Lock a note,
and know what that means.
Setting a vault passphrase, encrypting individual notes, unlocking with Touch ID, the recovery key — and an honest account of what a locked note gives up, and what encryption does not protect you from.
One passphrase,
per vault
Encryption is opt-in per note. Nothing changes for the notes you leave alone.
Set a vault passphrase
Settings → Security → Set up encryption. One passphrase covers every encrypted note in that vault, so there are no per-note passwords to track. Pick something you will still know in five years — nobody can reset it for you.
Encrypt a note
Right-click a note in the sidebar and choose Encrypt, or press Cmd + Shift + K (Ctrl + Shift + K) inside it. Its body becomes ciphertext on disk and the file gains a .md.age extension. Decrypt from the same menu to get plain markdown back.
Unlock to read it
Opening an encrypted note asks you to unlock the vault — Touch ID if you enabled it, otherwise the passphrase. Unlocking is vault-wide and lasts the session; Cmd + Shift + L locks it again at once.
Make a recovery key
Settings → Security → Recovery key generates a long code that opens the same vault. Save it in a password manager or print it: it is the only thing between a forgotten passphrase and losing those notes for good.
Ciphertext in a file,
key in your head
Locking a note encrypts its body with age — X25519 key agreement with ChaCha20-Poly1305 authenticated encryption, a standard construction rather than anything invented here. Ideas.md becomes Ideas.md.age, and what sits on disk from then on is ciphertext.
Your passphrase does not encrypt the notes directly. Each vault has one key, and the passphrase wraps it into a small file beside your notes that holds no readable key — which is why that file is safe to sync, and why an encrypted note opens on your other machine with the same passphrase. A wrong passphrase produces nothing useful: the authentication check simply fails, with no hint about how close you were. The full security model covers the rest.
Unlocking,
and getting back in
All of it lives in Settings → Security.
Touch ID
On a Mac you can unlock without typing. The passphrase is kept in that Mac’s login Keychain, marked so it never syncs to iCloud — it stays on the one machine, and “Forget on this Mac” removes it. Windows offers the same through Windows Hello where the hardware allows.
Auto-lock
Have the vault lock itself after a stretch of inactivity — a few minutes, an hour, or never. Locking is vault-wide: every encrypted note in it closes back to ciphertext.
Recovery key
A generated code, shown exactly once, that opens the same vault as your passphrase. Redeem it and Ampersand unlocks, then makes you choose a new passphrase on the spot. Generating a fresh code retires the old one.
Changing the passphrase
Instant on a vault of any size: the passphrase wraps the key rather than the notes, so only a small key file is rewritten. Any recovery key you made keeps working, because it wraps the same key.
What is covered
The body of each note you lock, and nothing more. Filenames, folder names, sizes and attachments stay readable on disk — so give a locked note a name you would not mind someone seeing.
What a locked note
gives up
A note that nothing can read is also a note nothing can index. This is the part worth knowing before you encrypt a hundred of them.
Version history
An encrypted note is never committed, locked or unlocked: readable snapshots of a locked note would undo the locking. Versions recorded before you encrypted it still exist, so clear the vault’s history too if that matters.
Links and backlinks
Encrypted notes leave the link graph: wiki-links written inside one are not indexed, and it appears in no other note’s backlinks. Decrypt it and it rejoins.
Tags
Tags inside an encrypted note are not indexed, so it will not turn up under a tag you filter by — including tags it carried before you locked it.
Search
While the vault is locked, encrypted notes are skipped entirely. While it is unlocked, search reads them by decrypting in memory — nothing plaintext is written to disk — and Settings → Security can turn even that off.
Export and publishing
Both carry content out of the encrypted boundary, so both are blocked while the vault is locked and confirm while it is unlocked. A PDF, a Word file or a published page is an ordinary readable copy from the moment it exists.
AI
A cloud model working on a locked note asks first, every time, and inline autocomplete stays off for encrypted notes on a cloud provider. Apple Intelligence and local models run on your machine, so they never prompt.
What this
does not do
Encryption here protects the body of a note at rest: a stolen laptop, a synced folder on someone else’s server, a backup that ends up somewhere you did not intend — none of them yields readable text without your passphrase. It is worth being equally plain about the rest.
There is no escrow and no recovery service. We never hold your passphrase, your key or your notes, so we cannot reset anything. Lose both the passphrase and the recovery key and those notes are gone permanently — no support request changes that.
It is not end-to-end encrypted sharing. There is no way to hand a locked note to somebody else and have them open it with a key of their own; sharing means decrypting first, and so does asking a cloud AI provider about it. And a published page is stored readable on a server whatever password you put in front of it — a password controls who we serve the page to, not whether it could be read.
It protects the disk, not the keyboard. While the vault is unlocked, decrypted text is in memory and anything running as you could reach it, which is what auto-lock is for. Metadata stays visible too: filenames, folder names, sizes and timestamps are not encrypted, and attachments sit beside your notes in the clear — so a sensitive image is not covered by locking the note that refers to it.
Getting back in is never gated
Before you rely on it
Good to know
What happens if I forget my Ampersand passphrase?
If you made a recovery key, redeem it: it opens the same vault, and Ampersand then asks you to set a new passphrase. Without the passphrase and without a recovery key, those notes cannot be opened by anyone, including us. There is no escrow, no master key and no reset link, because the passphrase never leaves your computer — which is exactly why generating a recovery key on the day you turn encryption on matters.
How do I password-protect a single markdown note?
In Ampersand, set a passphrase for the vault once (Settings → Security), then encrypt individual notes from the sidebar’s right-click menu or with Cmd + Shift + K. The note’s body becomes ciphertext on disk and the file gains a .md.age extension; opening it asks you to unlock with the passphrase or Touch ID. Notes you leave alone stay ordinary markdown.
What encryption does Ampersand use?
The age format — X25519 key agreement with ChaCha20-Poly1305 authenticated encryption — using a standard implementation rather than anything hand-rolled. Each vault has one key, which your passphrase wraps with scrypt into a small key file inside the vault. A wrong passphrase simply fails the authentication check, and altered bytes fail to decrypt rather than opening as changed text.
Is it safe to sync encrypted notes to iCloud or Dropbox?
Yes, and that is the intended use. What syncs is ciphertext plus a key file containing no readable key, so the folder is useless without your passphrase — and that is what lets an encrypted note open on your other machine. Filenames, folder names and file sizes are not encrypted, so name a locked note accordingly.
Can I search my encrypted notes in Ampersand?
Only while the vault is unlocked, and only if you leave that setting on. When unlocked, search decrypts them in memory to look inside; nothing plaintext is written to disk. While locked they are skipped, and they are always absent from tags, backlinks and version history. The AI “ask your vault” feature never pulls an encrypted note into a cloud prompt.
Do I need Ampersand Pro to open my encrypted notes?
No. Unlocking and decrypting notes you already encrypted is free forever and never gated — if your license lapses, expires or is refunded, every one of your notes still opens. Only creating new encrypted notes is part of Ampersand Pro, and that rule is enforced in the app rather than promised in marketing.
Some notes are
nobody else’s business.
Download Ampersand, set a passphrase for your vault, and lock the handful of notes that need it.
Free to start · Mac, Windows & Linux · No account required