On-device by default
The intelligence features use Apple Intelligence, running on your Mac. Your notes are processed locally and are not sent to us or to any third party. These features appear only on hardware where Apple Intelligence is available and enabled in System Settings.
Everything else in HelloNotes works without them — the AI is an addition, never a requirement.
Note actions
- Summarise — a short summary of the current note.
- Suggest tags — proposes tags based on the content; you choose which to keep.
- Suggest links — finds notes that are plausibly related and offers to link them.
- Expand — fleshes out a stub or bullet into prose.
- Rewrite selection — improve, shorten, simplify or restructure the selected text. You see the result and choose Replace or Insert below; nothing changes until you do.
Ask your library
Ask Library answers questions using your own notes as the source. It finds the relevant ones, reads them, and answers with citations back to the notes it drew on so you can check the reasoning and jump to the original.
It is most useful for questions you know you have written about but cannot place — “what did I decide about the pricing model?” rather than general knowledge.
The Assistant
The Assistant is a chat window with tools: it can search your collection, read notes, propose edits, and — if you enable them — search and fetch from the web.
Edits always require your approval. When the Assistant wants to change a note, it shows you the exact change first and waits. Nothing is written to disk until you approve it.
Skills let you save reusable instructions for repeated jobs, and deep research runs a longer multi-step investigation across your notes and, optionally, the web.
Using your own model
If you would rather not use Apple Intelligence — or your Mac does not support it — you can configure a different model in Settings ▸ AI.
Local, nothing leaves your machine:
- Ollama — run
ollama serve; no key needed. - LM Studio — start its local server; no key needed.
- MLX — runs a downloaded model on Apple silicon.
Cloud, using your own API key:
Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Mistral, Groq, OpenRouter, xAI, DeepSeek, Cerebras, Together AI, Perplexity and Ollama Cloud are supported. Paste your key in Settings; it is stored in the macOS Keychain and never sent to us.
Cloud providers are off until you configure one. When you use one, the text for that action goes to that provider under your own account and their privacy policy — see the privacy policy.
Choosing where each feature runs
Settings ▸ AI has two separate choices: the chat provider (Assistant and Ask Library) and the intelligence provider (Summarise, Suggest, Expand). Both default to on-device Apple Intelligence. Creativity controls how varied the output is — lower is more focused and predictable.