nvEnvy Download
nvEnvy app icon — a navy notepad with a wilting bell-shaped flower

nvEnvy.

Find any note as fast as you can remember it.

Requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later · Universal · MIT licensed

I’ve used Notational Velocity and nvAlt for decades and wanted one I owned.
Why this exists · A note from the author

What it does

The notes app, distilled.

No folders to wrangle. No sync to babysit. No subscription. Just a search field and your text files.

Find

Search‑as‑you‑type, like it’s 2003.

One field. Type a few letters; the matching note rises to the top. Hit Return to open it — or to create it.

  • Title, body, and tag matches, ranked the way you’d expect.
  • Empty query? Most‑recent first.
  • Nothing matches? The next Return makes that note exist.

Own

Plain text. Plain folder. Plain forever.

Every note is a real .md file with YAML frontmatter for tags and dates. Edit them in BBEdit. Grep them in Terminal. Sync them with whatever you like.

  • iCloud Drive sync with proper conflict resolution — built in.
  • One‑click import from nvALT, including OpenMeta tags.
  • Finder tag mirroring keeps the OS in the loop.

Write

Markdown in place. Preview when you want it.

Type Markdown the way you already do; nvEnvy styles it inline. Need a real render? ⌘⌃P opens a live preview window with custom CSS, source view, and Print / Save HTML.

  • [[Wikilinks]] autocomplete and click‑to‑navigate.
  • Frontmatter #tags with batch tagging and a tag sidebar.
  • Import from RTF, RTFD, HTML, PDF, Word, web archives. Export to plain text, HTML, RTF, Word.

Move

Made for hands on a keyboard.

⌘L to search. ⌘J / ⌘K through the list. ↩ for the note. ⎋ back to search. Nine bookmarks on ⌘1–9.

  • Save and recall any search query as a bookmark.
  • nvenvy:// URL schemes for automation.
  • AppleScript, Shortcuts (App Intents), and a Services menu entry.

Cheat sheet

The whole app, on one page.

If you knew nvAlt by muscle memory, you already know nvEnvy. Everything in its familiar place.

Navigate

Focus search field⌘L
Create or select note↩
Back to search⎋
Next note⌘J
Previous note⌘K
Deselect / snapback⌘D
Toggle note list⌘⇧C
Toggle layout⌘⌥L

Format

Bold⌘B
Italic⌘I
Strikethrough⌘Y
Plain text (strip formatting)⌘T
Indent / Outdent⌘][
Insert link from clipboard⌘⇧L
Paste as Markdown link⌘⌥V
Copy note link⌘⌥C

View & preview

Toggle preview window⌘⌃P
Toggle preview source⌘⌥U
Toggle word count⌘⇧K
Save bookmark⌘S
Show bookmarks⌘0
Restore bookmark⌘1…9

Notes & files

Edit tags⌘⇧T
Rename note⌘R
Reveal in Finder⌘⇧R
Delete note⌘⌫
Export note⌘E
Print⌘P

Lineage

Twenty‑three years of the same good idea.

nvEnvy stands on two pieces of work that taught a generation of writers how a notes app should feel.

2003 · Notational Velocity

nv

by Zachary Schneirov

The original. Search and create from a single field. Open source under a BSD‑style license; the idea everyone else has been copying ever since.

2009 · nvAlt

nvAlt

by Brett Terpstra

A fork that kept nv breathing through a decade of macOS releases — Markdown, MultiMarkdown, tags, an external editor pipeline. Beloved.

2026 · nvEnvy

nvEnvy

a community reboot

A native Swift rewrite for Apple silicon and modern macOS. Same single field. Same plain text on disk. Same muscle memory. New foundations.

FAQ

Questions, fairly asked.

Is nvEnvy free?
Yes. nvEnvy is open source under the MIT license. If you find it useful, a star on GitHub or a pull request goes further than money.
Will my old nv / nvAlt notes work?
Yes — there’s a one‑click importer from nvALT that brings over your notes, frontmatter, and OpenMeta tags. You can also just point nvEnvy at the same folder; anything that’s a plain text or Markdown file shows up on launch.
Does it sync?
iCloud Drive sync is built in, with proper conflict resolution and Finder tag mirroring. Because notes are plain files in a folder, you can also use Dropbox, Syncthing, a git repo — nvEnvy just reads and writes the folder.
What about iOS / iPad?
Not in v0.1. The whole point is being native to the Mac. An iOS companion is on the roadmap once the desktop is solid — help wanted there in particular.
Is this Electron?
No. Native Swift and SwiftUI, with an AppKit assist where it counts. macOS 14 Sonoma or later.
How does this differ from Obsidian / Bear / Apple Notes?
nvEnvy is smaller in scope on purpose. No graph view, no canvases, no plugins, no AI. One search field, plain text files, a fast editor, a few clean integrations (AppleScript, Shortcuts, URL schemes, Services). If you miss the days when a notes app was a notes app, that’s what this is.
Is it on the Mac App Store?
Coming soon. In the meantime, a notarized, hardened‑runtime .dmg comes from GitHub Releases, with auto‑update via Sparkle.
What languages is it localized to?
English, German, French, Italian, Portuguese (BR), and Simplified Chinese, with more coming as contributors arrive.

Open source

Yes, this is vibe‑coded. Your contributions are appreciated.

nvEnvy is a small project carried by people who’ve used nv and nvAlt for a long time. It’s MIT licensed, written in Swift and SwiftUI, and very much a work in progress. If a Saturday spent fixing a sharp edge sounds like a Saturday well spent, the repo is open.

Open the repo Contributing guide Open issues
$ git clone https://github.com/kenm47/nvEnvy.git