What OttaNote does
You organise your notes in folders, give them structure with headings and checklists, and find them again with search.
Folders, notes, attachments
You organise your work in folders and notes, and folders can have subfolders. PDFs, images and other files you simply drag into a note.
Headings give a note its structure. Under a heading you collapse everything you don't need for now, and with the mouse or the keyboard you move that part in one piece. Checklists work the same way, with as many levels as you like.
Use tags if you would rather search by topic than by folder. Notes can also link to each other: type [[ and choose a note. With Plus you can see which other notes link to a note.
What saves time
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Collapsing and moving sections
When you collapse a heading, everything under it goes along. You can move that whole section somewhere else with the mouse or the keyboard.
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Checking off a whole block
Ctrl+click (on the Mac ⌘+click) on a checkbox ticks or unticks the item and everything under it in one go. A finished job with twelve smaller tasks takes one click.
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Ctrl+M for your own highlight
You choose once which formatting you use most, for example bold, a text colour or a background. After that you apply it to your text with one keystroke. With Ctrl+Shift+M you change the choice, and anything you already highlighted changes with it.
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Paste that recognises
If there is Markdown or formatted text from a web page on your clipboard, OttaNote asks whether to turn it into headings, lists and checkboxes, or whether you want the text without formatting.
Tidying up when a job is done
"Delete checked items" takes all ticked lines out of the note. Anything that is still open stays, even if it was under a ticked item. Those lines then move up one level.
To keep track of what you have done, OttaNote first copies the ticked lines to a separate note in the same folder, along with the headings they were under. That copy is called something like · 20260716 Moving house. Your to-do list stays short, and you still have a log of what is finished.
The previous version stays in the version history: 30 days on Free, a year on Plus.
In the browser, light or dark
In the browser, OttaNote works on any computer, tablet and phone, without installing anything. You sign in and see the same notes as on your other devices.
There is also a program for Windows and the Mac. You can read more about it under Plus & pricing.
You choose a light or dark theme, and the app is available in seven languages.
When you are better off with something else
If you work with a team, or want databases with views and relations, publishing pages or integrations with other services, a workspace like Notion suits you better.
OttaNote is for anyone who once spent an evening setting up a system and then never wrote anything down again. You create a folder and you type. There is no system to design first.