Notes, tasks and a clipboard
manager in one quiet Mac app.

A download link appears as soon as checkout completes, and the same link arrives by email along with your licence key. Open the disk image, drag Cyanote to your Applications folder, launch it, and paste the key once when it asks. That is the whole setup: there is no account to create, no email address to verify, and no password to choose. The key is checked on that first launch and never again, so the app keeps working on a machine that is offline, on a machine that never sees the internet again, and on the day this website stops existing. If you lose the key it is still in your checkout email, and if you lose the email, one message to support gets it back. The same $4.99 licence covers every future update.

On your own Mac, in a single SQLite database file kept under ~/Library/Application Support/. There is nowhere else for it to go: Cyanote has no account system, no sync service, no analytics and no telemetry, so nothing you write is uploaded anywhere. The only time the app talks to the network at all is when it checks whether a new version exists. You can move that database file to any folder you like — an external drive, or a folder your own backup tool already watches — and Cyanote will keep using it there. Individual notes can be locked with a password, and a locked note's plaintext is not left behind in freed database pages. Because it is one ordinary file in an ordinary folder, Time Machine already backs your notes up without being told to.

Macs running macOS 12 (Monterey) or newer. Cyanote ships as a universal binary, so it runs natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs — no Rosetta, and no choosing between two downloads. It is signed and notarized by Apple, so Gatekeeper opens it without the unidentified-developer warning that unsigned downloads trigger. It is a desktop app: there is no iPhone or iPad version and nothing to log into in a browser. A Windows build exists and is in testing; it is not on sale yet, and when it ships the same $4.99 licence covers it, so buying today does not mean buying twice. Cyanote is not on the Mac App Store — it is sold directly, which is part of what makes a one-time price and a no-account design possible.

No, and deliberately not. What there is instead is a fourteen-day refund: buy it, use it properly, and if it is not for you, one email gets your $4.99 back — no reason required, no proof that you uninstalled it, no form. That is a better deal than a trial for the same reason it is a worse funnel: a trial asks you to evaluate an app in the fortnight you happen to have free, against a clock, whereas a refund lets you use it the way you would actually use it and decide afterwards. The refund window is the same whether you ask on day one or day fourteen, and asking for one does not cost you the updates you already downloaded.

No. Cyanote has no sync service, and this is the direct cost of the design rather than a feature waiting to be built: sync needs a server, a server needs an account, and an account is the thing this app is built not to have. Your notes live in one SQLite file on one Mac. If you want that file on a second Mac, you can put it in a folder that iCloud Drive, Dropbox or Syncthing already watches and point Cyanote at it there — that works, but it is your sync setup and your conflict risk, not a supported feature, so do not run it in both places at once. There is no iPhone or iPad app and none is planned. If reading your notes on a phone is something you need, Cyanote is the wrong app and Apple Notes or Obsidian will serve you better.

Against Notion: Cyanote opens instantly, works with the wifi off, needs no account, and includes a clipboard manager — Notion is more powerful, collaborative and cross-platform, and free for one person, so if you work with other people it wins outright. Against Paste and the other Mac clipboard managers: several are better at being a clipboard manager alone and several cost less, but none of them holds your notes, to-dos, calendar and habits in the same window. Against Apple Notes: Cyanote adds tasks, a board, a calendar, habits, routines and clipboard history, and stores everything in one file you can move; Apple Notes is free, syncs to your phone and is already installed. Each of these is argued at length, with prices and with the cases where the other app is the better buy, on the comparison pages.