Antinote is a rare $5 Mac app: a temporary scratchpad with enough craft that people write love letters about it. The Verge put it on a best-of list. The math is the part that sneaks up on you — descriptive totals, instant unit and currency conversion (crypto included), variables that turn a note into a tiny calculator.
People who search for an Antinote alternative usually liked that math, then hit the product's honest thesis: Antinote is for temporary. Notes auto-delete. The escape hatch is export to Apple Notes, Obsidian or Bear. If you find yourself exporting the good ones, you do not need a better scratchpad. You need the calculation to have been born on a day that stays.
The overlap is the math
Hejour does not try to be Antinote. It does not swipe, it does not auto-delete, it does not run a pomodoro. It does run the calculator layer people come for:
- Contextual, line-by-line math — end a line with
=, get a result in the text. - Conversions —
12 km to mi,32 F to C,$80 to EUR,0.01 BTC to USD. - Variables —
rooms: 3, thenrooms * 2.5 L to gal =.
paint: 2.5 L
rooms: 3
need: rooms * paint
need to gal =
need to USD =Live rates are optional. Local arithmetic and unit conversion never leave your Mac. Details and more examples live in the math-in-notes guide.
Where the products disagree on purpose
| Antinote | Hejour | |
|---|---|---|
| Job | Temporary scratchpad | One page per day |
| Math, units, currency, variables | Yes | Yes |
| Notes disappear | By design | Never — the day is the file |
| Todos, calendar, iPhone | Checklists; iOS later | Todos that carry, events on the page, iPhone now |
| Timers, autopaste, swipe stack | Yes | No |
| Export | To Notes, Obsidian, Bear, txt | Already plain files; optional iCloud |
| Price | $5 once | Free; Pro $19 once for Mac + iPhone |
If Antinote is the desk blotter you wipe at 6pm, keep it. If the blotter is where the real work happened and you keep photocopying it into a real notebook, skip the photocopy. Write the estimate on today.
The short version
- Want a disposable, gorgeous scratchpad: Antinote is correctly priced and correctly scoped.
- Want that math on a day you will still have in October: download Hejour. Same motion — type, convert, name a value — without the second app you export into.