What's new in Blok

New

• Hide empty sections (Settings ▸ General): sections with no notes to show leave the list, all but the one new notes go to. ⌘K, the input’s section menu and a note’s Move To still list them, and a section comes back with its first note. It’s off unless you turn it on.

Changed

• Dragging a note to the top or bottom of the list scrolls it, faster the nearer the edge, and on past it over the search field or the input. Let go there and the note lands where the list shows it. Before, the list only scrolled with the pointer right at its edge.
• A selected long note opens sooner, after a quarter of a second.

Fixed

• A selected long note now shows from its first line, just under its section’s header. Its first lines were hidden under the header.
• ↓ from a long note folds it back in place, with the next note right below. The list jumped a moment later, or was left empty if you had read to the end of the note.
• Esc with a section’s header selected takes you to the input, as it does with a note selected. It hid the panel.
• Allowing Accessibility no longer piles up dialogs: Open System Settings… first shows macOS’s own request on its own, and opens System Settings the next time. Before, System Settings came up over the request, and each time Blok opened again added another one.

Changed

• Blok is notarized: it’s signed with a Developer ID and checked by Apple, so a download opens like any app from the internet, without Open Anyway in System Settings.
• Once, after this update, macOS asks for your login password before Blok reads its licence from the Keychain (and your notes’ key, if they’re encrypted), because Blok’s signature changed: enter it and choose Always Allow. Choosing Deny pauses nothing; Blok asks again the next time it opens.
• Once, after this update, give Blok Accessibility again for capturing with ⇧⇧: in System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security ▸ Accessibility (Device Control and Data Access on macOS 27), select Blok and remove it with − (switching it off and on may not be enough). Then quit Blok, open it again, click Open System Settings… in its banner, and switch it on.
• Updates are checked more closely: Blok only installs one that Apple has notarized, as well as signed by Blok’s developer.

Changed

• The input grows as you write: a long note or prompt moves the input’s top edge up over the note list, until it has two thirds of the space they share, instead of scrolling after two lines. Saving the note brings it back to its usual height. The compact layout grows too, with the + and the section staying beside the first line.

Changed

• A new app icon: obsidian, with your sections stacked behind the note in violet, and the b’s stem standing apart from its bowl. Silver with a dark card in light mode, obsidian with a light card in dark; the clear and tinted versions follow System Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ Icon & widget style, as before.
• The menu bar mark matches it: solid now, the note card with its b, and the stacked cards behind it.

New

• A new app icon for macOS 26: the same graphite Stack b, now in glass, with dark, clear and tinted versions that follow System Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ Icon & widget style.

Changed

• Alerts read like the system’s, and when something goes wrong they say what happened in plain words, or what to do next, instead of showing a technical error.
• A note’s context menu no longer shows keyboard shortcuts, as in Finder. They work as before, and Settings ▸ Shortcuts lists them all.

Fixed

• Folding a section while searching sent the list back to the section’s header, and you lost your place among the matches. The list stays where it is now.
• The panel could still go empty after a fold in two cases (on macOS 27): a section that opened as you dragged notes over it and closed as you dragged them away, and a section folded on another Mac while you were scrolled into it.
• With keyboard navigation on (System Settings ▸ Keyboard), Tab stopped twice at every control in Settings. It stops once now.
• The arrow keys change Settings’ pop-up menus (Captures go to, Text size and the others). Only Space did before. The Return menu can be reached with Tab too.

Changed

• Confirmations at the notch are gone, and with them Settings ▸ Advanced ▸ Experimental: Blok has no experimental features now. A capture made while the panel is hidden is confirmed by the glass toast at the top of the screen, as it was with the setting off. An "experimental" key left in your settings file is ignored.

Fixed

• Folding a section while scrolled down into it could leave the panel empty, with no sections or notes, until Blok was restarted (on macOS 27). Your notes were all still there. Its header now goes to the top of the list, with the sections after it below.

Fixed

• Switching between light and dark (in System Settings, or with Auto at sunset) left the panel a washed-out grey until Blok was restarted. It follows the switch now. Its glass is no longer tinted for this: how see-through it is follows System Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ Liquid Glass.
• Pasting screenshots into a note you’re editing adds them to that note, as dropping them on it does. ⌘V did nothing there before.
• “Nothing here yet” in an empty section no longer shows through the section’s header when you scroll.

Changed

• Opening Blok puts you in the input with nothing else selected, instead of leaving the last selected note lit up too. ↑ goes back to what you had selected when you hid Blok, so you can carry on down the list.

Fixed

• “Nothing selected” came out of the notch even with notch confirmations turned off (Settings ▸ Advanced ▸ Experimental). Every message now follows the setting.

New

• Free through your school or work? Settings ▸ General ▸ Licence has a link to check whether a school, university or nonprofit you’re at gives you Blok for free. If it does, the key comes by email, with a link that opens Blok to use it.

Changed

• ⌘/ opens Settings ▸ Shortcuts, where every shortcut is in a table to search and change, with the editor’s keys (↩, /, ⌘B…) under While typing. The cheat sheet in the panel didn’t fit.
• Section headers sit closer together again, as before the chevron’s bigger click target.

Fixed

• Free licences from rosok.dev work. Blok turned down keys from the website as “not a Blok licence key”.
• Hiding Blok while editing a note threw the edit away; it’s saved now, as clicking elsewhere does. Esc still drops it.
• A private note stays short while it’s blurred, instead of growing to its full length when selected and showing how long it is.
• A section’s header no longer stays lit up after notes are dropped into it.

New

• A licence can be activated from a link. Opening the link in the licence email opens Blok, which says whose licence it is and asks before using it, so there’s no key to copy and paste. A link that was cut short says so, with Open Settings to paste the key instead.

Changed

• Deleting a section happens straight away, with Undo in the message (and ⌘Z), instead of asking first. Undo puts it back where it was, with its notes and images.
• A section’s right-click menu is in groups: Capture Here, Rename… · Collapse, Sort by Tag, Move · Copy as Prompt, Export as Markdown… · Make Private, Hide · Delete Section.
• Dragging notes onto a section’s header lights it up and puts them at the top of that section. Resting over a folded section opens it, as a Finder folder does.

Changed

• The list’s scroll bar works like the Mac’s own. It follows Show scroll bars in System Settings ▸ Appearance: while scrolling it’s a thin bar that widens when you point at it (and stays while you do), and with Always (or a mouse with Automatically) it’s there all the time, full width on its track, with room of its own. Drag it, or click its track to jump there. It moves at the list’s own speed, is as long as the part you can see, and reaches the top and bottom exactly with the list.

Fixed

• A note half under a pinned section header turned white (black in dark mode) until it scrolled out from under it.

New

• A haptic tick on a Force Touch trackpad each time a note or section you’re dragging finds a new place.
• The Accessibility banner can be closed. Settings ▸ General now has an Accessibility row: whether it’s allowed, a button to allow it, and a switch to bring the banner back.

Changed

• The section picker under the input is a bigger button, lit up on hover, and anywhere on it opens the menu.
• Clicking a section’s header selects it, as the arrow keys do, and its chevron is easier to hit.
• Deleting the completed notes happens straight away, with Undo in the message, instead of asking first.
• Menus: what doesn’t apply is left out of a right-click menu instead of greyed out, the … menu shows its shortcuts in their own column, and the menu bar menu starts with Enable Accessibility… when it’s needed. Help in the panel, the Welcome window and the menu bar icon names the shortcuts you’ve set, not the defaults.
• Restore Defaults… in Settings ▸ Shortcuts asks first.
• Small text sizes keep text at 10 points or more, and a note’s copy button grows with the text.
• VoiceOver reads images and files by name, as buttons that copy them (with Open and Show in Finder), says what each ✕ removes, and says which section ↑↓ reach in ⌘K.

Fixed

• Checking off a note with completed notes hidden left nothing selected: the note above it (or its section’s header) is selected now.
• ↑↓ in ⌘K went past the bottom of a long list without scrolling, and a pointer resting on the list took the highlight back.
• Dragging a section with the list scrolled down hid the other sections, and a small drag could send it to the end: they stay around the pointer now.
• The menu bar menu said Show Blok and Hide Blok in English whatever the language.
• The capture confirmation by the notch has an easier-to-read page line.

New

• A licence key can be turned off if it’s been shared around: Blok hears of it with its daily update check, and a key that’s been turned off pauses capture and new notes, as the end of the trial does, and says so. Your notes stay, as always.

Fixed

• Drag and drop on macOS 26: dropping files and images on Blok, and dragging notes and sections, did nothing there, and dragging a section could leave every section folded. They work now, and a section let go anywhere but the list always unfolds again.

A licence from this version on: Blok is free to try for 14 days, starting when you first open this version. After that, capture and new notes need a licence key (Settings ▸ General ▸ Licence); without one, every note is still there to read, copy, export and check off. Using Blok already? Your key comes by email.

New

• Private notes: make a note (or a whole section) private from its menu, and it’s blurred until you click it, shown after Touch ID, and never sent to an AI agent. A note that looks like it holds a secret (an API key, a password, a pasted environment file) becomes private by itself; Settings ▸ General can switch that off, and the settings file takes your own patterns. Which notes are private syncs between your Macs once they all have this version.
• Blok in Norwegian: everything Blok says is in English and Norsk bokmål. Settings ▸ General ▸ Language picks one, or the Mac’s language.
• VoiceOver: each note reads as its text and state, with actions for what dragging and its menu do (done, edit, copy, pin, move, delete); section headers are headings. Messages are read out. With Reduce motion on, nothing in the panel slides or springs.
• Connect an AI Agent (in the … menu): the setup for Claude Code, Codex, the Claude app, Cursor and others, ready to copy. A note an agent adds or changes carries its own name.
• Sync in one step: Settings ▸ Sync has a single Set Up Sync…: choose the folder, and Blok joins the library another Mac syncs there, or starts one.
• Compact layout (Settings ▸ General): a denser list and a one-line input at any size.
• Dragging a section folds every section to its header while you drag, and the others slide aside where it will land, as notes do.
• Keys for sections: ⌥↑ and ⌥↓ on a section’s header move it, and ⌫ deletes it.
• Resizing with the keyboard: ⌃⌥⌘ + the arrows move the panel’s free edge.
• Export a section on its own from its menu; … ▸ Export Library as Markdown… exports them all.
• ⌘⇧. shows or hides completed notes.
• Return can add a line instead of saving (Settings ▸ General ▸ Return), and ↩ confirms a delete.
• The panel opens on the screen of the app you’re in.

Changed

• The position bar is always there while you scroll; its setting is gone.
• After adding a note, ↑ starts from it; the composer’s section picker is easier to hit; Settings is a little lower.

Fixed

• The / menu shows while editing a note.
• ⌘Z brings back a note you checked off with its circle.
• Editing a note that isn’t private no longer asks for Touch ID.
• The + button’s file dialog opens at once, and dialogs don’t darken the panel.
• The panel no longer goes dark for a moment when Settings closes.
• ⇧⇧ captures from a terminal with VoiceOver on.