Syphony Notes
3.3.0 beta Download

Add only what you need.

New abilities for Syphony. Take the ones you want from the Store inside the app.

Pages of another kind

Write a paper or a web page right beside your notes, with the result next to what you type.

LaTeX and HTML

Papers and web pages, with the result beside the source.

What it does

  • Your source on one side, the PDF on the other. It is compiled on your own laptop a moment after you stop typing, with no upload and no time limit.
  • Mistakes you can find. The bar says how many errors there are and opens the log. Show in PDF jumps from a line to its place on the page, and a double-click in the PDF jumps back.
  • Web pages too. An HTML page shows the way a browser draws it, at the size of a phone, a tablet, a laptop or an A4 sheet.
  • A start for every kind of work: an article, a report or thesis with its chapters in their own files, slides, or a blank page.
  • Shared like any other page, with the people in your project.

How to use it

  1. Download LaTeX and HTML from the Store.
  2. In any page, type /latex or /html and pick a template. Or rest the pointer on New in the bar.
  3. Write. The PDF follows by itself; ⌘ ↩ (Ctrl Enter on Windows) compiles at once.
  4. The download button on the bar saves the PDF. Notes, on the left of the bar, takes you back to your notes.
The technical bit

The first time you compile, Syphony downloads Tectonic, a LaTeX engine of about 22 MB built on XeTeX, with a starter set of common packages; packages it does not have yet are fetched as a document asks for them. If TeX Live is installed, the Compiler menu in the Files tile can use its pdfLaTeX, XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX instead.

For Mac (Apple silicon and Intel) and Windows.

Sheets Coming

Spreadsheets as pages, kept as plain CSV files.

What it will do

  • A grid among your notes, with formulas that add, average and look things up, and columns you can sort.
  • A file any app can open. The numbers are kept as a plain CSV file in your folder, the formulas beside it.
  • Out to Excel when somebody asks for a spreadsheet.

When it comes

Sheets is being made now and is not in the Store yet. Once it is, you will download it like the others and type /sheet in any page.

Speak and listen

Talk instead of typing, and listen instead of reading.

Dictation

Speak where you would type.

What it does

  • Talk instead of typing. Press the shortcut, say what you want written, press it again, and your words appear where your cursor was.
  • Written out on your own computer. What you say is turned into words on this machine, and the sound is deleted once they are written.
  • In every app, if you want. It can work in your mail, your browser or anywhere else you type, for as long as Syphony runs.
  • 25 European languages, recognised by themselves: there is no language to choose.

How to use it

  1. Download Dictation from the Store, and the speech model when it asks.
  2. Click where the words should go and press ⌥ Space, or Ctrl Shift Space on Windows.
  3. Talk. Press the shortcut again, or Return, and your words are typed in. Esc stops without writing anything.
  4. For other apps: Settings › Extensions, Where the shortcut works, In every app. A Mac asks once to allow Syphony in Accessibility.
The technical bit

NVIDIA's Parakeet TDT 0.6B (version 3) writes out what you say, on your computer. It is about 0.9 GB to download, once, and uses about 2 GB of memory while it is open; it lets go two minutes after you stop.

Read aloud

Your pages, read to you in a natural voice.

What it does

  • A natural voice, made on your computer. Nothing you write is sent anywhere to be read.
  • Follow along. The sentence being read lights up and the page scrolls with the voice. Click any word to read on from there.
  • At your speed, from 0.75 to 2 times, in one of six voices.
  • Laughs and sighs. Type <laugh>, <sigh> or <breath> before a sentence, and the voice does it.
  • Keep it as audio to listen to on the way.
  • In English, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.

How to use it

  1. Download Read aloud from the Store. Its voice downloads once: 0.4 GB, or 0.15 GB for the smaller one.
  2. Press Read aloud on the bar (or ⌥ ⌘ R on a Mac). It reads what you selected, or from where your cursor is.
  3. Skip a sentence, pause or change the speed in the player at the bottom.
  4. Export saves the reading as a sound file.
The technical bit

The voice is Supertone's Supertonic 3, run on your graphics card. A computer without one reads with its own built-in voice, which cannot laugh or be exported. If you publish a reading, say it was made by a computer: the voice's licence asks for that.

Meetings

Keep what was agreed, and walk into the next meeting better prepared.

Memory

Listens along and keeps what matters.

What it does

  • Keeps what matters, not the recording: plans, promises, dates and who is who. The sound and the full text are deleted once it has read them.
  • Works out who said what by itself, and only asks you what it cannot tell, like who "we" was.
  • Answers your questions about anything it heard or anything in your notes, with where it heard it.
  • What is coming up in the next two weeks, on a calendar you can change.
  • Takes what you tell it. Type a sentence and it remembers that too.

How to use it

  1. Download Memory from the Store, and the speech model when it asks.
  2. Connect an AI service in Settings › AI.
  3. Choose Memory in the bar and press Listen along.
  4. Ask it anything with ⌘ J (Ctrl J on Windows), from anywhere in Syphony.

What is said is written out on your computer. To find what matters in it, Memory then sends that text, a few minutes at a time, to the AI service you connect.

The technical bit

Memory listens in pieces of about five minutes and skips a piece with almost nothing said. The AI service is Ollama Cloud unless you choose another in Memory's settings: Claude, or any server that speaks OpenAI's API, including Ollama running on your own computer, in which case nothing leaves it.

Meeting Assist

Sharper at every meeting you have again and again.

What it does

  • A playbook for each kind of meeting you repeat: intro calls, job interviews, sales calls, check-ins. Each learns only from its own.
  • Suggestions while you talk: what to ask, what to dig into, what is not covered yet, each with the reason.
  • Learns after every meeting: a summary, what was not asked and would have mattered, and the questions that work.
  • Into Memory with one press, if you use both.

How to use it

  1. Download Meeting Assist from the Store, and connect an AI service in Settings › AI.
  2. Choose Assist in the bar and press Make a playbook.
  3. Press Start a meeting, pick the playbook, then Start recording.
  4. Tick a suggestion once you have asked it. Afterwards, say how it went.

The sound stays on your computer. Every few minutes, the text of what was said goes to the AI service you connect.

Connections

Your notes linked to each other, and to the live web.

Index

Every name in your notes, connected.

What it does

  • Names, found for you. People, places and organisations get a faint dotted line under them wherever they come up on more than one page.
  • Press one to see the open to-dos that name it, the other pages it is on, and who it comes up with.
  • The whole Index: every name, sorted into people, places, organisations and projects.
  • Nothing is written into your pages, and it reads them on your own computer.

How to use it

  1. Download Index from the Store. It fetches its model once, 379 MB.
  2. Keep writing. Names that come up on more than one page get a dotted line.
  3. Press a name to see where else it is. If it got one wrong, choose Not a name in the card's ⋯ menu.
  4. Open the whole Index from ⋯ › Extensions › Index.
The technical bit

Names are found by GLiNER2.5, a model of 287 million parameters made by Fastino, run on your computer in 8-bit. It was measured on English and Dutch notes; other languages work as well as the model knows them. On Windows it needs a processor with AVX2. On macOS 11 to 13 the dotted lines do not show, and the Index does.

Webhooks

Live numbers and pages from the web, in your notes.

What it does

  • A live number in your notes. Point at a number on any web page, like a price, a score or the weather, and it stays up to date.
  • Named once, used anywhere. Every page that shows the value follows when it changes.
  • As often as you like: every minute, every quarter of an hour, once a day, or only when you ask.
  • A whole web page inside yours. Paste an address and the site shows in your page.

How to use it

  1. Download Webhooks from the Store.
  2. In a page, type / and choose Live value, then New value from the web…
  3. Paste the web page's address, click the number you want, give it a name and press Add value.
  4. For a whole web page: type /, choose Web page and paste its address.
The technical bit

It reads a page the way a browser would but without your cookies, so a page that needs you signed in cannot be read. Values are read again only while Syphony is open. Somebody who does not have the extension sees the last number it read.

Looking for webhooks that tell your own server when a page changes? Those are built into Syphony: Settings › API.

More are on the way

New extensions arrive in the Store inside Syphony as they are made, and this page grows with them. Every one is signed, and its page in the Store says what it can reach before you download it.

To take one off, open it in the Store and press Remove. What it kept stays on your computer, in case you change your mind.