Your words.
Yours to keep.
Plain .md files you'll still be able to open in twenty years. Ampersand just makes writing them feel effortless: Notion-style blocks, AI when you want it, and export good enough to send. Nothing ever leaves your machine.
Free to start · Mac, Windows & Linux · Your files never leave your machine.
General
Ampersand turns plain markdown into a calm writing surface.
Milestones, owners, and target dates for the quarter.
Positioning, pricing, and the day-one checklist.
Ampersand · v1 launch
Ampersand turns plain markdown into a calm writing surface. Every note is a file you own.
Files stay plain .md
Export without lock-in
Plain files. Real ownership. No lock-in.
Documents
Font
Weight
Width
Powerful where it counts,
quiet everywhere else
Serious editing, real intelligence, and export you can be proud of. One fast native app, not a browser tab pretending to be one.
Ampersand is a native Markdown editor for macOS, Windows and Linux. It edits ordinary .md files with a Notion-style block editor, optional AI you bring your own key for, and export to PDF, Word, HTML and Markdown.
Writing in Ampersand
Updated 2026-06-18 · Vault 412 notes
Every note is a plain .md file in one folder you own. These are the notes on what each export format is for.
| # | Format | Engine | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vector | Printing | |
| 2 | Word | Native | Editing |
| 3 | HTML | Inlined | Sharing |
Added a 3-row table from the files and the CommonMark spec.
AI that writes
with you, not for you
Finish a sentence, rewrite a clumsy paragraph, summarize a long page, or hand the whole draft to an agent and watch it work. Choose Claude, GPT, Apple Intelligence, or a local model that never touches the network.
- Inline ghost-text autocomplete
- Rewrite, expand, translate, grammar
- Agent mode with tool use
Quarterly numbers, then the roadmap.
Q3 came in ahead of plan; the roadmap slips a week to absorb it.
Ana to re-cut the forecast
Move the launch review to Thursday
Record the meeting.
Keep the meeting.
Hit record — in person or on a call — and get a note with a summary, the decisions, the action items as checkboxes and the full transcript. Whisper runs on your own Mac, so the audio never leaves it, and no bot joins the call.
- Transcribed on-device, nothing uploaded
- Works with any call, and with a room
- The summary writes itself into your note
Exports that look
hand-set
A real vector engine turns your document into PDF, Word, HTML, or Markdown that actually looks designed. Page breaks keep a block whole instead of slicing it down the middle. Headers repeat, code stays highlighted, and every equation is still editable.
- PDF, Word, HTML & Markdown
- Smart breaks that never split a block
- Drop in your own page breaks
Current version
Tighten intro, add ownership section
First full draft
Initial draft
Private.md.age
Encrypted · age + ChaCha20
This note stays on this Mac. Plain .md, encrypted on disk with age.
Lock with a passphrase
Ship the launch
Touch ID
Unlock “Private.md.age”
Encrypted, backed up
yours
Every note is a plain .md file on your disk, readable anywhere and yours to keep. Lock a private one behind Touch ID. Scroll back through every version you ever saved. Find anything in the whole vault the moment you start typing. No account, no cloud, no catch.
- Per-note encryption (Touch ID)
- Time-machine version history
- Instant full-text vault search
Stop renting
your own work
For the kind of person who reads the fine print and wants their work to outlive the app.
Your notes are plain .md files in a folder you choose. There is no account, no database, and no subscription you have to keep paying to open your own writing.
Native, not Electron
Built in Rust and Tauri. Opens the instant you click and barely touches your battery.
Plain markdown, forever
Every note is a real .md file. Open it anywhere, in ten years, without us.
Bring your own AI
Claude, GPT, Apple Intelligence, Ollama, or any CLI agent you already trust.
Pixel-perfect export
One document becomes a vector PDF, a native Word file, or clean HTML.
Time-machine history
Every save is a version you can return to. Nothing is ever truly lost.
Search the whole vault
Ripgrep-fast full-text search across every note you have ever written.
Why they
never switch back
Real words from people who write, ship, and own their work.
Ampersand is used for long-form writing, technical notes, and research — anywhere the files need to still be readable years after the app that made them.
“This export was simply never possible in Notion.”
Notion slices the page wherever it runs out of paper - tables cut in half, headings stranded at the bottom. Here every break lands where a designer would put it, so my case studies go to clients untouched.
“It runs the AI I already pay for, on files I already own.”
The agent drives my claude CLI, so the full power of Claude works inside my vault without a second subscription. And my notes stay plain .md I can grep, with history in a real git repo under the hood.
“It gave me back a riff I thought was gone.”
My tabs live in source mode - monospace, every string right where I left it. And when I “improved” a progression into mush, I scrolled back two weeks and stole my own riff back. That alone is worth the price.
Pay once.
Own it forever.
No subscription, no seats, no account. Start free and unlock the heavier tools with a single payment whenever you're ready.
Ampersand is free to use. Ampersand Pro costs $29 once (normally $49), covers 3 devices, and comes with a 14-day money-back guarantee. There is no subscription.
The real editor, not a trial. Everything you need to write, link, and search your library. Yours to keep.
- The full native editor & smart blocks
- Inline AI: rewrite, expand, grammar, translate
- Instant vault search, wiki-links & backlinks
- Version history timeline & diff
- Import from Obsidian, Notion & Word
- Markdown export, one file at a time
- Unlock & decrypt your notes, always
Founding price for the first 1,000 customers.
Everything in Free, plus the power tools. Pay once, and every future update is included.
- Record meetings, transcribed on-device (macOS only)
- Export to PDF, Word, HTML & whole-vault Markdown
- AI agents & ask-your-whole-vault
- AI image generation & prompt library
- Publish a note to a private share link
- Per-note encryption with Touch ID
- Multiple vaults & iCloud settings sync
- One-click restore of any past version
- Quick capture from the menu bar or system tray
14-day money-back guarantee · Use on up to 3 devices · Secure checkout via Polar
The questions
worth asking
The things worth knowing before you trust it with your work.
Common questions about what Ampersand costs, where it stores your notes, whether it works offline, and which AI models it can use.
Still have questions?
Our team is happy to walk you through everything.
The editor is free forever, and it's the real thing, not a demo. One optional payment ($29 launch price (regularly $49)) unlocks export, AI agents, encryption, and multiple vaults, with 14 days to change your mind. You'll never see a subscription.
One payment ($29 launch price (regularly $49)) unlocks the heavier tools: meeting recording, PDF, Word and HTML export, AI agents and vault-wide questions, image generation, publishing a note to a private link, per-note encryption, multiple vaults, and iCloud settings sync. The editor, inline AI, search, links, and Markdown export stay free forever. Pay once and it's yours.
Yes, in person or on a call, and the speech is transcribed by a model running on your own Mac. No bot joins the call, nothing appears in the participant list, and the audio is never uploaded — it is deleted once the transcript exists unless you choose to keep it. You get a note with a summary, the decisions, the action items as checkboxes, and the full transcript.
In a folder you pick: on your Mac, in iCloud Drive, or any synced folder you like. They're plain .md files with no database and no account behind them, so your library stays portable for good.
Yes. A guided importer pulls in a Markdown folder, an Obsidian vault, a Notion export, or a Word .docx, carrying over your callouts, links, embeds, and attachments, and it shows exactly what will happen before it changes a thing. Everything lands as plain .md, so leaving is just as easy.
Fully. Type [[ to link between notes, open the backlinks panel to see everything pointing at the current one, and organize with #tags or YAML frontmatter. Tags live inside search instead of a cluttered sidebar, so #idea drills straight to every note that mentions it.
Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, Apple Intelligence, local models through Ollama, and any CLI agent. Bring your own key or run everything on-device, and point each feature at whichever model you prefer.
Completely. Everything but the cloud AI works with the Wi-Fi off. Add a local model and the whole app keeps running on a plane: writing, search, AI, and export.
Yes. Publish it and you get an unguessable link that opens in any browser, with no account and no app to install. You choose how long it lasts — 7, 30 or 90 days, or never — and you can put a password on it, or restrict it to named email addresses or to everyone at a domain, in which case a reader gets a one-time code by email. Published pages run no JavaScript, set no cookies and are never indexed by search engines. Publishing is part of Pro; taking a note down is always free, whatever the state of your licence.
There's no account to create and nothing routes through our servers. Your notes live only in the folder you picked. AI is bring-your-own-key, so a cloud model only ever sees the text you hand it, and a local model keeps even that on your Mac.
Lock a note and its body is encrypted on disk with age (X25519 + ChaCha20-Poly1305), governed by a single passphrase per vault and unlocked with Touch ID. While locked, a note stays out of search, history, and the link graph. Decrypting your own notes is always free, so you can never be shut out of your own words.
Almost never. Unsaved edits are continuously written to a crash-safe journal, so after a crash the app offers to recover your drafts and reopens the exact tabs you had. And version history quietly snapshots every save, so you can always scroll back to an earlier draft.
Yes. A vault is just a folder, so you can keep separate ones for work, personal notes, and side projects, each with its own search, links, and history. Switching between them from the command palette is always free; creating extra vaults is part of Pro.
Both, plus HTML and a Markdown bundle. A real vector engine lays out crisp pages with running headers and footers, smart page breaks, highlighted code, and proper math.
macOS (Sonoma 14 and later), Windows, and Linux — every release ships native builds for all three, on both Intel/AMD and ARM. macOS is where Ampersand started and is the most polished; the Windows and Linux builds are newer, and a few Mac-only touches like Touch ID unlock stay on the Mac.
Ready to own
every word?
Open a blank page that is finally on your side. Free, native, and completely yours.
Download Ampersand free for macOS, Windows or Linux. No account, no trial period, and your notes stay as plain .md files on your own computer.
Free to start · Mac, Windows & Linux · No account required