Cloud Sync

Antinote can sync notes between your Macs, iPhones and iPads through your own iCloud account. There is no Antinote server. Covers conflicts, encryption and caveats.

Updated for v2.0

Cloud Sync

Design Intent: Your notes are yours. Sync should work without an account, without a server we run, and without anyone — including us or Apple — being able to read your notes.
  • Antinote can sync your notes between your Macs, iPhones, and iPads using your own iCloud account. There is no Antinote account and no Antinote server — notes travel through your personal, private iCloud database.
  • On Mac, turn it on in Settings > General > "Sync notes with iCloud" (off by default; Antinote will ask to restart). On iOS it is on by default (Settings > "Sync with iCloud").
  • What syncs: note text, checklists and their checked state, links, note order, pinned (slotted) notes, read-only (locked) state, and trash state.
  • If your iCloud storage is full, Antinote shows an error and keeps working locally — sync resumes once space frees up.
Settings
  • Sync notes with iCloud On | Off
  • Sync preferences with iCloud On | Off

    • When Two Devices Edit the Same Note

    • Antinote never silently overwrites your writing. When a note comes back from iCloud, it is compared three ways: what you have now, what the other device wrote, and the last version both sides agreed on.
    • Edits to different lines merge automatically. If you changed line 2 on one Mac and line 4 on another — even while one was offline — both edits land in the note on every device, with no conflict and nothing to clean up.
    • Edits to the same line become a conflict note. If both devices changed the very same line (or one inserted or deleted lines where the other was working), the newest synced version wins in place, and your other version is preserved in full as a new note marked --==SYNC CONFLICT==-- — an "Altiverse" note, placed right after the original. A warning pill points you to it; keep what you want and delete the rest.
    • Pinned (slotted) notes resolve in place. Slots are permanent, so instead of a separate conflict note, the other version is appended inside the slotted note below a --==SYNC CONFLICT==-- divider. Both versions stay in the slot until you tidy up.
    • Unsaved keystrokes count: if a synced change arrives while you are mid-sentence, what's in your editor — not just what was last saved — is what gets protected.

    Syncing Preferences Between Macs

    • Settings > General > "Sync preferences with iCloud" keeps your settings, custom keywords, color themes, and keyboard shortcuts the same on all your Macs. It requires note sync to be on, and takes effect immediately — no restart.
    • Changes apply on your other Macs within moments of syncing; a pill lets you know when preferences arrived from iCloud. If two Macs change the same setting, the most recent change wins, setting by setting.
    • Machine-specific state never syncs: window positions, license details, API keys, local file paths, and privacy gates stay on the Mac they belong to.
    • Preferences are end-to-end encrypted in transit and at rest, exactly like notes.

    End-to-End Encryption

    • Everything Antinote syncs — note contents, checklists, links, and note metadata like ordering — is encrypted on your device before it is uploaded, using Apple's CloudKit encrypted fields. Antinote can never read your notes, and there is no Antinote server in the path.
    • The encryption keys live in your iCloud Keychain, which only your trusted devices can access.
    • Encryption is always on. There is no setting to turn it off.
    • Your synced notes are only truly end-to-end encrypted if you turn on Apple's Advanced Data Protection for your iCloud account. Without it, Apple holds keys that can decrypt some of your iCloud data. Follow Apple's guide to enabling Advanced Data Protection — we strongly recommend it.
    • Note that Advanced Data Protection is not available in the United Kingdom, where Apple withdrew the feature in early 2025.

    Considerations

    • Sync metadata is visible to Apple. Like any CloudKit app, the encrypted records still reveal non-content metadata: roughly how many notes you have, when they change, and their approximate size. The contents themselves are encrypted.
    • iCloud device backups are separate. Your iPhone/iPad backup (and Mac Time Machine or iCloud Drive, if you back up your home folder) contains Antinote's local database, and standard iCloud Backup is not end-to-end encrypted by default — another reason to turn on Advanced Data Protection.
    • Losing your iCloud Keychain means losing cloud copies. If you reset your iCloud Keychain (for example after losing all trusted devices), the keys protecting your synced notes are gone and the cloud copies cannot be decrypted — by design. Your notes are still safe on any device that has them locally, and Antinote's local Auto-Backup keeps recent copies of your database.
    • Extensions are separate from sync. If you install extensions that call external services (like AI extensions), the text they send goes to whatever service that extension uses — that is unrelated to iCloud sync and only happens when you run the extension's command.