support

A small app with a small number of ways to get stuck. Here are all of them.

Anything not answered here — send it through the support form.

Getting started

Where did the app go?

First Ink lives in the menu bar, not in a window you leave open. Press ⌥Space from anywhere and the pad appears; press it again and it goes away. The icon is in the menu bar at the top right — on a Mac with a notch it can be hidden behind it, which is what the banner on launch is there to warn you about.

If you would rather it had a Dock icon, it does by default. Settings › The pad › Show in the Dock.

The shortcut does nothing

Something else has probably claimed ⌥Space — Spotlight, Raycast and Alfred are the usual ones. Settings › The pad › Summon shortcut › Change will record a different combination, and it refuses one that is already taken rather than accepting it and failing silently.

The log says whether the keypress arrived at all: Settings › The app › Logs.

Your notes

Where are they kept?

On your Mac, in the app's own sandboxed container. Nothing is sent anywhere — see privacy.

Backing up

Settings › Backup & sync. Back up now writes a complete copy of the pad. Export a copy writes one and shows it in Finder, so you can put it on a stick or send it to yourself. Thirty automatic backups are kept; exports are never deleted.

Sync between Macs

Switch on Back up and sync through iCloud Drive on each Mac, signed into the same Apple Account. Each Mac writes its own file and reads the others, so two Macs writing at once cannot overwrite each other and nothing is ever dropped.

If it says iCloud Drive is not set up, turn iCloud Drive on in System Settings › Apple Account › iCloud, then open First Ink again.

Restoring

Settings › Backup & sync › Restore from a backup. A restore is merged in, never over the top: everything written since stays, and anything the backup has that the pad has lost comes back. It can only ever add.

Reporting something

The more of this you can include, the faster it gets fixed:

1. What you did, and what happened instead.
2. Your macOS version — Apple menu › About This Mac.
3. The app version — Settings, at the top of the sidebar.
4. The log. Settings › The app › Logs › Export puts the file in Finder. It records what the app did — the shortcut firing, windows opening, backups being written — and nothing you wrote.