Grape for researchers Keep every source. Ask what you already read.
Papers, interviews, field notes and half formed arguments in one local library you can question in plain language, months after you filed them.
Local first. Nothing leaves your machine unless you turn sync on.
Free plan, no account
Works offline
Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone and Android
Your notes in a file you own
Bring your own AI, or use ours
Export as Markdown, HTML or PDF
Findings
Three problems this addresses
Stated plainly, without the usual claims. What changes when the library can answer a question.
01
You annotated the paper last year and are reading it again.
Stop rereading papers you already annotated
Ask what your notes say about a method and get the answer with the note it came from, ready to cite.
02
The interview sits as audio for a month before anyone transcribes it.
Turn interviews into text the same day
Record the session, get a transcript in the note, and code it while it is still fresh.
03
The argument is spread across a year of files that never met.
See how the threads connect
Link notes to each other and use the graph view to spot the argument forming across a year of reading.
AI agent
Ask your notes. Get an answer.
Ask a literature review a question in plain language and get the answer with the note it came from, so in the middle of writing up you are reading your own words instead of hunting for them. The agent can file, tag and tidy while it is in there.
Summaries from your own words
A week of meeting notes becomes three bullet points you can send on.
Tidying stops being your job
Ask it to file the loose notes into folders and add the tags you already use.
Web search in the same chat
When the answer is not in your notes, it can look it up and write it in.
Memory
Tell it once. It remembers.
Most researchers explain the same things to every new chat. Say once what you work on and how you want a literature review written up, and the agent keeps it for every chat after, in a list you can read and edit.
Facts caught on the way past
Say you run a bakery while asking about customers. The bakery is kept and the question is answered.
Read it, fix it, delete it
The whole list lives in Settings under Personalization, as sentences rather than a black box.
Forget is a real command
Say forget that in the chat and the memory is deleted, not hidden.
Semantic search
Find it by meaning, not by memory.
Describe an argument the way you remember it and the right note comes back. No naming convention to keep up with across a literature review, and no scrolling through interviews and field notes you filed months ago.
No naming convention to keep up
Your filing can be a mess. Search reads what the note is about.
Best match first
Results are ranked by how close they are to what you described.
Folders and tags when you want them
Structure helps, it is just no longer the only way back to a note.
Transcribe a ninety minute interview into the project folder.
Voice recording and transcription
Say it out loud. Keep it in writing.
Record interviews and field notes straight into a note and Grape turns them into text you can search, quote and question, usually before you are back at your desk. On Pro it also says who said what.
Capture on the move
Talk into your phone on the walk back and read it at your desk.
Transcript and notes together
Your own scribbles sit above the transcript, in the same note.
Searchable the moment it lands
An hour of audio becomes text you can find six months later.
Flashcards
Revise without making the cards.
Turn a literature review into a deck without writing the cards. The questions come out of what you captured yourself, which is the version that matters for the chapter.
The slow part is done for you
Writing the cards is what stops most people revising. Not anymore.
Ten minutes is enough
Short review sessions on the phone beat one long night before the exam.
Straight from your notes
No stranger on the internet deciding what matters in your course.
Adaptive quizzes
Find the gaps before somebody else does.
A quiz written from a literature review shows the difference between having read something and knowing it. Useful in the middle of writing up, and more useful the week before that.
Reading is not knowing
A quiz shows you the difference in about two minutes.
Targets the weak spots
Answers you miss come back around, the ones you know do not.
One note, one quiz
No question bank to build and no separate app to keep in sync.
Ten questions, not a hundred
Short enough to run before a lecture, long enough to tell you something.
Practice in a queue
The quiz is on your phone, so five spare minutes becomes revision.
Straight back to the note
Every question points at the line it came from, so you can go and reread it.
Mind maps
See how one topic hangs together.
A long note about an argument becomes branches you can follow, which is a different pass over the same material than reading a literature review again.
- 1
Structure you cannot see in prose
Long notes hide their shape. A map puts it back on the surface. - 2
Revision that is not rereading
Walking a map is a different pass over the same material. - 3
Built from your note, not a template
The branches come from what you wrote, in your own words.
Brainrot videos
The note, as a video you cannot skip.
Turn a note about an argument into a short narrated video, captions burning over a gameplay clip. The version of a literature review that gets watched to the end, because it looks like everything else on the feed.
The format that gets watched
Vertical video, a voice narrating, captions landing on the beat.
Pick the voice and the world
Six voices over forty clips, so two notes never make the same video.
Captions with a look
Twenty one caption styles, from TikTok classic to neon to retro VHS.
The script is your note
Written from what you wrote, so the video teaches your material.
Under a minute
Long enough to cover a topic, short enough to actually watch twice.
Saved in the note it came from
The finished video sits with the writing, ready to replay or send on.
Infographics
The note, redrawn as a poster.
One poster drawn from a note: the sections as panels, the numbers as a chart. The fastest way to put an argument in front of someone who was never going to read a literature review.
A style for the audience
Corporate for the deck, hand drawn for the class, dark for the feed.
The shape the channel needs
A tall scroll for a phone, a landscape for a slide, a square for a post.
Made to leave the app
Export the poster and hand it to someone who will never read the note.
Slide decks
The note, ready to present.
A note about an argument becomes the deck: a title, a section for each turn, bullets short enough to say out loud, a closing slide of takeaways. For researchers it is the presentation a literature review was always going to have to become.
Written in the order you would say it
A title, sections where the note changes subject, and a closing slide of takeaways.
Edit on the slide, not in a form
Double click a line to rewrite it, drag a part to move it, hide what does not belong.
Pictures where they help
Grape draws a picture for the slides that suit one and leaves a quote alone.
Graph view
See the whole library at once.
See every note you have written about an argument and the ones you forgot were connected. Most researchers find a theme running through a literature review that they never filed as one.
Connections you did not plan
Two notes from different months turn out to be about the same thing.
Links do the work
Link note to note as you write and the map fills itself in.
Where your attention went
Note stats show what you have actually been writing about.
Drawing canvas
Draw the part words cannot carry.
Some of a literature review is not sentences. Put an argument on an infinite canvas inside the note, right next to the writing that explains it.
Diagrams without a second app
Boxes and arrows are two clicks away instead of a context switch.
Sketch, then explain underneath
The caption you write is what makes the drawing findable later.
Draw with a pencil in hand
Rough it out on the phone, tidy it up at the desk.
Handwriting notes
Write it by hand. Ask it like text.
Write interviews and field notes by hand on pages of ruled paper and Grape reads the words off the page on the device itself, so a page of a literature review in your own hand turns up in search like any typed note and the agent can quote it.
Paper that behaves like paper
Pen, highlighter, eraser, shapes and text boxes on pages that stack the way a notebook does.
Your handwriting, searchable
The words are read off the page on the device itself, and nothing leaves it to do so.
The agent reads your pages
Ask what the lecture said on Tuesday and the answer comes from the ink.
Write on the slides
Import a PDF and annotate it page by page, then export the lot back out as one.
Page forty is a tap away
A navigator shows the whole notebook as thumbnails, with a page added or removed from there.
Open the notebook at the desk
The pages sync like any note and open in the desktop app, where you can add to them.
Themes
Paint the app the way you like it.
Twenty-four themes repaint the whole app around a literature review: the panels, the editor, the drawings and the notebook paper. Pick a light one for the day and a dark one for the late shift, so the app looks right in the middle of writing up too, and both follow you to every device.
The palettes you already know
Nord, Dracula, Solarized, Catppuccin, Gruvbox, Rosé Pine, GitHub, One, Ayu, Everforest, Flexoki and Monokai, mapped onto every part of the app.
Paper, for long afternoons
A warm, low contrast page for reading and writing for hours without the glare of a white screen.
Midnight, for the small hours
True black, so an OLED screen switches its pixels off and the note is the only thing lit.
Web clipper for Chrome
Clip the page. Keep it as a note.
A page worth keeping goes into Grape as a note, with the images and the source line, filed next to a literature review. Ask it questions later the way you would ask anything else you wrote.
1Clip it where you are reading
2It is filed before you switch windows
Three ways to take a page
The readable article, only the part you highlighted, or just the title and the link.
Filed before it lands
Pick the folder and the tags in the panel, or set a default once and never see it again.
The pictures come too
Grape downloads every image into the note, so it reads offline and after the page is gone.
Share sheet
Share it to Grape. It is a note now.
Share a page from Safari or a file from any app on your phone and it lands as a note beside a literature review, with the source under the title, ready to read at your desk.
1A page in Safari
2Two taps to share it
3A note in Grape
Two taps from Safari
Tap share, tap Grape, tap Save. The page is a note before you are back in the browser.
See the note before it exists
The title and the body sit in fields you can correct, and what is there when you press Save is the note.
Filed on the way in
Choose the folder from the sheet, or skip it and find the page in your default folder.
In practice
What that looks like for researchers
Three points in a project where the tool changes the work rather than decorating it.
01
Reading a new paper
Drop the PDF into a note, write alongside it, and tag it into the theme it belongs to.
02
Fieldwork day
Record on the phone, add photos, and let it all sync back to the desk copy.
03
Writing up
Ask for every note that touches a concept, then pull the quotes into the draft.
Further capabilities
What Else Is in the App
Everything listed is available today. Nothing here is planned rather than shipped.
Bring your own AI, or use ours
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Groq, DeepSeek, OpenRouter, Ollama, LM Studio and more.
Work with no wifi and no worry
Your notes live in a database on your device. You choose where the file sits.
Your prompts, one keystroke away
Save the instructions you use constantly and run them on any note.
Pick up where you left off
Notes, drawings, decks, tags, chats and settings stay in step across devices.
Keep the sketch in the note it belongs to
An infinite canvas inside the note for diagrams, wireframes and rough thinking.
Answers that need the web, in the same chat
Grape can search the internet and drop what it finds into the note.
Keep the PDF next to your notes on it
Drop PDFs into a note, page through them and write alongside.
A daily backup you never have to remember
Made automatically on the device you use and kept for thirty days.
Connect a note to the notes around it
Link note to note, then see the whole web in graph view.
Find things in three keystrokes
Nested folders, drag and drop, hashtags with autocomplete and pinned notes.
Move in from your old app in one go
Import Apple Notes, or a folder of Markdown, with the structure intact.
Write without fighting the editor
Tables, checklists, images, files and slash commands for the rest.
Own the file, not a subscription to your own words
No lock in. The database is yours, on disk, from day one.
Desk and field
One Library at the Desk and in the Field
A desktop app for reading and writing up, a mobile app for interviews and field notes, one library across both.
Mac, Windows and Linux
The full workspace
Sidebar, editor, chat, drawing canvas and search in one window. This is where the long work happens: writing up, cleaning up and asking bigger questions of everything you have collected.
Keyboard shortcuts for everything you do often
A local database you can point wherever you like
A Chrome extension that clips pages straight into it
iPhone and Android
Capture in ten seconds
Open the app, talk or type, done. Recording, chat and search sit one tap from the note list, so the thought gets saved while you still have it.
Record and transcribe on the move
Grape in the share sheet, for pages and files from other apps
The same notes you left open on your desk
Install it on everything you write on. Free, and no account needed.
Get the apps Comparison
What a Notes App and a Chat Model Each Leave Out
A notes app holds the reading. A chat model discusses it. Neither can cite the annotation you made on page twelve.
| A notes app | A chat assistant | Grape | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keeps every note in one place | |||
| Answers a question from your own notes | Only what you paste in | ||
| Points back to the note the answer came from | |||
| Records and transcribes, by speaker | Audio only, no text | ||
| Turns a note into flashcards, a quiz or a deck | If you paste it in | ||
| Works offline | |||
| A file on your disk you can take anywhere | Export, if the app allows it | ||
| Free to start |
Cost
The Free Plan Has No Expiry
Notes, PDFs, recording and export cost nothing. The paid plans add the AI and sync, and a local model is always an option.
- Unlimited notes, folders and tags
- Rich editor and drawing canvas
- Attachments, images and PDFs
- Voice recording
- Web clipper and share sheet
- Templates
- Note links
- Graph view
- Version history
- Daily backups
- Import and export, any time
- A local database you own
- Everything in Free
- Grape AI built in, no keys
- AI chat, agent, memory and web search
- Semantic search
- Voice transcription
- Speaker identification
- Flashcards, quizzes and mind maps
- Slide decks with AI pictures
- Brainrot videos and infographics
- Cross device sync
- Home screen widgets on iPhone
- Twenty-four themes
- Priority support
- Everything in Free
- Bring your own AI keys
- AI chat, agent and web search
- Semantic search
- Voice transcription
- Priority support
- Memory and personalization not included
- Flashcards, quizzes and mind maps not included
- Speaker identification not included
- Slide decks not included
- Cross device sync not included
- Widgets and themes not included
| Notes, on every plan | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Unlimited notes, folders and tags | |||
| Rich editor and drawing canvas | |||
| Attachments, images and PDFs | |||
| Voice recording | |||
| Web clipper and share sheet | |||
| Templates | |||
| Note links | |||
| Graph view | |||
| Version history | |||
| Daily backups | |||
| Import from Apple Notes and Markdown | |||
| Export as Markdown, HTML or PDF | |||
| AI | |||
| Grape AI built in, no keys to manage | |||
| Bring your own AI keys | |||
| AI chat about your notes | |||
| Agent that reads and edits notes | |||
| Semantic search | |||
| AI web search | |||
| Voice transcription | |||
| Memory and personalization | |||
| Speaker identification | |||
| Flashcards, quizzes and mind maps | |||
| Slide decks with AI pictures | |||
| Brainrot videos | |||
| Infographic posters | |||
| Devices, themes and support | |||
| Cross device sync | |||
| Home screen widgets on iPhone | |||
| Twenty-four themes | |||
| Priority support |
You write a lot and do not want to pay
Free. Unlimited notes, folders, tags, recording, drawing, version history and export, with no account and no trial clock.
You want the AI to just work on every device
Pro. Grape AI is included, so there are no keys to manage, and sync keeps your laptop and phone in step.
You already pay for an AI provider
Lifetime. One payment and your own keys for AI chat, the agent, search and transcription. Sync and the rest of Pro stay with Pro.
Every plan keeps your notes in a local database you can export at any time. Stop paying and your writing stays exactly where it is.
Questions
What Researchers Ask Before Installing
Data handling first, then the rest. Where the app falls short, the answer says so.
- Can I keep sensitive research data off the cloud?
- Yes. Grape is local first, so the database stays on your machine unless you turn sync on. If you need AI without sending text to a hosted provider, you can point Grape at a local model through Ollama or LM Studio.
- Does it handle citations?
- Grape is not a reference manager. It keeps your notes, PDFs and transcripts together and answers questions about them. Most researchers keep using Zotero or similar for bibliographies and use Grape for the thinking around them.
- What is Grape, in one paragraph?
- Grape is a note app for Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone and Android with AI built into the middle of it rather than bolted on the side. You write, record and collect things the normal way, and then you can search by meaning, ask questions about your own notes, and turn any note into a summary, a set of flashcards, a quiz or a mind map.
- What makes it different from other note apps?
- Most note apps treat AI as an extra panel. In Grape the agent works on your workspace: it can read, create, edit, move, tag and delete notes, and every answer points back to the note it came from. Semantic search, voice transcription, flashcards, quizzes, mind maps and the drawing canvas all live inside the editor rather than in separate tools.
- Where do my notes actually live?
- On your device, in a local database, and you can choose where that file sits. Nothing needs to leave your machine for the app to work. If you turn on sync with a Pro plan, your notes are also stored in the cloud so your devices can stay in step.
- Do I need an account to use it?
- No. Download the app and start writing. You only need an account for the paid plans, which is where built in AI and cross device sync come in.
- What does the free plan actually include?
- Unlimited notes, folders and tags, the full editor, the drawing canvas, attachments, voice recording, version history and export. The AI features are on the Pro and Lifetime plans.
- What AI features are included?
- AI chat with the agent that reads and edits your notes, semantic search across everything you have written, AI web search and voice transcription, all on the Pro and Lifetime plans. Pro also remembers what you tell it, tells the speakers in a recording apart, and turns a note into flashcards, a quiz, a mind map, a slide deck with pictures, a short narrated video or an infographic poster.
Method
Six Steps From Install to First Answer
There is no workspace to design. Import what you have and ask it a question.
- 01
Download and open it
No account, no setup wizard, no workspace to design first. Choose where your notes live and start typing. - 02
Bring your old notes across
Import from Apple Notes, point Grape at a folder of Markdown files, or drag in the PDFs you keep reopening. - 03
Put everything in one place
Type, paste, record, attach, clip a page from Chrome or share one from your phone. Folders and tags are there when you want them and out of the way when you do not. - 04
Ask instead of scrolling
Open the agent and ask a question about your own notes. The answer comes back with the note it came from. - 05
Turn notes into the thing you needed
A summary, a deck of flashcards, a quiz, a mind map, or a clean export to send to somebody else. - 06
Put it on your other devices
Turn on sync and the same library shows up on your phone, while each device keeps its own daily backup.
Essays
Longer Reading on Notes and Memory
Pieces on note taking, working alongside a model and how the app is built.
September 11, 2026
Bear Alternative for Students
Bear costs less than Grape and is a fine place to type a lecture. What it will not do is anything with the note after class.
Read the post
September 10, 2026
NotebookLM Alternative for Students
NotebookLM reads the PDFs your professor uploaded. Grape holds the note you took in the lecture, and turns that into revision.
Read the post
September 9, 2026
Notability Alternative for Students
Notability's free plan stops at five notes. Grape has paper you can search, typed notes and the study tools, with nothing metered.
Read the post
Documentation
Short Guides to the Setup
Installing, importing a folder of Markdown, turning on a local model, syncing and backups.
3 min read
Free, Pro or Lifetime
What each plan includes and which one fits how you work.
Read the guide
2 min read
Choose a theme
Twelve light and twelve dark presets repaint the whole app on Grape Pro, and the choice follows you between devices.
Read the guide
1 min read
Change the appearance and accent color
Light, dark or follow the system, plus seventeen accent colors to make it yours.
Read the guide
Notices
Release Notes by Email
One short message when something substantive ships. Nothing else.
Ask what you already read.
Papers, interviews, field notes and half formed arguments in one local library you can question in plain language, months after you filed them.