A free note app that keeps your files.
Free text expander, clipboard manager and markdown notes. $18 once for unlimited clips, notes sync and AI prompts.
Why people move from paid note apps
The specific reasons people give for switching.
Free means the whole notes feature
Not a trial, not a note limit, not a watermark. The vault, the overlay, capture, daily notes, wikilinks, backlinks and AI on a note are free and stay free.
No account needed to write
Notes are files on your Mac. Nothing has to reach a server for you to open the app and start typing.
Open a folder you already have
Point it at an existing Obsidian vault or any folder of markdown and your first screen is a full library rather than an empty one.
Reach them from any app
Control Command Shift K searches your whole vault from on top of Mail, Slack or anything else, and pastes into the document you are already in.
AI at no cost
Summarise, outline, continue and extract tasks run entirely on device with Apple Intelligence, needing no key and no subscription.
A text expander and clipboard manager included
Both free as well, capped only at your 10 most recent clips. Abbreviations expand in every app, including inside a note.
TypeFire compared with paid note apps
Prices and capabilities as of August 2026.
| TypeFire | paid note apps | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free tier or paid |
| Note limit | None | Sometimes |
| Account required | No | Usually |
| Works offline | Entirely | Varies |
| Notes readable elsewhere | Plain markdown | Often not |
| AI on a note | Free, on device option | Paid add-on |
| Global hotkey over other apps | Yes | No |
Where paid note apps is genuinely better
Three things paid note apps does better. If any of them is your deciding factor, use paid note apps.
Apple Notes is already installed
It is on every Mac, it opens instantly and it syncs to your phone for free. If that is enough, it is genuinely hard to beat on convenience.
Cloud apps sync everywhere for free
Notion and Apple Notes both sync to mobile at no cost. TypeFire is Mac only, and notes sync is a Pro feature.
What TypeFire adds
Not available in paid note apps at any price.
A global hotkey
Your notes on top of every app, pasted where you are typing.
Files you own
Plain markdown in a folder you chose, readable in any editor forever.
Quick capture
One keystroke from thought to saved note, without opening the app.
Snippets and clips
A text expander and a clipboard manager in the same free app.
Turn anything you copy into something you type
Right-click a clip, choose Save as snippet, give it an abbreviation. The thing you copied once becomes something you type three characters to get, forever. The same conversions run across all three surfaces: a clip becomes a note, and a note you keep rewriting becomes a snippet. Clipboard managers have no snippet engine, text expanders do not watch your clipboard, and no note app has either, which is why the loop only closes here.
- 01
Copy something
It lands in Clips alongside everything else you copied today.
- 02
Save as snippet
It leaves your rolling history and enters your permanent library.
- 03
Give it a trigger
Type
invfrom then on and never look it up again.
A clipboard manager you can tell what to ignore
A clipboard manager sees everything you copy. Until 4.0 the only control over that was a password-manager exclusion you could not see. There are three now, none of them gated, and the limits of the strongest one are stated rather than buried.
Turn image capture off
One switch. Text keeps being captured and pictures stop. Images you have already saved are kept rather than deleted, which is not what most people expect a privacy toggle to do, so it is worth saying.
Name apps to skip
Add any application and TypeFire ignores what you copy in it. Choose from the apps it has already seen, with clip counts, or browse to any app on your Mac. Each app gets one of three settings: allow it, block images only, or block everything you copy there. The middle one is what most people want for a work tool, keeping the text and losing the screenshots.
The password managers, now visible
TypeFire has always ignored password managers. That list is in Settings now, twenty-three apps including 1Password, Bitwarden, KeePassXC, Dashlane and Apple Passwords, blocked by bundle ID in code rather than by a setting you have to find. It shows which of them you have installed, and any one can be overridden.
Encrypted database, owner-only files
Clips are stored in an encrypted SQLite database on your Mac. The key is generated on your machine and kept in the macOS Keychain. Image files sit alongside the database with owner-only permissions.
Secrets expire in minutes
Card numbers and high-entropy strings are detected and deleted after five minutes by default, adjustable in Settings. Everything else follows the retention you choose.
An on-device AI option
Apple Intelligence and local models through Ollama or LM Studio run entirely on your machine. If you pick Claude, OpenAI, or Gemini instead, text goes to that provider directly; TypeFire operates no server in that path.
Where blocking by app stops being a guarantee
macOS does not tell an application which other application wrote to the clipboard. TypeFire matches on the app that was in front at the time, plus any app that identifies itself using the standard convention. That covers the overwhelming majority of real cases and it is not absolute. The protection that does not depend on a guess is the concealed-content marker: password managers mark what they copy, and TypeFire never stores it whatever else is set.
The app list also covers what you copy, not screenshots you save as a file. A PNG on your desktop records nothing about what was on screen, so TypeFire matches those to an app where it can and skips them when it does. It is right in the ordinary case and it is not a promise: to keep saved screenshots out entirely, turn off Save screenshots to Clips.
Eighteen dollars. Once.
TypeFire Pro is a single payment that unlocks unlimited clips, Selection Prompts, Prompt Chains, notes sync and note version history. There is no subscription and no per-seat pricing.
Free tier, then one payment
No free tier at all
One time
No free tier
One time
Lifetime, or $3.99/mo
Subscription, forever
Two months of Paste, or all of TypeFire.
Moving from paid note apps
Still not answered?
Apple Notes is the most convenient because it is already installed and syncs to iPhone for free.
Obsidian is the most capable for linked thinking. TypeFire is the best free option if you want your notes to stay plain markdown files you own and to be reachable by a global hotkey from inside every other app on your Mac, with a text expander and clipboard manager included.
It is free permanently, not a trial. The vault, the global overlay, quick capture, daily notes, wikilinks, backlinks and AI on notes have no time limit and no note count limit.
A separate 7 day Pro trial covers the paid features and needs no card; when it ends you return to the free tier and keep everything free.
You sign in with an email code once so the app can restore a purchase later, and after that everything works offline.
Your notes never leave your Mac unless you turn on sync, which is a Pro feature.
TypeFire Pro is $18 once for three Macs. It adds notes sync between your Macs, note version history, unlimited clipboard history instead of the 10 most recent, Selection Prompts and Prompt Chains.
Free, and your notes stay yours.
Download it, point it at a folder, and press one key from anywhere. No account needed to start writing.
Free text expander, clipboard manager and markdown notes. $18 once for unlimited clips, notes sync and AI prompts.
⌃⌘⇧V your clips⌃⌘⇧T your snippets