Notes

Notes in LifeWell are quick records — a thought you want to keep, a checklist for tomorrow, a photo of a whiteboard, a voice memo of a meeting. Five types cover the common shapes: pure text, audio, picture, checklist, or mixed (any combination). Each note has a title, optional content, colour coding, pinning, archiving, folders for organisation, tags, and cross-feature associations linking it to memories, people, events, or chats.

Notes are the lightweight counterpart to memories (deep, intentional life-moment records). A note is the thing you write in 10 seconds; a memory is the thing you reflect on for 10 minutes.

Note types

Type	What's primary	Example
text	Rich-text body	"Pick up dry-cleaning after work"
audio	Recorded voice memo	A 90-second meeting summary
picture	Uploaded photo(s)	Snapshot of a whiteboard, a receipt
checklist	Tickable items	Shopping list, packing list
mixed	Multiple media + text	A meeting note with audio recap + photo of slides + typed action items

Pick the type when you create the note; you can change it later if the note evolves.

Rich-text editor (TipTap)

Text notes use a TipTap editor (powered by ProseMirror). Supported formatting:

• Headings (H1–H3).
• Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough.
• Bullet and numbered lists.
• Task lists with checkboxes (separate from checklist type — task lists are inline checkable items inside a text note).
• Code (inline) and code blocks.
• Block quotes.
• Horizontal rules.
• Links.
• Tables (basic).
• Image embedding (linked from your Drive).

The editor is keyboard-shortcut-friendly (Cmd-B bold, Cmd-I italic, Cmd-K link, etc.) and renders cleanly on mobile.

Audio notes

Tap Record on an audio-note → speak → tap Stop → save. The recording uploads to your Google Drive and the note metadata in Firestore references the file.

• Browser audio: uses MediaRecorder API where available (Chrome / Firefox / Safari modern versions).
• Mobile: uses Capacitor's audio plugin for native quality.
• Max length: ~5 minutes per recording (configurable; default keeps file sizes manageable).
• Playback: in-note audio player with scrubbing and speed (1×, 1.25×, 1.5×, 2×).

A pending feature: optional automatic transcription via a clinician-approved local-only model. Currently transcription is manual ("transcribe the audio for me later"). Speech-to-text via paid cloud APIs is on the long-term roadmap with explicit user opt-in.

Picture notes

A picture note has one or more photos as the primary content + optional caption. Uploaded photos go to your Google Drive; the thumbnail is cached locally for quick preview.

Useful for:

• Whiteboard / blackboard snapshots after a meeting.
• Receipts.
• Reference images.
• Sketches you want to keep.

Checklist notes

A checklist is an ordered list of ChecklistItems, each with a text and a checked/unchecked state. Drag to reorder; check items off; the note shows progress ("3 of 7 done") in its list-card preview.

Sub-items (nested checklists) are supported with Tab indentation in the editor.

Mixed type

Some notes don't fit one type. A mixed note can have:

• A text body.
• One or more audio recordings.
• One or more photos.
• A checklist.

All at once. Useful for meeting notes (typed action items + photo of slides + voice memo of the discussion).

Colours

Notes have an optional colour for visual organisation:

Colour	Use suggestion
default	No colour (most notes)
red	Urgent
orange	Bills / financial
yellow	Reminders
green	Wellness / personal
teal	Travel
blue	Work
purple	Personal projects
pink	Family / kids
brown	Recipes / food
gray	Reference / archive

These are user-meaningful, not enforced. Use them however helps you scan a wall of notes.

Pinning and archiving

• Pinned notes appear at the top of the notes list.
• Archived notes are hidden from the main list but still searchable.
• Deleted notes go to a trash that retains them for 30 days before permanent deletion.

The pin / archive / trash pattern matches what most note apps do — keep it familiar.

Tags + folders

Two organisation systems:

• Folders (Note folders) — a single-parent hierarchy. A note belongs to at most one folder.
• Tags — many-to-many. A note can have any number of tags.

Use folders for "where" (work folder, recipes folder, project X folder) and tags for "what" (urgent, idea, follow-up). Most users develop folder + tag conventions over time.

Associations

Each note can be associated with other LifeWell entities:

• Memories — link a quick note to a memory it relates to.
• People — link a note to a person from your records.
• Events — link a note to a calendar event.
• Chats — link a note to a chat thread.
• Health entries — link a note to a specific vital reading or condition entry.

Associations create the cross-references shown on the note maps visualisation. They also surface contextually: opening a person's profile shows notes associated with that person.

Google Drive backup

Same architecture as memories:

• Note metadata lives in Firestore.
• Media (audio + photos) lives in your Google Drive.
• Token exchange goes through lifewell-gdrive-token-proxy (the Cloudflare Workers proxy).

See Google Drive sync for the full architecture.

If you skip Google Drive setup, you can still create text and checklist notes (no media). Audio and picture notes require Drive.

Search

Substring search across:

• Title.
• Text body (rich-text rendered to plain).
• Checklist items.
• Tags.

Case-insensitive. Real-time as you type. Search ignores archived notes by default (toggle to include).

What this is

• A fast, flexible note-taking layer with rich text + media.
• A cross-reference layer linking notes to people, memories, events.

What this is not

• Not a knowledge-graph app. No automatic backlink discovery (yet).
• Not real-time collaborative. Single-user notes; no co-editing.
• Not an OCR layer. Picture notes are pictures; the app doesn't extract text from images automatically.
• Not encrypted at rest with your own key. Standard Firebase encryption applies; no client-side end-to-end encryption.

Frequently asked

Can I import from another notes app (Evernote / Notion / Apple Notes)? Bulk import from common formats (HTML, Markdown bundle, ENEX) is on the roadmap. For now, copy-paste preserves most formatting.

What happens if my Google Drive runs out of space? Audio and picture note uploads fail with an error. Text and checklist notes still work. Free up space in your Drive to resume.

Can I export all my notes? Yes — JSON export of metadata + links to Drive files. Markdown bundle export is planned.

Are notes encrypted? Server-side encryption at rest (Firebase default). Not client-side end-to-end encrypted. If you need E2EE for the most sensitive notes, write them somewhere else.

Why do checklists have a separate type if rich-text notes can have task lists? Two reasons: (1) The checklist type renders differently (progress bar, large tick targets), better for to-do-list use. (2) Notifications can be set on checklist progress ("you finished today's checklist!"). Rich-text task lists are inline; checklists are first-class.

Where to read next

• Note folders — folder hierarchy.
• Google Drive sync — Drive integration architecture.
• Memories — deeper life-moment records.
• Note maps — visualisation of note associations.

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Last updated: 2026-05-11 Author: Ahsan Mahmood