Frequently Asked Questions

Cabinote is a free, offline desktop application for macOS and Windows that gives you a beautiful freeform canvas for writing, drawing, and pasting images. Your notes live inside notebooks, and those notebooks are displayed on a gorgeous 3D bookshelf — like a real physical bookcase, but digital.

There's no account, no cloud sync, no subscription. Just open it and start writing.

Truly free. No trial period, no paywall after 30 days, no premium tier, no in-app purchases, no ads, no subscription. The app is a passion project by TheHobbyist Software.

If you find it useful, you can support us with a small donation — but it's entirely optional and never required to use the full app.

Cabinote is available for:

• macOS — Universal Binary (Apple Silicon + Intel), and a dedicated Apple Silicon build
• Windows — 64-bit installer (x64) and ARM64 installer

Linux support may be added in a future release.

macOS: Download the .dmg file, open it, drag Cabinote to your Applications folder, and launch it from there. On first launch macOS may ask you to confirm opening an app from the internet — click "Open" to proceed.

Windows: Download the .exe installer, run it, and follow the prompts. You can choose whether to install for just yourself or all users, and whether to create a desktop shortcut.

No. Cabinote makes absolutely zero network requests. It works completely offline — on a plane, in a remote cabin, or behind a corporate firewall. Your notes are always available regardless of your internet status.

A note canvas is an infinite free-form space. You can add:

• Text boxes — click anywhere on the canvas to drop a text box; style text with bold, italic, font size, and colour
• Drawings — using the pen, marker, highlighter, or eraser tool
• Images — drag & drop image files onto the canvas, or use the image picker button

All elements can be dragged, resized, and rearranged freely. The canvas grows as you add more content.

Click the pen icon in the note toolbar to enter drawing mode. You have four tools:

• Pen — thin, precise strokes (great for handwriting and detail)
• Marker — bold, opaque strokes
• Highlighter — wide, semi-transparent strokes for emphasis
• Eraser — erase drawn strokes

Each tool has three size options (small, medium, large) and a full colour picker. Click the pen icon again or press Escape to exit drawing mode.

Yes. There are two ways:

• Drag & drop: Drag image files (JPG, PNG, GIF, WEBP, BMP) directly from Finder or Explorer onto the note canvas.
• Image picker: Click the image icon in the note toolbar to open a file picker. You can select multiple images at once.

Images are copied into the app's local storage (under your user data folder) so they stay embedded in the note even if you move or delete the original file.

Yes. The canvas supports up to 30 levels of undo. Press ⌘Z (macOS) or Ctrl+Z (Windows) to undo. Notes are saved in snapshots, so undo restores the complete canvas state to a previous point rather than just undoing a single action.

Yes. Notes are auto-saved continuously as you work. You'll see "Auto-saved ✓" in the toolbar. You never need to manually save — just write and close.

Each note can display a lined background (like ruled paper) to help keep your text aligned. You can toggle this per note using the lines button in the toolbar. You can also set a global default in Settings — all new notes will open with lines on or off depending on your preference.

Badges are coloured labels you can apply to notes so they stand out in the notes list. The available badges are:

• ⭐ Important · 🚨 Urgent · 🔐 Confidential · 👁 Review
• 💡 Idea · 💚 Personal · 💼 Work · 📝 Draft

Right-click a note in the sidebar to assign or remove a badge.

Press ⌘K (macOS) or Ctrl+K (Windows) from anywhere in the app. The global search panel opens and searches across all notebooks simultaneously — by note title and note content. Click a result to jump straight to that note.

The bookshelf is the home screen — it displays all your notebooks as physical-looking books on a 3D wooden (or metal, or glass) shelf. It's designed to make your notes feel like something you actually want to open, not just a boring list.

You can hover over a book to preview its title and right-click for quick actions like Open, Rename, Change Cover, Add PIN, or Delete.

There are 6 rack themes: Light Wood, Dark Wood, Black Metal, Gray Metal, Aluminum, and Glass. Switch between them using the palette icon in the bookshelf toolbar. The theme applies to all shelves at once.

Yes, extensively. Right-click a notebook and choose "Change Cover" to open the cover designer. You can:

• Pick any solid colour from a built-in palette
• Apply a gradient using two colours
• Use a custom photo as the cover background
• Add an overlay pattern: dots, lines, grid, diagonal, or waves
• Add cover text in any colour and position it anywhere on the cover

Yes. Click the grid icon in the top toolbar to switch from the bookshelf view to a flat card grid. The grid shows each notebook as a card with its cover and note count. Click the shelf icon to switch back.

Right-click any notebook on the shelf and choose "Add PIN". Set a numeric PIN. The notebook will show a 🔒 lock icon and require the PIN before you can open it.

PINs are session-only — they are stored in memory, not on disk, and reset when the app is closed. This means you'll need to enter the PIN again each time you launch the app.

To remove a PIN: right-click the notebook, choose "Change PIN" or "Remove PIN", and enter the current PIN to confirm.

No. Absolutely zero. The app has no analytics, no crash reporting, no telemetry, no account system, and no network requests of any kind. Your notes are yours exclusively.

See the full Privacy Policy for details.

All data is stored locally using an embedded NeDB database:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/cabinote/
• Windows: %APPDATA%\cabinote\

Inside that folder you'll find a data/ subdirectory with the notebook and notes databases, and a media/ subdirectory with your embedded images.

Simply copy the entire cabinote folder from the paths listed above to an external drive, another computer, or a cloud storage folder of your choice (Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, etc.). To restore, copy it back to the same path before launching the app.

Uninstall the application first, then manually delete the data folder at the paths listed above. On Windows, the uninstaller may offer to delete user data as part of the uninstallation process.

• macOS: macOS 11 (Big Sur) or later. Apple Silicon (M1+) or Intel.
• Windows: Windows 10 (64-bit) or Windows 11. x64 or ARM64.
• RAM: 256 MB minimum; 512 MB+ recommended for large notebooks
• Disk: ~150 MB for the app + space for your media files

If you're unsure, download the Universal Binary — it runs natively on both Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4) and older Intel Macs.

To check your chip: Apple menu → About This Mac → look for "Chip" (Apple Silicon) or "Processor" (Intel).

Cabinote is built with Electron (the same framework used by VS Code, Slack, and Figma) and uses NeDB as a lightweight embedded database. The entire UI is vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — no React, no Angular, keeping things fast and lean.

This is a standard macOS Gatekeeper warning for apps not yet notarised through Apple's program. To open it:

1. Right-click (or Ctrl-click) the app in Finder
2. Choose "Open" from the context menu
3. Click "Open" again in the dialog that appears

You only need to do this once. After that, the app opens normally like any other app.

Yes! Updates are released periodically with new features, improvements, and bug fixes. Because the app is fully offline, it does not auto-update. Check the Changelog page or the Downloads page for new releases and download the latest version when you're ready.

Email us at amit@thehobbyist.in. We read every message and genuinely appreciate feedback — it's how the app gets better.