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Your notes are encrypted to keys that only you hold, and the developer has no copy. Your other devices and sync targets still have them, and the recovery kit printed when you created the vault lets a new device take over. If every device and the kit are gone, nobody can decrypt the notes. Keep the kit somewhere safe, and keep a backup. See Replace a lost or broken device.

Choose Back Up To when you create a vault, or Settings, Backups, Choose Backup Folder. Sempere writes a <Name>.sempere-backup snapshot of the encrypted files to that folder (another drive or cloud provider), copies only what is new each time, and can verify it. The CLI does the same with sempere backup. A backup is for recovery: devices do not sync from it. Restore it with Restore from Backup.

Give the vault a sync target (a shared .sempere folder in iCloud Drive is the easy way, or a WebDAV server), open it on the new device, and choose Join This Device. Approve it on the device that manages devices by typing the six words it shows. See Add a second device.

Yes. Each device keeps a complete copy of the vault, works on it offline, and syncs it both ways with a sync target: a shared .sempere folder in iCloud Drive or elsewhere, or a WebDAV server. Other devices open the target and join by approval. Edits from several devices merge, with no conflict copies. The CLI does the same with sempere sync webdav and sempere sync folder.

Nothing. There is no account, no analytics, no crash reporting and no server of ours. Handwriting recognition and transcription run on your device. The app connects only to a WebDAV server you add. The system may download a speech model from Apple, which holds none of your data. Read the privacy policy.

iPadOS 27, iOS 27 or macOS 27 or later for the app; macOS 27 or later or Linux for the CLI. Write with Apple Pencil on the iPad, a finger on the iPhone, and the mouse or trackpad on the Mac. See the specs.

Yes. The importer reads the raw notes of a personal Notability backup (.note and .ntb files, their folders, or the backup's zip files), not PDF exports. It brings strokes, PDF backgrounds, images, typed text, recordings and recognized text, and skips notes already imported. It is in the app (File menu on the Mac, the note list's toolbar elsewhere) and in sempere import notability.

Yes. A note is a folder of revisions, and each revision is gzip-compressed JSON encrypted with age, so with your recovery key, age 1.3 or later, gunzip and jq you can read it. The recovery kit prints the steps. The sempere CLI exports PDF, SVG, PNG, Markdown, HTML and media files on macOS and Linux, and the web viewer opens a vault in a browser.

Recognition runs on the device (Apple Vision) and is on by default; check that Settings, Writing, Recognize Handwriting is on. "Recognize N Notes Now" in the note list's Handwriting menu reads every note still waiting, and so does the CLI on macOS (not on Linux). Search covers recognized text, titles, tags, notebooks, typed text, PDF text and, when you turn it on, transcripts. Transcription of recordings is off by default: turn it on in Settings, Audio & Transcription. Recognition can also misread a word.

At github.com/anthonytw/sempere, under GPL-3.0-or-later with an App Store exception.