Secure notes: a page only you can read
The Notes folder is an encrypted page in your own mailbox. Notes autosave, take attachments, can never be sent — and deleting one is permanent.
A secure note is a page you write for yourself. It lives in your mailbox, encrypted exactly as your mail is, and it has no recipient — there is no To field and no Send button, so a note cannot be sent by accident, forwarded, or mailed by anything running on your behalf.
Notes are where a password hint, a recovery phrase you have already written down elsewhere, a scan of a document or a long half-finished thought can sit without leaving your account.
Where they are
Notes is a folder in the mail drawer, directly under Drafts — Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Notes, Archive, Trash. Open it and the new-item control (the sidebar button, the ✚ on a phone, the c key on a desktop) becomes New note for as long as you are in the folder.
An empty folder reads No notes yet with one action, Write a note.
An anonymous identity has no email address, so its mail side is locked — but a note is exactly what such an account may keep: private, encrypted, sent nowhere. While mail is locked the Notes row is listed in the Chats drawer instead, after the conversations, and it moves back to mail the moment the identity is saved. It is never in both.
Write one
- Open Notes and press New note. On a desktop the note opens in its own window; on a phone it fills the screen.
- Type a title and the body. The title is what the folder lists; until you give it one, the note is listed as Untitled note.Web & desktop screenshotA note being written: title, body, and “Auto-saved at …”.This capture is produced by the screenshot pipeline and will appear here.
A note being written: title, body, and “Auto-saved at …”.Web & desktop iPhone screenshotA note being written: title, body, and “Auto-saved at …”.Same screen as on the web, single column. This capture is produced by the screenshot pipeline and will appear here.A note being written: title, body, and “Auto-saved at …”.iPhone Android screenshotA note being written: title, body, and “Auto-saved at …”.Same screen as on the web, single column. This capture is produced by the screenshot pipeline and will appear here.A note being written: title, body, and “Auto-saved at …”.Android - Nothing needs saving. A moment after you stop typing, the line under the note reads Auto-saved at 14:32 — that is the note on the server, encrypted.
- Close the window. To come back to it, open the note and press Edit note.
Formatting is the same editor the composer uses: the toolbar can be shown or hidden with Show formatting / Hide formatting, and the ⋮ menu holds Attach file and Add inline image.
On a desktop a saved note also offers Remind me… in its ⋮ menu, which brings the note back to your attention at a time you choose.
Attachments in a note
A note takes files and inline pictures under the same rules as an email — up to 10 files of 25 MB each, encrypted with the note (Attachments). Nothing about an attachment in a note is different except where it goes: nowhere.
A note is never sent
This is enforced on the server, not only hidden in the app. A note carries a permanent mark that says it is one, and our server refuses to send a marked message at all — before any recipient is looked up, any limit is counted or any mail is queued. So:
- A note never appears in Drafts and never in the Sent folder.
- It does not count against your sending limits, and it never enters the undo-send window.
- The scheduled sender that delivers held messages skips notes entirely, so nothing can post one later.
- Notes are never listed as conversations; each one stands on its own.
The mark cannot be taken off, and an ordinary draft cannot be turned into a note. If you want to send what you wrote, copy the text into a new email.
Deleting a note is permanent
There is no Trash for notes. The confirmation says so in as many words:
Delete this note? There is no trash for notes. This cannot be undone — the note and its attachments are deleted from the server.
Ordinary mail goes to Trash and can be restored until you empty it. A note skips that step: Delete note removes it and its attachments from the server straight away. Copy anything you might want first.
What our server sees
Cannot see
- The title, the text or the attachments of a note — all of it is encrypted on your device before it is stored
- A recipient, because a note has none, and no way to deliver one to anybody
Can see
- That a note exists, when it was last written to, and the size of what is stored
Common questions
Is a note as safe as an email in my mailbox?
It is stored the same way: encrypted on your device, decrypted on your device, unreadable to us. What makes a note safer in practice is that it was never transmitted to anybody — there is no copy at a recipient and nothing left a server of ours.
Can I see my notes on another device?
Yes, on any device signed in to the same account. Notes are in your mailbox, not in the browser.
Can somebody else see a note I wrote?
Only by getting into your account. A note has no recipient and no share function.
Do notes appear in search?
They are in your mailbox, so what the app has decrypted on that device can be found there. A note is never in the Drafts or Sent lists.
What happens to my notes if I delete my account?
They go with everything else — see Delete your account.