Creating Notes

How a note is made, what the panel offers, and how a saved note is edited.

Basic Steps

  1. Invoke NoteDrop

    Use any of the entry points: menu bar, keyboard shortcut (⌃⌥⌘N), Finder right-click or toolbar button, or Shortcuts and Siri.

  2. Check the destination

    The top of the panel shows where the note will be filed, e.g. "013456 › Correspondence" (hover for the full path). Use Change… to pick another subfolder of the matter, the matter folder itself, or Other….

  3. Select note type

    Choose File Note, Telephone Attendance, Conference Note, and so on — or press ⌘1–⌘9 for the first to ninth type.

  4. Write your note

    The panel opens with the cursor in the note. Use the toolbar above the field — or ⌘B / ⌘I — for bold, italic and lists, or dictate with the microphone button.

  5. Add description and time (optional)

    ⇧Tab goes back to Description, which becomes part of the filename. Enter a duration for any note type; NoteDrop rounds it up to your billing unit (6 minutes by default; set in Settings › Note Panel › Time Recording).

  6. Save

    Press ⌘↩ or click Save. A confirmation beside the panel says where the note went ("Saved to 013456 › Correspondence") with Open and Show buttons.

A note can be saved with just a description and no body text — for example a "LVM" telephone attendance with a duration.

Destination and Folder Problems

  • No matter number detected — if the folder doesn't look like a matter and your industry profile expects matter folders, the panel says "No matter number detected — saving to <folder>" in orange, with the same Change… menu, instead of filing silently.
  • Save to Another Folder… — if the folder is read-only, has been moved or deleted, or can't be read (for example a disconnected network drive), NoteDrop says which it is and offers Save to Another Folder…, which moves the draft and saves straight away. For a privacy-protected folder (Desktop, Documents, iCloud Drive, network drives) it offers Allow Access… once.
  • Changing the destination takes any unsaved draft with the note.

The Note Panel

  • Date — the Date row (date, time and a calendar) is always shown and starts at the moment the panel opened, so a note written up after a call carries the call's time. ⌘D jumps to it.
  • Duration — accepts minutes or hours: 45, 90 min, 90m, 1h, 1.5h, 1h15, 1h 15m, 1 hr 15 mins or 1:15. The hint beside the field shows the minutes, the rounded billing time and the number of billing units. Anything else shows an inline message and Save stays disabled, so a note is never filed without its time.
  • Attendees / With — Conference Note, Meeting Note, Client Meeting and Consultation Note have an Attendees field; Telephone Attendance and Phone Call have "With", the phone number and Incoming / Outgoing. ⇧⌘A jumps there. They appear in the PDF and Markdown.
  • Timestamp — ⇧⌘T or the clock button inserts the current time at the cursor — useful for running attendance logs.
  • Insert Snippet — inserts one of your snippets (Settings › Note Panel › Snippets) at the cursor.
  • Apple Intelligence — the sparkles menu suggests a description and type, tidies text, or expands points into a note. See Apple Intelligence & Dictation.
  • Dictation — the microphone button transcribes into the note as you speak, with a Tidy button afterwards.
  • Output format — a picker in the action bar (or ⌥⌘F) switches between PDF, Markdown or Both for that note only; your default in Settings › Document › Format is unchanged.
  • Resizable — drag any edge or corner. The panel remembers your size.
  • Drafts — saved as you type and when NoteDrop quits or updates. Reopen them from the menu bar's Unsaved Drafts.

Accessibility

The panel follows Increase Contrast and Reduce Transparency in System Settings › Accessibility › Display. Its window is titled with the matter ("New File Note — 013456 SMITH John", or "Edit File Note — …"), so VoiceOver and the Window menu say which matter you're writing in.

Templates, Snippets and Tokens

Each note type can have a template (Settings › Note Panel › Note Types), and you can keep reusable snippets for the Insert Snippet menu. Both can use these tokens, filled in when the note opens or the snippet is inserted:

TokenBecomes
{client}Client (or name) from the folder
{matter}Matter (reference) number
{matterType}Matter type (category)
{date}The note's date
{time}The note's time, in your 12/24-hour setting
{author}Author name from Settings
{noteType}The note type

Formatting

The note field has a small toolbar with Bold, Italic, and bullet list buttons. Formatting renders in the saved PDF:

  • Bold — toolbar button or ⌘B
  • Italic — toolbar button or ⌘I
  • Bullet lists — toolbar button, or type - at the start of a line
  • Numbered lists — type 1. at the start of a line

Pressing Return inside a list continues it on the next line; Return on an empty item ends the list. The "Aa" button shows everything available.

Editing a Saved Note

Choose Edit Note… from Recent Notes → Note Actions. Saving rewrites the file, keeps the note's original date and sequence number, and stamps it "Amended <date> by <author>" in the PDF footer and the Markdown metadata header.