Everything Memo does, in detail.
Every item on this page ships today. What is planned is listed at the end, and marked as such.
Write
Everything you put on a page is a standard PDF annotation with its appearance stream. Memo has no format of its own.
- Pen, highlighter pen, eraser
- Pressure-sensitive pen with Apple Pencil, a highlighter pen, an eraser, rectangles, ellipses, lines and arrows. Colors and widths are remembered per tool.
- Highlight, underline, strike, squiggle
- Select text with the pointer and use the bar that appears, or pick the tool and drag over the text.
- Notes on highlighted text
- A note is drawn as a frosted italic chip just above the text, readable over any page. Overlapping notes stack; zoomed out they shrink to a badge. Choose the look (frosted, clear, solid), size, italic and color with a live preview.
- Sticky notes and text boxes
- Add sticky notes and text boxes anywhere. Comments and tags can be attached to any annotation.
- Blank notebooks are PDFs too
- Blank, lined, grid or dotted paper. Add pages while you write. The result is a plain PDF like any other.
- Finger or stylus
- Once a stylus is used, the pen draws and fingers scroll. Without one, a finger draws with a drawing tool and two fingers scroll and zoom. Pan and Select modes, undo and redo, zoom by pinch, wheel or buttons.
- Lasso and screenshots
- Freehand or rectangle lasso to move, recolor, duplicate, copy or delete several annotations at once. Capture the area as a PNG to copy, share or paste as an image on any page.
- Fast saves on huge PDFs
- Saves are PDF incremental updates: only the changed objects are appended. About 2 ms and 2 KB per edit on a 42 MB file. The file is compacted from time to time so it does not grow forever.
Media
Images, videos, audio, voice notes and any file are embedded as standard PDF file attachments, so other readers can open or extract them.
- From your device or from a link
- Insert a local file, or paste a link. The file type decides whether it becomes an image, a video or audio player, or a file card. Images display in every reader; audio and video show as a card elsewhere and play inline in Memo.
- Voice notes
- Record right on the page. The browser's microphone on the web; native recording on iPhone, iPad and Android. A new voice note opens its info panel so you can name it right away.
- Online media
- YouTube and Vimeo videos play embedded; online images, audio and video load directly; any page can be linked. Each is saved as a standard PDF link, clickable in every reader, or downloaded and embedded as a copy.
- Move, resize, describe
- Media resizes from any corner and keeps its proportions. The Info button edits name, description, tags, source, date and custom fields; name and description are written into the PDF and searchable.
Organise and search
A library of folders and PDFs, with a search that reads both what is printed on the pages and what you added.
- Folders, colors, icons, three views
- Folders with colors and emoji icons, a breadcrumb path, and grid, list or tree views. Sort by name, date, size, pages, or where each file is.
- Move by drag and drop
- On the web, drag documents or folders onto a folder or a breadcrumb. On touch screens, use Select mode or "Move to another folder".
- Tags and document info
- Description, tags, a date and your own fields are saved inside the PDF using the standard Subject and Keywords, so other readers show them and tags set elsewhere are picked up.
- Search inside a PDF
- The side panel searches text, #tag and field:value, filters by kind, media type, tags and date, and marks the found words on the page.
- Search across documents
- Names, highlighted text, notes, media titles, descriptions, tags, fields, and the text of the PDFs themselves. Scope it to a folder, one document or everywhere. A result opens at the right page with the match outlined, and a Previous / Next bar steps through every occurrence.
- Match case, whole word, pattern
- Switches next to every search field. Pattern accepts regular expressions. Search runs on an on-device index, refreshed when a document is saved.
- Bookmarks and table of contents
- Bookmarks are standard PDF outline entries, listed with the PDF's own contents. Back and Forward return to the exact spot you left.
- Picks up where you left off
- Library tiles show the last page you read, with your annotations, and documents reopen on that page. This is remembered on the device; viewing never changes the file.
- Trash with undo
- Deleting on the device moves the item to a local trash with an immediate Undo; items are kept 30 days. Drive PDFs go to Drive's own trash.
Sync with Google Drive
Device first, Drive second. You decide when uploads happen, and every screen tells you where each PDF is.
- One folder in your Drive
- My Drive/Memo by default, or any path such as Work/Notes/Memo. Move it later from Settings. PDFs you add to that folder from anywhere show up in Memo; Memo never works outside it.
- When to upload
- Automatically a few seconds after the last edit, periodically, manually, or only on Wi-Fi. Sync when leaving a document, keep PDFs on the device for offline use.
- Big PDFs
- Uploads stream from the device in 8 MB chunks, retry failed chunks, and resume after a cut connection or an app restart. A 300 MB PDF never sits whole in memory.
- Merges, not overwrites
- Edits from different devices are merged annotation by annotation. If a merge is not possible, a conflict copy is kept so nothing is lost.
- Clear status everywhere
- A badge on every item: Synced, Drive only, Device only, Not in Drive yet, Newer in Drive, Changed on both, or uploading with a percentage. A sync center lists every PDF on the device.
- Compare this device and Drive
- Which PDFs are only in Drive, only on this device, the same, or different, and which side is newer, with Download, Upload and Merge actions, one by one or all at once.
- Notes through time
- Drive keeps a revision of the file on every upload, so earlier states of your notes are in Drive's version history.
Devices
The same app on iPad, iPhone, Android and in the browser, with the same PDFs.
- Web
- Drag PDFs from your computer onto the library to import them. Keyboard shortcuts for search, navigation and tools, with hover descriptions on every button.
- iPad and iPhone
- Apple Pencil pressure. In portrait, the toolbar wraps so every button stays visible.
- Android
- Finger or stylus drawing, native voice recording, the same sync and library.
- No account needed
- "Use on this device only" stores PDFs locally. Connect Google Drive later from Settings and upload what was only on the device in one step.
- Look
- Black, gray and white, dark and light themes, and an optional accent color. The editor palette, pen sizes and default paper are yours to set.
Coming
Planned, not shipped yet. Nothing here is in the app today.
- soonAI notebooks from a prompt
- soonAI summaries of a document
- soonPage thumbnails, reorder and rotate pages
- soonOpen PDFs from anywhere in Drive with the Google Picker
- soonExport highlights and notes to Markdown
- soonVersion history browser and a timeline of your notes