Support
Promptly for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch
Write to hello@promptly.ltd. One person reads it. Say which device you are on and what you expected to happen, and if a note has gone missing say when you wrote it and roughly what it said.
Folders, notebooks, topics: what is the difference?
A notebook is a place you keep notes, usually a person
or a project. A folder holds notebooks, so a folder called
1:1s can hold a notebook for each person. A topic cuts
across all of it: tag notes #hiring in four different
notebooks and the topic page gathers all four. Notebooks are where a note
lives; topics are what it is about.
Why did my note go to that notebook?
Because that is where the last one went. The chip under the writing
field always shows where the next note will land, and it stays put until
you change it, so a run of notes about one thing stays together without
you choosing each time. To send one somewhere else, tap the chip, or just
write the name: @Roadmap anywhere in the sentence sends it
there, and #pricing tags it.
I said one thing and got three notes
Spoken notes split at your pauses, on purpose: each finished sentence becomes its own note so it can be found and moved on its own. You see them all before any of them are filed, and tapping one sets it aside; tap it again to keep it.
Separately, Settings › Writing › Join quick notes saves notes sent in quick succession as one, joined by semicolons, instead of a note each.
The return key makes a new line instead of sending
Settings › Writing › Return key sends. With it off, Return starts a new line and you send with the button. A connected hardware keyboard always sends on Return; hold Shift for a line break.
Can I change a note after I have sent it?
Hold the note. Edit rewrites the words, Move to sends it to another notebook, the topic row changes or clears its topic, and Delete puts it in the trash for thirty days. Holding a note is also how you share it, or send a line of it to Reminders or a date in it to Calendar.
Writing with an Apple Pencil on iPad
The field opens as the nib comes close, and handwriting turns into text as you go. Scratch out a word to delete it. If your Pencil's squeeze or double tap is set to something a notes app has no use for, it files the note instead.
Search cannot find a note I know I wrote
Search looks for the words you type, and notes written fast rarely contain the words you would search with later. Use Ask instead: it reads your notes for meaning rather than matching text, so "what did we decide about pricing" finds the note that never used the word decide. If Spotlight on the Home Screen has stopped finding notes, use Settings › iCloud & Data › Rebuild search index.
I see the same notebook twice, or a renamed topic came back
Settings › Notebooks & Topics shows a Tidy up section when it finds a notebook living in two folders, and names which ones. You choose which folder keeps it, and notes are moved rather than deleted, trashed ones included. The section is not there when there is nothing to tidy, which is the usual case. Topics that look like two spellings of one thing are offered the same way, further down the same screen.
Version 1.0.1 fixes the cause. Renaming a topic or moving a notebook used to leave the old one behind when a second device synced afterwards, because the rename reached the notes this device had and not the ones it had never seen. Renames now travel with your notes, so a note arriving later is corrected too.
Where are my notes?
On your device, and in your own iCloud if you are signed in. There is no account and no server of ours, which is also why we cannot look anything up for you: nobody here can see your notes.
How do I get everything out?
Settings › iCloud & Data › Export all notes. It writes plain JSON, which imports back into Promptly on any device and is readable without it. Do this before anything you are unsure about.
What happens if I delete the app?
If you use iCloud, your notes are in your own iCloud and come back when you reinstall and sign in. If Settings › iCloud & Data says Local only, they are on that device and nowhere else, and deleting the app deletes them. Export first either way.
Bringing in notes you already have
One note at a time: open it in Apple Notes, tap Share, choose Promptly. It arrives as separate notes rather than one block, and you pick where it goes before anything is written. The share sheet only offers notebooks you already have and cannot make a new one, because naming a place belongs on a screen where you can see what you named last week.
A whole folder: use the Mac import tool. It reads Apple Notes on your Mac and writes one file to AirDrop across, then Settings › iCloud & Data › Import from file. Both show you what they found before anything is written.
macOS refuses to open the Mac tool
Expected on the first run. It is signed but not notarised, so Gatekeeper stops it until you say otherwise: right-click the file in Finder and choose Open. It asks for permission to read Notes, which is how it reads them, and it makes no network connection of any kind.
My iPad and iPhone disagree
Syncing goes through your own iCloud, so both devices need the same Apple Account and iCloud Drive turned on. Settings › iCloud & Data in the app says what it can see, including the last time anything synced and the reason if something failed. Notes arrive in waves rather than all at once, so give a large library a few minutes with the app open.
Does it run on Mac, and on Apple Watch?
On an Apple silicon Mac you get the iPad version, two columns and all, from the same purchase. There is no separate Mac app and no Intel version.
The Apple Watch app is included. It shows the notebook you are writing in, lets you switch to another, and gives you a field to add a line without taking the phone out. Open Promptly on the phone once first, or the watch has no notebooks to offer yet. A line written on the wrist waits there until the phone has it, so writing out of range loses nothing.
The AI features are missing or greyed out
Seven things run on the model that comes with iOS: a suggested topic for a note, a heading for a burst of them, catch-ups, answers from your notes, reading a screenshot, what you said arriving as several notes rather than one paragraph, and a recap you can send. Settings › Intelligence says whether the model is available and why not when it is not, and How this works there describes each of the seven and what none of them do.
They need Apple Intelligence turned on, which not every device and not every language supports. Without it, writing and filing and reading are untouched: the write bar, notebooks, folders, topics you type yourself, the timeline, search, sharing, export and making a prompt never asked the model anything. You can also turn the lot off deliberately with Suggestions on that screen.
What does "Make a prompt" actually do?
It writes out the notes you chose as plain text and puts it on your clipboard. Nothing is sent anywhere: where it goes next is your paste.
Replace names is on before you copy, so people become Person A and notebooks become Notebook A. The list pairing those back to real names is shown on screen and is never part of what you copy. You can turn it off if the names are the point, and either way the screen shows you the whole text before you copy a word of it.
Can I share a notebook with someone?
No. Promptly does no collaboration at all: no shared notebooks, no comments, no links to send. You can share the text of a note, or a whole notebook or topic as Markdown, through the usual share sheet.
I deleted something by mistake
Deleted notes wait thirty days in Settings › iCloud & Data › Trash before they are gone for good. Deleting a notebook puts its notes there too, so a notebook deleted in error is thirty days recoverable rather than gone.
What does Pro add, and is it a subscription?
One payment, not a subscription. It adds meeting briefs, a page for every person you write about, and Handoff. Everything else stays free, and stays that way.
Pro follows your Apple Account, so it is already unlocked on your other devices signed into the same one. If a device has not noticed, use Restore purchase on the Pro screen. Refunds are Apple's to give: use reportaproblem.apple.com.
What do I need to run it?
iOS or iPadOS 18 or later, watchOS 11 for the watch, and an Apple silicon Mac for the Mac version. The seven AI features additionally need a device that supports Apple Intelligence, with it turned on.
Writing, filing, reading, searching and the AI features all happen on the device and work in aeroplane mode. The only thing that needs a connection is syncing between your own devices.
The text is too small, or the animations are too much
Settings › Reading › Reading size sets how large your notes, their dates and the field you type into are, on top of the system text size. Buttons and tabs keep theirs, so the words grow without the furniture growing with them. Turning on Reduce Motion in iOS settings quiets the app's transitions.
Something else
hello@promptly.ltd. See also Privacy and Terms.