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Your notes are encrypted with a key only you hold, so there is no reset that we can perform for you. Use your recovery key: on the sign-in page choose "Forgot your password? Use your recovery key", enter your email, the one-time code we send you, and the 24 recovery words you saved when you set up encryption, then choose a new password. Your notes stay intact. If you have lost both the password and the recovery key, your library cannot be recovered by anyone, including us.
Check your spam, junk or promotions folder first. Then sign in with the email and password you chose: you will see the "Check your email" screen, where you can Resend email or, if you mistyped the address, Change address and have the link sent there. An account that is not confirmed within 7 days of sign-up is removed automatically, and you can simply sign up again.
In the app, open the avatar menu (top right) and choose Account & Security → Change password. You need your current password. Your notes and your 24-word recovery key stay exactly as they are. From the same place you can create a new recovery key if you have lost the old words.
In the app, open the avatar menu and choose Account & Security → Turn on two-step sign-in. Enter your password, scan the QR code with an authenticator app (Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, 1Password, Authy and others all work), and type the 6-digit code it shows. From then on, signing in asks for your password and a code from the app.
You are given ten recovery codes when you turn it on. Keep them somewhere safe: each one signs you in once if your phone is not to hand. If you lose both your phone and your recovery codes, recover your account with your 24-word recovery key from the sign-in page; that sets a new password and turns two-step sign-in off, so you can set it up again.
Separately, the first time you unlock the encrypted vault in a session, we email a 6-digit code to the address on your account.
In the app, open the avatar menu and choose Account & Security → Change email, then enter the new address and your password. We email a link to the new address; the change happens when you open it (the link works for 24 hours), and we let your old address know. Until then you keep signing in with your current address. Your password, your notes and your recovery key are not affected.
In the app, open the avatar menu and choose Account & Security → Delete my account, then enter your password and type DELETE. The account and everything in it are deleted at once, and we email you to confirm. Deletion is irreversible. Encrypted copies in our backups age out within about six months. If you cannot sign in, email contact@zabulan.com from the address on your account and we will do it for you.
Before deleting, consider saving a copy: any note exports as HTML, Markdown or PDF, and File → Offline Folder… writes your whole library to a folder of your choosing.
No — an account is required. Zab Notes is a cloud application: your notes live in your account so they are backed up and available on every device you sign in on.
Two ways, both available at any time including during the trial:
_library.json with your folders and tags.Images and audio stored in the cloud, and calendar events, are not included in the folder export yet.
Everything you write is encrypted on your device before it reaches us: notes, boards, mind maps, drawings, charts, plans and calendar events, titles included. Content is encrypted with XChaCha20-Poly1305 using a key that only your password (through Argon2id) or your 24-word recovery key can unlock. We never see your password, and we hold only ciphertext, so we cannot read your library, and neither can anyone who compels us.
The words you write are always encrypted. A few details are not, because our server sorts and schedules by them: when a calendar event starts and ends and how it repeats, colours, and the dates, statuses and figures in a project. The Privacy Policy lists them all.
On top of that, the optional per-note vault adds a second lock (XSalsa20-Poly1305, with its own passphrase) for notes you want sealed even while you are signed in. Files you upload, such as images and audio, are stored as uploaded and are not end-to-end encrypted.
Yes. Sign in on each device and you see the same notes — they live in your account, not on one device. If a device loses its connection, notes you have opened stay available and edits made offline are sent when it reconnects. There is no per-device limit.
Yes. Once you have signed in on a device, Zab Notes keeps a copy of your library on that device and every workspace keeps working without a connection: notes, mind maps, drawings, charts, the planner, projects, Kanban boards and the calendar, including creating, editing and deleting. Changes are sent automatically when you are back online. If a note changed elsewhere in the meantime, your offline edit is kept as a version rather than overwriting it. Images stored in the cloud and encrypted notes need a connection.
Yes, read-only. In the Calendar, choose Calendar links and paste the calendar's link. For your Zabulan calendar, make the link in Zabulan under Admin → Calendar. Its events appear in their own colour, and you can hide or show them, see their details, and press Refresh to read them again. They cannot be edited, moved or deleted from here, and nothing is copied into your own calendar.
Your browser reads the link itself, straight from that calendar's server. Our server never fetches it and never sees those events. The link, its name and colour are stored encrypted, like the rest of your library. Treat the link like a password: anyone who has it can read that calendar. If you lose control of it, revoke it where it was made.
In a web browser it works with calendars that let a browser read them, such as Zabulan. Most iCloud, Google and Outlook links do not; for those, Zab Notes says This calendar can’t be read from your browser. Offline, the copy your device last read is shown, with the time it was read.
File → Import… takes a Markdown, HTML or plain-text file and turns it into a note. Import one file at a time; folders and tags are not carried over. Importing whole libraries from other apps (Notion, Evernote, Bear) is planned but not available yet.
Nothing is deleted straight away: your notes are kept for at least 90 days. If your trial or plan ends, the app asks you to choose a plan before you can keep working in it, and offers Export my library right there, which writes everything, readable, to a folder you choose. If you are leaving, you can also save a copy beforehand with File → Offline Folder… or per-note export, both described above.
Paid plans are not switched on yet: nobody is being charged, and accounts keep working after the free trial. The answers below describe how plans work from the day they open.
Two ways, both with every feature on every device: $10 a month, starting with a free 30-day trial, or a perpetual license for $100, paid once, for version Z1. License holders are offered each later version as an optional $10 upgrade. See the pricing page for the details.
Choose Monthly when you sign up. After you confirm your email you add a card through Stripe's secure checkout, and you have 30 days free from confirmation. You're not charged during the trial, and if you cancel before it ends you're never charged.
You're offered the upgrade for $10. It's optional: if you don't upgrade, you keep the version you bought, with security and bug fixes, and everything in it keeps working; only the new version's new features are left out.
Yes, a custom edition: Zab Notes duplicated and customized to your requests, under your own name and domain (for example Billy's Notes at billysnotes.com), with full service of your application. Open a ticket below with the Billing category (or email contact@zabulan.com) with the intended use, the name and domain you want, and the customizations you need. Custom editions start at $1,000 and are quoted individually under a written agreement.
In the app, open the avatar menu and choose Account & Security → Plan & billing, then Manage billing. That opens Stripe's billing page, where you can cancel, update your card and download invoices. Cancelling stops future charges and you keep access until the end of the period you've paid for. From the same place you can switch from Monthly to the perpetual license; the subscription then stops by itself.
Yes, within 30 days of a purchase: your first monthly payment, the perpetual license, or an upgrade. Ask us (ticket with the Billing category, or contact@zabulan.com) and we refund it in full. After 30 days, payments aren't refundable; on the monthly plan, cancelling simply stops the next charge.
Stripe usually confirms within a few seconds; occasionally it takes a minute. Reload the page. If it still asks, send us a ticket with the Billing category and the email on your account, and we'll sort it out. You won't be charged twice.
Yes — and it's a first-class target. The drawing tools support Apple Pencil pressure and tilt, charts/mind maps work with touch and pencil, and the layout adapts to portrait or landscape. The Magic Keyboard works for all keyboard shortcuts.
On a phone, Zab Notes is a capture-and-notes app: Capture (camera, photo, audio and quick notes) and your Notes (search, read and edit). The other workspaces (Kanban, Mind Maps, Drawing, Charts, Calendar, Node Clusters, Project Planner and Projects) need the room a tablet or desktop gives them, so they are not offered on phone-size screens. Anything you capture on your phone is waiting for you in full on the larger screen.
Yes. Right-click any tool in the activity bar and choose Open in new window. Edits in one window sync to the other in real time via BroadcastChannel — useful when Speechify is reading a note in one window while you mind-map in another.
Two ways. Open any item (note, kanban board, mind map, drawing, chart, planner document, project, calendar event, or capture), click Link to…, and pick another item. Or, in the Node Clusters workspace, hold Ctrl (Cmd on a Mac), click one node, then click another to connect them directly. Either way the link is bidirectional and shows in Node Clusters as a connection between the two nodes.
Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox, and Brave on their last two major versions. Mobile Safari and Chrome on Android also work. Older browsers may run but won't get full feature support — particularly the Drawing canvas and Node Clusters, which need modern Canvas and CSS features.
Use the form below with category set to Bug Report. Include:
Confirmed bugs get fixed in the next minor release; severe ones get hotfixed.
Most slowdowns come from one of three things:
If none of that helps, send us a ticket with details and we'll investigate.
An official API is on the roadmap but not available yet. The data export tool is the recommended way to get your content out for use elsewhere. If you have a specific automation use case, let us know — it helps us prioritize.
Zab Notes is a Progressive Web App. In Chrome/Edge, click the install icon in the address bar. On iOS Safari, tap Share → Add to Home Screen. On Android, you'll see a prompt to install. After installation it runs in its own window with offline support.
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For urgent issues, you can also email contact@zabulan.com directly.