Everything NotePin can do.

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What NotePin does

NotePin saves a note against the web page you found something on, and brings it back when you return to that page.

A note is a piece of text with a web address attached. That address is what makes NotePin different from a plain notepad: notes group by site, the toolbar icon shows a count for the page you are on, and if you choose to, your notes for a site can appear directly on that site as floating sticky notes.

Typical uses:

• A workaround you found in a long GitHub issue, saved on that issue.
• A price and a return window on a product page, so next week you still have the numbers.
• A change you want to make to a recipe, waiting on the recipe.
• A quoted paragraph from an article, with the source link kept automatically.

This page is the reference. For longer walkthroughs of one feature at a time — capturing selected text, replacing bookmark folders, in-page stickies, keeping a commonplace book — see the guides.

Setup

Install and first run

1. Install from the Chrome Web Store or Microsoft Edge Add-ons.
2. A welcome page opens once, explaining the basics. You can close it and reopen it any time from the extension's details page.
3. Pin the toolbar icon. Click the puzzle-piece icon in the browser toolbar, then the pin beside NotePin. Without this the icon hides in the overflow menu and the badge count is invisible.
4. Open any web page and click the NotePin icon. The popup opens with an empty list and a Take a new note… button.

Quick start

Save your first note

Three ways, in order of how often you will use them.

Capture

Every way to capture

Drafts are kept for you

If you start writing in the popup and the popup closes — you clicked the page, switched tabs, or the browser closed it — the text is kept. Open NotePin again and it is still there.

If you then capture something else with a right-click, the new capture is added underneath your unsaved draft rather than replacing it, and a short message confirms it. Nothing you typed is thrown away.

Deep dive: Save selected text from any web page — every capture route, why the source address matters more than the text, and how this differs from a highlighter extension.

The interface

The popup, screen by screen

The popup is the quick surface. It opens on the toolbar icon.

Current Site matching

Current Site treats www, the main domain, and its subdomains as one site. A note saved on www.example.com or app.example.com shows when you are on example.com, and the other way round. Two different subdomains — a.example.com and b.example.com — stay separate, and a lookalike domain such as notexample.com never matches. The toolbar badge counts the same way.

Popup notes are always newest first

The popup list ignores the board's sort setting and always shows the most recent notes at the top, with pinned notes above everything. Change the sort on the board and the popup is unaffected.

Reference

What a note holds

Why the page title matters

NotePin stores the title of the page you were on. On a note card the title is shown instead of the raw address, so a list of notes reads like a list of pages rather than a column of near-identical URLs. The full address is still there — hover the link to see it. Titles are also searchable.

A note whose address you typed by hand on the board has no page to take a title from, so it shows the address instead.

Dates

Notes from today show the time only. Older notes show the date only. Hovering either shows the complete date and time in your local format.

Deep dive: How to bookmark a website in Chrome and Edge — what a browser bookmark stores, what it cannot, and where a note with an address fits.

Organising

Colors and color labels

Eight colors: red, yellow, blue, green, purple, orange, pink, and teal.

A color is a stripe down the left edge of the note card, and it is a filter on the board. Colors cost nothing to use and nothing to store.

Name what a color means

Six weeks after you decide purple means "read later", you will not remember. Open Settings → Color labels and give each color your own name — "Blocker", "Buy", "Follow up". Those names then appear on the color swatches, in the board's color filters, in the bulk color picker, and on in-page sticky notes.

Organising

Tags

Up to five tags per note, 24 characters each. Use them when a project spans several sites.

1. Open the note form in the popup or on the board.
2. Type into the Tags field, separating tags with commas.
3. Save. The tags appear as small chips on the note card.

Click any tag chip to filter down to that tag. That fills the search box with tag:name, which you can also type yourself.

Deep dive: Build a digital commonplace book — tagging by theme rather than by site, and a colour template worth stealing.

On the page

In-page sticky notes

Your notes for a site, shown on that site, in a small floating panel.

Turning them on

1. Open Settings from the popup or the board.
2. Tick Show sticky notes on matching sites.
3. Your browser asks for permission to read and change data on websites. This is what lets NotePin draw the panel on a page. Accept it to continue.
4. The panel appears on any site where you already have notes, including tabs already open.

Using the panel

Whole site or one exact page

By default the panel shows notes for the whole site, matched the same way as Current Site. Turn on Only show on the exact matching URL in Settings if you would rather each page show only its own notes — useful on sites where every page is a different topic.

Deep dive: Sticky notes on any website — every panel control, per-site against per-page matching, and how these differ from desktop sticky notes.

The interface

The fullscreen board

The board is the full-window view: every note, with filters down the side.

Open it with the expand button in the popup header, or with a keyboard shortcut you assign.

No Domain

Notes saved without a web address are grouped under No Domain, which appears directly under All Notes whenever such notes exist.

Sorting

Six orders, remembered between sessions:

• Created (newest) and Created (oldest)
• Updated (newest) and Updated (oldest)
• A–Z and Z–A

Pinned notes always sort above everything, whichever order you choose.

Narrow windows

Below about 992 pixels wide — including a normal window at high browser zoom — the sidebar becomes a drawer you open from the header, so the note list keeps the full width.

Deep dive: A better bookmark manager — why folder trees stop scaling, and how the board replaces them with domains and colours.

Finding things

Search and filters

What search looks at

Typing in the search box matches against all of:

• The note text
• The page title
• The full web address
• The domain
• The note's tags

Searching by tag

Type tag:work to show only notes carrying that exact tag. Clicking a tag chip on a note does this for you.

Combining filters on the board

Domain, colors, the sidebar's domain filter box, and search all apply at once. A note has to satisfy every active filter to appear.

Your domain, color, and search choices are remembered for the tab while it stays open. The board also clears a filter by itself if the last note matching it disappears, so you are never stuck looking at an empty board with no way back.

Deep dive: Search that covers your own words — the one thing a browser bookmark manager cannot do, since it only ever matches titles and addresses.

Working at scale

Bulk actions

Available on the board once you tick at least one note.

1. Tick the checkbox on any note. The bulk toolbar appears.
2. Use Select visible to tick everything currently on screen.
3. Choose an action: apply a color, pin, unpin, export, delete, or clean duplicates.

Cleaning duplicates

Duplicates finds notes with the same text and the same address, keeps one of each, and removes the rest. It asks first and gives you an undo afterwards.

Which actions can be undone

Day to day

Editing and deleting

Editing in place

Click the pencil on any note card. The card turns into an editor with the text, the address, and a color picker. Ctrl + Enter saves, Esc cancels.

The dedicated editor window

Clicking the pencil on an in-page sticky note opens a separate small window for that note. Clicking the same sticky again brings that window back to the front rather than opening a second one. It asks before discarding unsaved changes.

Deleting

Deleting a single note happens immediately, with a 5-second Undo in the toast at the bottom. Bulk deletes and clearing the visible list ask first, then also offer undo.

Reference

Settings reference

One settings panel, opened from the gear icon in either the popup or the board. Changes apply immediately — there is no Save button.

Import, export, the sort selector, and the storage meter appear on the board. The popup size control appears in the popup. Everything else is on both.

Reference

Keyboard shortcuts

While writing or editing

On the board

These work when you are not typing in a field and no dialog is open.

Browser-wide commands

Three commands can be given a key combination of your choice. None are assigned by default, so they never clash with something you already use.

1. Open chrome://extensions/shortcuts — on Edge, edge://extensions/shortcuts.
2. Find NotePin in the list.
3. Click the pencil beside a command and press the keys you want.

Your data

Sync across devices

NotePin uses your browser's own sync. There is no NotePin account.

Sign in to Chrome or Edge with the same profile on another computer, install NotePin, and your notes arrive. Nothing passes through a NotePin server, because there isn't one.

• Sign in with the same browser profile on each device.
• Make sure extension syncing is enabled in your browser's sync settings.
• Install NotePin on both.

Editing in two places at once

If the same note changes in two windows, NotePin notices and reloads the newer version rather than letting one overwrite the other. If it ever receives an incomplete set of notes from the browser — which can happen mid-sync — it shows a warning and refuses to save until the picture is complete again, rather than writing a half-copy over your notes.

Deep dive: A lighter alternative to Keep, OneNote and Evernote — what having no account and no server buys you, and what it costs.

Your data

Storage limits

Browser sync gives an extension about 100 kB in total. NotePin stops at 95 kB to stay clear of the edge.

That is the budget for all your notes together, not per note. Roughly speaking, at typical note lengths that is somewhere around 250 to 300 notes. Longer notes, page titles, and tags each take a share.

The storage meter

Settings → Storage shows a bar with how much you have used. It turns amber at 80% and a warning appears, so you get notice well before anything fails.

What uses space

Your data

Export, import, and backup

Everything is on the board, under Settings → Notes.

Export

Choose a format, then click Export Notes.

Files are named with the date and time, for example notes-20260813-142530.json. You can also export just the notes you have selected, using Export in the bulk toolbar.

Import

Two modes, chosen by the tick box beside the buttons:

A sensible backup habit

• Export a JSON backup before a big clean-up or a bulk delete.
• Export before switching browsers or reinstalling.
• If you keep a lot of notes, export occasionally and keep the file somewhere safe.

Deep dive: Keeping a collection for years, not weeks — why Markdown export is the format that matters when notes outlive the tool.

Your data

Privacy and permissions

Your notes stay in your browser. There is no NotePin server, no account, and no analytics inside the extension.

Cleaner saved links

Two settings strip tracking parameters and section anchors from addresses as you save them. They apply to new saves and edits only, never retroactively to notes you already have.

Links that leave NotePin

Two optional links open a third-party page, and only if you choose to follow them: uninstalling opens a Google Forms feedback page, and the one-time rating prompt links to the Chrome Web Store or Edge Add-ons listing. Your notes are never attached to either.

The full policy is on the Privacy page.

Reference

Languages

NotePin follows your browser's language automatically. There is no language setting — change your browser's display language and NotePin follows.

• English
• Spanish (Español)
• Portuguese, Brazil (Português do Brasil)
• French (Français)
• German (Deutsch)
• Japanese (日本語)
• Norwegian Bokmål (Norsk bokmål)

Any other browser language falls back to English.

Reference

Accessibility

• Every control is reachable and operable from the keyboard, with a clearly visible focus ring.
• Note text is exposed to screen readers as text, and the actions on each card have their own labels.
• Status messages and the undo toast are announced to assistive technology.
• Dialogs keep focus inside themselves and return it where it came from when they close.
• If your system asks for reduced motion, NotePin turns off its animations and transitions.
• Color is never the only signal — pinned state, selection, and color all have a second cue.

Help

Troubleshooting

Reference

Quick reference

Help

Support

If something here did not answer your question, or you have found a bug, get in touch. Telling us your browser, the NotePin version from the extensions page, and what you were doing makes a report far easier to act on.

There is also a short FAQ inside NotePin itself — the question-mark icon in the board header.