribble on a different kind of napkin - Drafts used to be the bomb, but when it got modernized and more complex it lost its appeal for me, plus subscriptions make me gag Enter Tot. It’s reliable and adorable. Gets out of the way until i need it and then there it is, with no recriminations about where i’ve been all week. Here’s when i use it: - need to type something NOW; pausing to think about what it’s for or where it goes would shatter the thought - need to copy and paste between devices and apple’s magic isn’t working - keeping track of temporarily persistent categories of information (like covid resources for example) - want to type something non-urgent but don’t know yet where it’s going to be filed - quick note when out and about, easy and mindless as a pocket notebook - i use the seven-color spectrum to impressionistically organize the ephemeral contents: more personal stuff goes towards the green end; more work-related stuff goes towards the red end You get the idea. It’s things like BBEdit, Tot, Keyboard Maestro, etc that keep me on the Mac. I’m sure I could replicate most of what these things do for me with Linux, but only if I had time and limitless patience. The verdict: if you want it and can afford it, buy it. It does exactly what it says it will do, and that should be rewarded.