Notes and the Notes list

A note in Roma is an item on your Notes list. It has a title, a body and a conversation with your operator, and nothing else: no status to tick, no due date, no reminder. Every account starts with a Notes list, and anything you ask the operator to keep as a note lands there.

What makes a note a note

The list does, not the item. The Notes list keeps no properties, so an item on it is a title and a body, and that is a note. Move an item onto the Notes list and it is a note. Move it back to Tasks and it is a task again, with the due date and the status it had waiting where you left them. Moving is in move an item to another list.

That is also why a note never buzzes: a reminder belongs to a Due date, and the Notes list has none.

Create a note

Type it where it will live. On the Mac and in the browser, pick Notes under Lists in the sidebar, press New in the bar or ⌘N, type the title into the New item row and press Enter. Press Enter once more and the note opens with the caret in its body. On your iPhone, open the Lists tab (or More, then Lists), tap Notes, tap the plus, type and press Return. There is no New note in the iPhone's create menu, because Notes is a plain list without a tab of its own, so the Notes list's own plus is the way in.

Roma tidies a typed note's title: your words, in sentence case, with an obvious slip in a well-known name fixed, and never a verb added. The body is yours. Roma does not touch a body you write.

Ask your operator. "Create a note called Kitchen ideas", "new note: the paint colors", "save this as a note". A title you give is kept word for word. The content you dictate becomes the body, tidied the way your AI editing settings say, and lines that read like things to do become a checklist inside it. Anything short of a clear note request stays a task: "note that the plumber comes Tuesday" or "idea: a lamp for the hall" are tasks, because a task is what Roma captures by default. And a note named like a list is that list: "add milk to my shopping list" adds a line to the note called Shopping list, when you keep one.

The body

A note's body is a document: headings, bold and italic, bullets and numbered lists, checklists, quotes, code, links, images and files, and @mentions of your other tasks, notes and lists. It round-trips to plain Markdown, so nothing in it is locked to Roma. The editor and its shortcuts are in the body of a task or note, and every change is kept in version history.

The Notes list itself

The Notes list is an ordinary list named Notes. It sits under Lists in the sidebar on the Mac and in the browser, and on the Lists page on your iPhone, like any list you create. You can rename it, archive it or delete it. When a note later needs a home, Roma creates a fresh Notes list for it. Its page has the same sort (Title, Date added, Last edited) and the same search as every other list, and since it keeps no Status, its count on the Lists page counts every note.

Save a note to favorites from its menu and it shows under Favorites in the sidebar.

Find a note again

Use the search in the bar above the list, or the search everywhere in Roma, which is in search in Roma. Or ask your operator: "what did I note about the dentist?" makes it search your notes before answering. A note you delete stays recoverable for about 30 days.

Questions people ask

Can a note have a due date?

Not on the Notes list, which keeps no Due date. Move the note to Tasks and it becomes a task you can date, and a task that was once dated gets its date back. Or add a Due date property to a list of your own and keep your dated notes there.

Does Roma rewrite my notes?

A note you type keeps its body exactly as you wrote it. Only its title is tidied, in your own words. A note you dictate to the operator is tidied the way your AI Editing settings say, and nothing you said is dropped.

How do I turn a note into a task?

Move it to the Tasks list from its menu, or tell the operator "move this to Tasks". It is the same item afterwards, with its body, its conversation and its history, and with a status and a due date to set.

Where are my notes on the iPhone?

On the Lists page: open the Lists tab, or More and then Lists, and tap Notes. The iPhone has no Notes tab, because Notes is a list like the others.