What Is Flotes? A Markdown Note App Built for Learning

Flotes is a Markdown-based note-taking app that turns what you write into study material. Its core loop is: write notes in plain Markdown, then review them through interactive views and spaced repetition. It fits people who already take notes and want to actually retain them — students, self-learners, and anyone building a long-term knowledge base. According to the site, it is free to use with unlimited notes and all views, and there is a separate Pricing page if you want to check current plan details.

What Flotes does

The site frames the product around one idea: "Turn Notes into Knowledge." Notes live in Notebooks — customizable folders that carry interactive views. From there, the same notes can be studied, visualized, connected, or compiled.

Core capabilities

Markdown as the foundation

Flotes is "powered by Markdown." You write in plain Markdown, and the site states you can import and export freely — an open format with no lock-in. Backlinks in the Wiki view are stored as standard Markdown links, so they survive export. This matters if you care about portability: your notes are not trapped in a proprietary format.

How the learning loop works

1. Write — Capture notes in Markdown inside a Notebook.
2. Study — Turn note content into fill-in-the-blank and concealed-section prompts. You grade yourself.
3. Review — A spaced repetition algorithm schedules when you see material again, based on your self-grading and tracked progress.
4. Reorganize — Use views to see the same notes differently: canvas for spatial grouping, wiki backlinks for connections, summary for long-form output.

The distinguishing point versus a general note app is step 2 and 3: the app assumes your notes are study material, not just an archive.

Who it's for

• Students and exam preppers who want notes and flashcards in one place instead of two tools.
• Self-directed learners who read and write a lot but lose the material afterward.
• People who want Markdown portability and are wary of lock-in.
• Writers and documenters who want to compile scattered notes into long-form content.

It is less suited if you only need a plain scratchpad, or if you want a mature ecosystem of third-party plugins — the site presents Flotes as an independently owned project created and maintained by Erik Verduin, not a large platform.

Getting started

1. Go to flotes.app and choose Create Account (there is also a Login link for existing users).
2. Create a Notebook to hold related notes.
3. Write notes in Markdown.
4. Switch to the Study view to generate fill-in-the-blank and concealed-section prompts, then grade yourself.
5. Let spaced repetition schedule your reviews.
6. Optionally explore Canvas, Wiki, and Summary views on the same notes.

The site lists a Start for Free entry point and states free use includes unlimited notes and all views. Check the Pricing page for anything beyond that, since plan specifics are not detailed in the material available here.

Practical notes

• No lock-in is a real feature here, not a slogan — Markdown import/export and the open JSON Canvas export format mean you can move your content out.
• Sharing and publishing are built in — the site says notes are free to share and publish on the web.
• Support channels exist — Documentation, Discord, and a Blog are linked from the site, useful if you hit questions during setup.
• Sync is included across devices, which matters if you study on a phone and write on a laptop.

If your goal is to stop re-reading notes you never remember, Flotes is designed around exactly that problem: write once in Markdown, then let the app quiz you and schedule the reviews.