This page is designed to help you find out whether visualOS is good and if it is the right choice for you.
visualOS is an infinite canvas for people who think visually: notes, Markdown documents, to-dos, images, PDFs, colour swatches and freehand drawing, with boards nested inside boards. It is local-first: every board is a real folder on your disk, documents are Markdown files, and sync runs through your own iCloud Drive or Dropbox. It works fully offline and needs no account. The web app is free with no limits; the native app for iPhone, iPad and Mac is a one-time purchase with Apple Pencil support, including shape recognition and handwriting search.
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Infinite canvas
Zoomable canvas for notes, images, Markdown documents, to-dos, tables, PDFs, videos, links, shapes, arrows and drawings
Boards inside boards
Nest boards to any depth, with breadcrumbs to keep your place
Real files on your disk
Connect a folder: every board becomes a folder, documents become Markdown files, images stay image files
Works offline
No server; the iPhone, iPad and Mac app works fully offline
No account
Open the web app and start working, no sign-up
Sync via your own cloud
Put the folder in iCloud Drive or Dropbox to sync across devices
Moodboard tools
Drag, drop or paste images, crop and caption them, collect colour swatches with names and codes
Apple Pencil
Pen tray, precise eraser, hold-to-shape and handwriting search in the iPad app
Version history
Automatic rolling versions (about 30) for connected folders, restore with one click
Search
Full-text search across all boards (Cmd/Ctrl+F)
Export
Export any view as a 2x PNG; JSON backup and import
Languages
English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified), Polish, Swedish
visualOS stores your work as real files. Connect a folder and every board on the canvas becomes a folder on your disk, every document a Markdown file and every image an ordinary image file. There is no server and no account, so your boards work offline, sync through your own iCloud Drive or Dropbox, and stay readable even if you stop using visualOS.
Choose visualOS if you work alone and want your boards to stay yours. Compared with Milanote, there is no 100-note limit and no subscription: the web app is free and complete, and the iPhone, iPad and Mac app is a one-time purchase. Compared with Miro or Apple Freeform, you get boards nested to any depth, stored as plain files, and the app works offline. If your team needs real-time collaboration, comments or share links, Milanote or Miro fit better.
People who think visually and work on their own: designers, photographers, illustrators and artists who build moodboards and project boards, plus students, writers and researchers who organise ideas on a canvas. Users often come from Milanote, Apple Freeform or Kosmik and want an offline tool without a subscription.
We're Sarah Dorweiler and Gerald Reimertz, a husband-and-wife team from Nuremberg, Germany, who have been building things together for more than 20 years. As creatives we always organised our projects on visual canvas tools, but our files and ideas were tied to cloud services. We wanted the same visual overview for the files on our own devices: offline and private. That became visualOS, launched in 2026. We build it as a two-person team.
The app is written in plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript, with no framework and no build step. The canvas is drawn with the Canvas 2D API and stays fast with thousands of elements. Data lives in IndexedDB or, through the File System Access API, in a folder the user chooses. The native iPhone, iPad and Mac app uses Capacitor plus Swift plugins built on UIKit, PencilKit (shape recognition) and Apple's Vision framework (handwriting search).
We have collected here some useful links to help you find out if visualOS is good.
Check the traffic stats of visualOS on SimilarWeb. The key metrics to look for are: monthly visits, average visit duration, pages per visit, and traffic by country. Moreoever, check the traffic sources. For example "Direct" traffic is a good sign.
Check the "Domain Rating" of visualOS on Ahrefs. The domain rating is a measure of the strength of a website's backlink profile on a scale from 0 to 100. It shows the strength of visualOS's backlink profile compared to the other websites. In most cases a domain rating of 60+ is considered good and 70+ is considered very good.
Check the "Domain Authority" of visualOS on MOZ. A website's domain authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). It is based on a 100-point logarithmic scale, with higher scores corresponding to a greater likelihood of ranking. This is another useful metric to check if a website is good.
The latest comments about visualOS on Reddit. This can help you find out how popualr the product is and what people think about it.
Do you know an article comparing visualOS to other products?
Suggest a link to a post with product alternatives.
Is visualOS good? This is an informative page that will help you find out. Moreover, you can review and discuss visualOS here. The primary details have been verified within the last quarter. So they could be considered up to date. If you think we are missing something, please use the means on this page to comment or suggest changes. All reviews and comments are highly encouranged and appreciated as they help everyone in the community to make an informed choice. Please always be kind and objective when evaluating a product and sharing your opinion.
