MenoIn development
Notes that begin as speech. Meno is a fast, fully native Markdown notes app for Mac, iPhone, and iPad, with voice built in. It is a lighter-weight alternative to Obsidian, rethought around performance, voice, and thoughtful AI. Say it once, then ask for it later.
Why Meno
Plenty of people wish they kept meticulous notes and, in practice, don't. Meno is for them. It treats a note less as a piece of careful writing and more as a way into your own memory: collect as much as you can with as little effort as you can, and get the answer back out later, even when you no longer remember how or where you saved it.
So you talk instead of type. Capture a thought the moment you have it, record a conversation you will want to refer back to, save a link. Then, instead of digging through folders to gather everything on a subject, you ask and get the answer.
Obsidian, rethought
Obsidian paved the path for a truly good local Markdown notes experience. Meno embraces file over app fully, so you always control your files and can interop with other tools. A Meno vault is an ordinary folder of Markdown with the wikilinks, tags, and properties you already use. Nothing is locked in a database you have to export.
What Meno changes is everything around the files:
- Fully native on every Apple platform. Each app is written in Swift, so it opens instantly. Launch it on your iPhone and your notes are right there, with no waiting for an index to load.
- A highly performant native Markdown editor, written from the ground up in Swift.
- Voice built in, not added on: memos, meetings, and dictation are part of the app.
- Thoughtful, optional AI for recall, summaries, and search. Turn it on if you want it; the app is complete without it.
- Lighter by design. There is no plugin ecosystem to assemble or vet. The things most people reached for plugins to do are built in, or are a question you can simply ask.
Meno is an independent product and is not affiliated with Obsidian.
What it does
Voice memos
Record long, unstructured thoughts. Each memo becomes an editable note linked to its original recording and timed transcript.
Meeting recording
On the Mac, Meno records your microphone and the call audio as separate tracks, so the transcript knows who is you and who is everyone else.
Dictation anywhere
Press a global shortcut on the Mac, speak, and Meno pastes the text into the app you were already using.
Links and clippings
Share a link to Meno on iPhone and say in a sentence why you are keeping it. Both are saved as a note, so the reason is still there when you find the link again.
On-device transcription
Speech is transcribed on your Mac or iPhone. Your recordings do not have to leave the device to become text.
A native Markdown editor
Written in Swift and very fast. Live-styled Markdown with wikilinks, backlinks, tags, an outline, tables, code blocks, callouts, images, and clickable tasks.
Plain files in your folder
A Meno vault is an ordinary folder of Markdown, audio, and JSON. Keep it locally or in a sync provider you already use. It stays readable in Finder and any text editor, with or without Meno.
Ask your notes
AI is built in for recall, not for writing your prose: summaries, transcript cleanup, and questions answered from across your whole vault. It can run on the device where the hardware supports it, or through a cloud model you connect yourself.
Availability
Meno is in active development and is not yet available to download. It will be released for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS.
To hear when it launches or to ask about early access, write to hello@detentsoftware.com.