Windows · macOS · Android
Jodd is a local-first Developer Preview for viewing and editing notes across Windows, macOS, and Android. On a Mac it now reads and writes your Apple Notes through iCloud directly, with no other account in the middle. Elsewhere, connect a Gmail or Microsoft account to sync with Apple Notes, or skip cloud accounts entirely with a Local Folder vault that never leaves your device. What works where says exactly which account each platform can add, and what each one can do. It is a working technical product and a public build story by BBMedia—not yet a frictionless consumer app.
Technical setup and unsigned builds. Read the limitations before installing.
Jodd is an independent project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple, Google, or Microsoft.
psst — try lifting the corner
Grocery list
eggs, coffee, olive oil
SYNCED · 14s AGO
Below the seam
Apple Notes defaults to iCloud, but it'll happily sync through Gmail,
Outlook, Yahoo, or any IMAP account instead — that's Apple's own
feature, not a trick of ours. Pick Gmail specifically and turn on its
Notes toggle, and Apple starts writing every note as a hidden email
message, filed under a Notes label. Jodd is the other half
of that. It can't see notes that live only in iCloud, or synced through
a provider it doesn't support.
Notes label.
A Microsoft account (outlook.com, live.com,
Microsoft 365) works the same way in spirit but not in mechanism —
Apple treats it as an Exchange account, not an email one, and stores
each note as a structured Exchange item rather than a hidden email
message. Jodd talks to that over Microsoft Graph instead of an email
API. See what Jodd can see for how the
two differ in practice.
There's also a third option that isn't Apple sync at all: a Local Folder vault. No Gmail, no Microsoft, no account, no network — Jodd keeps notes as plain files in a folder you choose on your own device. It's a private, standalone notes store, not a way to read or write your existing Apple Notes.
Google grants the broad gmail.modify permission. Jodd's
implementation limits its queries and writes to the Notes label you
select and the Jodd folders beneath it.
Access requested
gmail.modify
This Google permission is broader than the Notes label. Jodd uses it to read, insert, trash, and label note messages, and does not send email on your behalf. Its application logic is scoped to your selected Notes label and its sub-labels.
Read the full privacy policy →A Microsoft account works differently from Gmail under the hood — Apple syncs it as Exchange data, not email — so the access model and a few guarantees differ too.
Access requested
Mail.ReadWrite, offline_access, User.Read
Jodd uses Mail.ReadWrite to read, create, update, move,
and delete items in your Notes container — Microsoft Graph does not
offer a narrower "Notes only" permission. offline_access
lets Jodd sync in the background without asking you to sign in
again every hour; User.Read only reads your basic
profile so Jodd can show which account is connected.
There is no OAuth here at all. Jodd talks to CloudKit — the same
private web service icloud.com itself uses — so the
access model looks nothing like the other two, and the honest
caveats are different too.
Worth knowing
No OAuth. No API key. No token.
This backend uses Apple's own private web service, not a documented public API. That is what makes it possible to reach Apple Notes with no Gmail or Outlook account in the middle — and it is also the honest risk: Apple can change it, and a change can break this backend with no notice. Your notes are never at stake, since they live in your iCloud account and in a local cache, but the connection itself carries no guarantee from Apple.
What works where →Everything you'd expect from a real notes app, none of it changing what Jodd is allowed to touch.
[[note title]] links between notes, with a graph view of how they connect.
Why this exists
Jodd is a founder-led project by Kaiwan Hongladaromp, whose career spans more than three decades across internet infrastructure, telecommunications, payments, and regulated technology. After years in senior leadership roles—most recently as chief technology officer of a licensed payment provider—he wanted a project that brought strategy and architecture back together with day-to-day building: writing code, testing assumptions, and shipping the result.
Jodd began with a problem he actually had. As more of his work moved between Mac, Windows, and Android, Apple Notes stopped being available everywhere he needed it. The small note-sharing experiment became a practical test bed for cross-platform development, local data, sync semantics, privacy boundaries, and AI-assisted delivery.
AI copilots and task-specific agents accelerate research, implementation, review, and testing. They report progress and expose decisions; Kaiwan sets the product boundary, evaluates trade-offs, and owns the final call. The aim is not to claim that AI builds a company by itself, but to show how an experienced technology leader can direct it as a capable working team while remaining close to the work.
A founder-led project from BBMedia
Before you install
Two independent questions, so two tables. Which account types your operating system lets you add, and what each account type can actually do once it is added. A Gmail account behaves the same on Windows, macOS and Android; an iCloud account can only be added on macOS at all.
| Account type | Windows | macOS | Android |
|---|---|---|---|
| GmailApple Notes synced through a Google account | ✓Yes | ✓Yes | ✓Yes |
| MicrosoftApple Notes over Outlook.com or Microsoft 365 | ✓Yes | ✓Yes | ✗No |
| iCloudApple Notes directly, no other account needed | ✗No | ✓Yes | ✗No |
| Local FolderAn offline vault on disk, no cloud account | ✓Yes | ✓Yes | ✗No |
iCloud is macOS-only because of the operating system, not a choice. There is no OAuth on that backend at all — the credential is a live Apple browser session held in a per-webview data store, which is a macOS 14+ API with no counterpart on Windows or Android. Support there is not scheduled. Microsoft sign-in uses a loopback redirect Android does not run, and a Local Folder vault needs a filesystem Android does not give an app.
| Capability | Gmail | Microsoft | iCloud | Local Folder |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read notes and folders | ✓Yes | ✓Yes | ✓Yes | ✓Yes |
| Create and edit a note | ✓Yes | ✓Yes | ⚠Most notes | ✓Yes |
| Rich text, lists, checklists | ✓Yes | ✓Yes | ✓Yes | ✓Yes |
| Move a note between folders | ✓Yes | ✓Yes | ✓Yes | ✓Yes |
| Delete a note | ✓Yes | ⚠Permanent | ✓Yes | ✓Yes |
| Recently Deleted & restore | ✓Yes | ✗No | ⚠Asks where | ✓Yes |
| Create, rename, delete a folder | ✓Yes | ✗No | ✓Yes | ✓Yes |
| Nested folder tree | ✓Yes | ✗No | ✓Yes | ✓Yes |
| Pin a note | ✓Yes | ✓Yes | ⚠Read-only | ✓Yes |
| Read inline #hashtags | ✓Yes | ✓Yes | ✓Yes | ✓Yes |
| Create a new #hashtag from Jodd | ✓Yes | ✓Yes | ✗No | ✓Yes |
| Display an existing attachment | ✓Yes | ✗No | ✗No | ✓Yes |
| Add a new attachment | ✗No | ✗No | ✗No | ✗No |
| Reminders and tasks | ✗No | ✗No | ✗No | ✗No |
| Search, tags, graph, Ask Jodd | ✓Yes | ✓Yes | ✓Yes | ✓Yes |
iCloud edits about three notes in four. Measured on a real 773-note account: 593 notes (76.7%) accept edits. An iCloud note is not HTML or email — it is Apple's own document format, carrying per-character identity and formatting Jodd does not fully interpret. Rather than rebuild a note from the text it can read, which would destroy formatting on Apple's servers silently, Jodd preserves what it cannot read and refuses the write when it cannot prove it did so. A note it will not write says so on the note itself — it never fails quietly. The refusals: 95 notes Jodd cannot re-encode byte for byte, 50 holding an attachment, table or inline tag, 35 whose formatting layers do not round-trip, plus password-protected notes, which show their real title, folder and dates with a placeholder body. An iCloud pin belongs to Apple and lives on a record Jodd does not own, so it is shown and not offered for editing; a restore asks which folder to use, because a trashed note's original folder is overwritten by the Trash's. An account with Advanced Data Protection turned on cannot work at all — note bodies are then genuinely end-to-end encrypted, and Jodd refuses at sign-in rather than leaving you a broken account.
Microsoft writes notes but never folders, permanently. Both of Microsoft Graph's folder-creation paths silently drop the property that marks a folder as part of Apple's Notes tree, and that property cannot be set afterwards — so no folder Jodd creates can ever be recognised. Folders you make in Apple Notes yourself work fine, and Jodd files notes into them without trouble. The folder list is flat for the same reason, which is also what Apple's own iPhone shows for these accounts. Deletes are permanent because nothing reaches a deleted-items folder to restore from, so Jodd asks first instead of offering an undo. Attachments are impossible: Apple itself refuses them on Exchange accounts. And a work or school Microsoft 365 account may not be yours to connect — organisations decide whether staff may consent to third-party mailbox access, and most require an administrator; Jodd shows your IT the exact link if so.
A Local Folder vault does everything and syncs with nothing: it is a private store of files on your own disk, not a bridge to Apple Notes. The full matrix, with the code it is derived from, is in docs/PLATFORM-MATRIX.md.
Stated up front
Useful today for technical users and evaluation. The limits live in the dark half of the page because they are facts about the machine, not apologies about the product.