Why I built Slote

The note that made me build Slote wasn't important. It was a study sheet: a derivation typed out line by line, and a diagram that needed drawing. The typed half lived in one app, the drawn half in another, and the actual thought lived in neither. Every time I opened one half, I was reaching for the other.

That gap isn't a missing feature. It's a structural decision most note apps made years ago. Typing apps treat ink as an annotation layer, something you scribble on top of the real note. Drawing apps treat text as a sticker you paste onto the real canvas. And the few apps that take both seriously tend to lock the result inside one ecosystem, so your notes live wherever your device's maker decided they should.

Slote is my answer to both halves of that problem.

Pen and keyboard, same page

In Slote, a note is a single page where ink and text are equal. You type a paragraph, sketch a diagram under it, circle the part that matters, and keep typing. No mode wall. No embedded canvas widget. No exporting a drawing into a text document. The page keeps clear layer separation so ink stays ink and text stays text, but they share one surface because that's how thinking works.

What I decided early

A few choices shaped everything else, so they're worth stating plainly:

• Four platforms at launch: iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS. If the pitch is "don't trap people in one ecosystem," shipping on one vendor's devices would be a joke. Cross-platform came first, not later.
• Offline-first, account optional. Your notes live on your device. Sign in when you want sync; don't when you don't. An empty sign-in wall in front of a notes app is lock-in wearing a trench coat.
• Every feature is free. Free sync covers 100 MB across two devices; Pro raises that to 5 GB and covers the rest of your devices. That's it. Drawing, writing, PDF import, export, encryption: never paywalled.
• Your work is portable. PDF in as a note background; PDF out; .slote backups you can carry anywhere. If Slote disappoints you someday, you leave with your notes.

What we can't read, and what we can see

Note content is encrypted on your device before it syncs. We can't read your notes, and we built it so that we never could.

We could stop there and let you assume the rest. Most apps do. So here's the rest: metadata (timestamps, your folder structure, file sizes) is not private. Our Privacy Policy says exactly that, in plain language, because a privacy claim you can't scope is a privacy claim you can't trust.

What Slote isn't

Not Notion, not a second brain, not a workspace with a notes feature. It's a page that lets you think with both hands.

Try it

Slote is launching soon, Product Hunt first. Join the waitlist. One email when we ship. No spam.