Matte
Pin a note to the Lock Screen
Long-press a note in the list and choose Pin to Lock Screen, or tap the pin in the editor. The note appears under the clock on your Lock Screen straight away, and in the Dynamic Island on phones that have one. The card shows the note's title, and for a checklist how many items are done, like "0/4". A plain note shows its first line; a long one, on an iPhone with Apple Intelligence, shows a one-line summary of what it is about instead, written on the phone. A line that ends in a number, like "Water 3", gets a + you can tap to count; only the + counts, so a tap anywhere else on the card opens the note. Tap the card to open the note. Pin a different note and it takes the place of the old one.
iOS clears any app's Lock Screen card after eight hours. Open Matte and the pinned note comes back. If you would rather it never left, add the Pinned note widget once: press and hold the Lock Screen, tap Customize, choose Lock Screen, tap the area under the clock, and pick it. The wide one is the card. Two round widgets sit beside it in the same list: Recent notes, the app's logo, which opens the app, and New note, a pencil, which starts one.
Home Screen widget
Press and hold the Home Screen, tap Edit, then Add Widget, and look for Matte. The Recent notes widget lists your latest notes, the pinned one first; tap a note to open it, or the small pencil in the corner for a new one. Its small size shows the pinned note, or the latest. The New note widget is a pencil tile: tap it and you are writing. Both sit on a solid ground, white in light mode and black in dark, whatever your wallpaper.
Checklists
Tap the checklist button in the editor to turn the current line into an item. Tap the circle to tick it. Return continues the list; Return on an empty item ends it, and so does Backspace at the start of one.
Writing Tools
On an iPhone with Apple Intelligence, select some text in a note and choose Writing Tools to proofread, rewrite, or summarise it, right in the note. It is Apple's feature and it works the same here as in Apple's own apps. Checklist circles stay where they are.
The sparkle
Make a list. Write or dictate a jumble under the title, then tap the sparkle in the editor bar. On an iPhone with Apple Intelligence, Apple's on-device model turns it into checklist items, one per task, in your own words, and nothing leaves the phone. On other iPhones the same button splits on commas, "and", and line breaks. Items you had already ticked stay ticked.
Tidy up makes every line read cleanly: capitals, spelling, commas and apostrophes, a full stop on a sentence, filler dropped, in your own words and one line for each line. On an iPhone with Apple Intelligence the on-device model does the spelling and punctuation; on any iPhone the capitals and spacing are fixed. Checklist circles stay where they are, and list items stay short. Reminders finds the dates and times in the note on any iPhone: put a day or a time on the line, like "dentist tuesday 3pm", "call mum tomorrow at 10", "rent due on the 1st" or "oven in 20 minutes", with several on one line separated by slashes if you like. It shows what it found; one tap puts them in the iPhone's Reminders app, after iOS asks once for permission, or "Notify me" sets a notification from Matte at that time, with the note's title and the line, that opens the note when tapped (no repeats or snooze; Reminders has those).
On an iPhone with Apple Intelligence the menu has more. Add a title reads the note and puts a few words on a new first line, ready to change. Sort the list puts the items of a checklist into groups, dairy with dairy and errands with errands, with the ticked ones staying ticked. All of it runs on the phone, and a shake undoes any change to the note.
Dictate a note
Hold the pencil, speak, tap Stop. The note lands with a title on top, spelling and punctuation fixed, and a checklist made when you spoke a list, all by Apple's on-device model on an iPhone with Apple Intelligence; on other iPhones the note is the words as you said them. Speech is turned into text on the phone by iOS and never leaves it; iOS asks once for the microphone and speech recognition.
Memory
Two things on an iPhone with Apple Intelligence. Where did I leave off? Open a note you have not touched for a day and the line under the bar says where it stands, in your own words: what you decided, what is still open, what comes next. Tap it or start typing and it goes; it is also in the sparkle menu whenever you want it. You've thought about this before. While you write, if an older note says something that bears on it, a line appears under the bar: "You wrote about this in Standing desk: 'standing hurt my knee for a week'". Tap it and choose: open that note, or move what you just wrote into it, where this note goes to the Trash. Both run on the phone and nothing leaves it.
Siri and search
Search in the app matches as you type. When what you typed reads as a question, like "when is the dentist", or is in none of your notes, on an iPhone with Apple Intelligence, Apple's on-device model reads your notes and answers: the note that says "call the dentist tuesday" comes up, with a one-line answer above it. Nothing leaves the phone.
Your notes show up when you search your iPhone from the Home Screen; tap one to open it. Siri takes five things without any setup: say "New note in Matte", "Add to Groceries in Matte" (Siri asks what to add, and it goes on the list), "Pin Groceries in Matte", "What's on Groceries in Matte" (Siri reads out what is left), or "Tick something off Groceries in Matte" (Siri asks which, and ticks it). Say the name of the note as it appears in the list. The first time, open the app once so Siri learns the names; the Shortcuts app lists the five under Matte.
Deleting
Swipe a note left to delete it. It goes to the Trash, behind the trash icon beside the title. Open the Trash and tap a note: it asks whether to put it back or delete it for good. A swipe deletes it for good. Anything left in the Trash is deleted after 30 days.
Sync
Notes sync between your own devices through iCloud when you are signed in. There is no account to create. If notes are not appearing on a second device, check that both are signed into the same Apple Account and that iCloud Drive is on in Settings → your name → iCloud.
Something wrong?
Open an issue on the project's GitHub issue tracker with what you expected and what happened.