01 What TackNote is
A TackNote note is a sticky note that can hold more than words. One note can carry typed text, a checklist, a sketch, photos and videos, any number of voice recordings with their transcripts, a reminder and a place. You can record an hour-long meeting onto a note, watch the words land as people talk, and on many recent phones have a summary written on the phone afterwards.
02 Getting TackNote
- TackNote for Android is coming to Google Play. When it arrives, tacknote.app/android on your phone links straight to it. Install it from there.
- Open TackNote. There is no account to make and nothing to sign in to. You land straight on your board, and your 7-day free trial starts.
TackNote needs Android 13 or later. It also runs on tablets and Chromebooks, where the board spreads across more columns.
03 The board
Your notes live on a corkboard as tilted paper cards, with the one you changed most recently first. The wooden rail along the bottom holds everything else:
- Notes: your board.
- Places: notes tacked to places, and a map of where notes were written.
- Record: start a recording in one tap.
- Folders: your projects and sub-folders.
- New: a fresh note.
Each card shows its title, a preview of what is inside, the first photo, and small badges for recordings, photos and a place. When you are standing at a note's place, its tack turns green.
Search
Type in Search notes at the top of the board. Search looks through every folder at once: labels, text, checklist items, recording and video transcripts, and place names.
Filtering by folder
Once you have projects, chips appear above the board: All notes, one chip per project, and Unfiled. Tap a project to see only its notes, and a second row of chips for its sub-folders.
To file a note without opening it, press and hold its card and drag it onto a chip. Drop it on All notes or Unfiled to take it out of every project.
Settings
Tap the TackNote logo or the gear at the top of the board to open Settings.
04 Writing a note
Tap New on the rail. Every new note gets a paper color you have not used on your last three notes, so neighbors on the board are easy to tell apart. A note you close without putting anything in it simply goes away.
Give it a label in the Label… line if you like, and write in Write it down… below. If there is no label, the note takes its title from its first line or first checklist item.
Four ways to write
The pill at the top switches how the note is written:
- Text: an ordinary note.
- Checklist: tap a box to tick an item, press Next on the keyboard for the next one, or tap Add an item. Tap the x on an item to remove it.
- Split: text above a checklist, for a note that needs both.
- Draw: sketch with your finger. The brush button clears the whole sketch at once, and there is no undo, so tap it only when you mean to start over.
The tool row
The buttons along the note, which scroll sideways on smaller phones:
- Text size: make the writing bigger or smaller.
- Colour: six paper colors.
- Remind me: a reminder (see Reminders).
- Record: record onto this note.
- Camera and Pictures and videos: add pictures and videos.
- Summarise: write a summary, on phones that can (see Summaries).
- File it: choose where the note lives.
- Tack to a place: pin the note to where you are.
Tap Board at the top, or use Back, to close the note. Everything saves as you go.
Throwing a note away
Tap the trash at the top of a note. TackNote asks first, because the note's pictures and recordings go with it.
05 Pictures & videos
Tap Camera and choose Take a picture or Record a video. TackNote opens your phone's own camera, and what you shoot lands on the note. Tap Pictures and videos to add up to 10 at a time from your phone.
- Tap a photo to see it full size. Swipe between photos, pinch or double-tap to zoom, and swipe down or tap the x to close.
- Tap a video to play it full screen.
When you add a video, TackNote listens to it on your phone and writes down what was said. You will find it under What was said in the video.
06 Recording & transcripts
TackNote records meetings, calls and passing thoughts, and writes down what is said as it is said, using your phone's own speech recognition.
From the Record tab
- Tap Record on the rail, then the big red button.
- Talk. The words appear as you speak, and a meter shows TackNote can hear you.
- Tap the button again to stop. TackNote turns the recording into a new note and opens it.
Onto a note you already have
Open the note and tap Record. When you stop, the transcript is added to the end of the note's text, or as a new item if the note is a checklist. If you close the note while it is still recording, the recording stops and stays on that note.
Reading and using a transcript
Each recording on a note has a play button and its length. Tap the words to read the whole transcript, where you can select text, Copy it, or Add to note. Press and hold the words to add them straight to the note.
The first time you record, Android may need to download a language pack for its speech recognition. Recording carries on while it does, and TackNote shows Getting the language pack ready….
If TackNote closes mid-recording
Nothing is lost. The next time you open TackNote it says We got your recording back and saves what it had as a note labeled Recovered recording. Tap Open it to go straight there.
07 Summaries
On phones that support it, a Summarise button appears once a note has a recording or a video with words in it. Tap it and TackNote writes a three-point summary at the top of the note. The transcript and the recording stay exactly as they were.
Summaries are written by Google's on-device model, on your phone, and are marked written on this phone, not sent anywhere. They need a recent phone with on-device AI, such as a Pixel 9, Galaxy S25 or OnePlus 13 and newer, and your phone's language set to English, Japanese or Korean. The first time, your phone may need a moment to get the model ready. If your phone cannot make summaries, the button simply does not appear.
08 Folders
Notes can live in a project, and inside a project in a sub-folder. Anything you do not file stays on the board.
- Make a project: tap Folders on the rail and type a name under Make a project.
- Add a sub-folder: type it under the project in the same sheet.
- Rename or take away a project: tap its … button. Taking a project away never deletes its notes. They go back to the board.
- File a note: open it and tap File it, or drag its card onto a chip on the board.
09 Reminders
Open a note, tap Remind me, pick a day, tap Next, pick a time and tap Set. When it is due, your phone shows a notification with the note's title and Your note is due. Tap it to open the note. Reminders survive a restart of your phone.
10 Places
Tack a note to a place and it waits there for you. The paint color, at the hardware store. The gate code, at the gate. The thing you always forget, at the door you always forget it behind.
Tacking a note to a place
- Stand where the note belongs, open it, and tap Tack to a place.
- The first time, tap Allow location. TackNote explains what it uses location for, then Android asks.
- Give the place a name under Call it something, such as "The hardware store".
- Use How close is close enough? to choose how near you need to be, from 100 to 500 meters. 150 meters suits most shops and buildings.
- Tap Tack it here.
A note is tacked to where you are standing when you tap the button. To move it, stand at the new spot and tap Move it here. Untack this note removes the place.
Getting place alerts with TackNote closed
At first a tacked note can only reach you while TackNote is open. For it to find you when the app is closed, tap Allow all the time in the place sheet, and on the next screen choose Allow all the time. TackNote uses this only to notice when you reach a place you tacked a note to.
The Places tab
Tacked here lists every note with a place, nearest first, and what TackNote is doing about each one:
- Watching, or Watching · 300 m away: ready to tell you when you arrive.
- Watching while TackNote is open: location is not set to all the time yet.
- You are here now: you are inside its circle.
- Too far away right now. It will start watching as you get closer. TackNote watches the 90 nearest places and swaps them as you move.
- Not watching yet. Location is off. Tap Turn on location.
Where notes were written
Separately from places, TackNote can remember where each new note was written and show them on a map under Places > Where written. It is off until you turn on Remember where notes are written in Settings. Only notes written after you turn it on appear, and the spot never changes once a note is made. Nearby pins group together with a count; tap a group to zoom in, or a pin to open its note.
11 Sending a note
Tap the Share button at the top of a note and choose how to send it:
- Send to a TackNote user: a single .tacknote file that keeps everything, including the color, ticks, place, folder, pictures and recordings. Whoever opens it in TackNote on their Android phone or iPhone gets the whole note.
- Send as a PDF: a tidy document with the title, date, place, text, checklist, pictures and transcripts. Videos appear as a still frame.
- Share as text and files: the words as plain text, plus the actual photos, videos and recordings.
12 Your notes & backups
Your notes, pictures and recordings are encrypted on your phone. Settings shows how many of each you have under On this phone.
- Backups. TackNote is included in your phone's Google backup only when that backup is end-to-end encrypted with your screen lock. Moving to a new phone with Android's own transfer brings your notes too.
- Sync. TackNote for Android does not sync with other devices yet. To move a note to another phone, send it as a TackNote file (see Sending a note).
13 Trial & unlock
TackNote is free for 7 days with everything turned on. After that, one payment unlocks it for good. There is no subscription. The price is shown in Google Play and on the Unlock button.
- In the last few days of your trial, a strip above the rail counts down. Tap Unlock, or open Settings.
- If you have bought TackNote before with your Google account, tap Restore a previous purchase.
When the trial ends
Your notes never go anywhere. TackNote becomes read only: every note still opens, and you can read, search, share and export them all. Writing new notes, editing, and adding recordings, pictures, reminders and places wait until you unlock.
14 Your privacy
- Encrypted on your phone. Your notes, pictures, videos and recordings are encrypted on your phone.
- No account. There is nothing to sign up for, and your notes are never sent to us.
- On-device listening. Transcripts and summaries are worked out on your phone.
- Your location stays on your phone. It is not sent to us or shared with anyone.
- What goes online. TackNote uses the internet only for your Google Play purchase, the map tiles on the Where written map, and getting Google's on-device summary model ready. None of these receive your notes.
Read the full privacy policy.
15 When something goes wrong
- TackNote needs the microphone to record. Turn on the microphone for TackNote in the Settings app, under Apps > TackNote > Permissions.
- Transcription is not available in this language here. Your phone has no speech recognition for its current language. The recording itself is kept.
- The language pack will download on Wi-Fi. Recording anyway. Transcripts appear once your phone has fetched its language pack. Your recording is safe meanwhile.
- On-device summaries are available in English, Japanese and Korean. Set your phone's language to one of these to make summaries.
- There is not enough here to summarise. A summary needs more than a sentence or two of transcript.
- Another note is recording. Stop that one first. Only one recording runs at a time.
- Could not reach Google Play to fetch the price. Check your connection and open Unlock again.
- A tacked note did not alert me. Check the Places tab. If it says Watching while TackNote is open, tap Allow all the time (see Places), and check notifications are on for TackNote.
16 Getting help
Stuck, or have an idea? We would love to hear from you. Email [email protected]. The FAQ answers the most common questions, and the changelog tracks what is new.
Using TackNote on a computer too? The Mac user guide and the Windows user guide cover the desktop apps.