Publishing

Last updated 20 October 2026

Publish a copy of a note to its own web address from your Mac, choose who can read it and how it looks, and take it down whenever you like.

What publishing does

Publishing puts a copy of one note on the web, at its own address on publish.mindlake.app. It’s a Mac feature, it works one note at a time, and nothing is published unless you ask. Your note on disk isn’t moved, changed or locked, and later edits stay on your Mac until you update the published copy.

Publishing needs a MindLake licence on your account. During the trial you can sign in, but a note won’t publish until you’ve bought MindLake; see Trial and licence.

Plans

Plan	What it includes
Free	Comes with your licence: 3 notes on the web at a time, and 100 MB of published pictures.
Pro, £4 a month	Up to 500 notes, 5 GB of published pictures, and a password on any note. Cancel any time.

The limit counts notes that are on the web now, so unpublishing one frees its place, and updating a note that’s already published always works. Settings ▸ Publishing ▸ Publishing plan shows your plan and what you have on the web from every Mac. Upgrade to Pro… opens the payment page in your browser, and MindLake picks up the change when you come back to it; Manage Subscription… changes your card, shows invoices or cancels. If Pro ends, everything you published stays up, and Renew Pro… lets you publish more again. The publish sheet only offers the upgrade when you reach the limit.

Publish a note

Open the note and choose Note ▸ Publish to the Web…, or Publish… in the ••• menu at the top of the note.
If you aren’t signed in, sign in right there in the sheet, as described below.
Under Who can see it, choose who can read the note.
Click Publish. The sheet shows the note’s address, with a Copy button.

Who can see it	Meaning
Anyone with the link	Anyone who has the address can read it. Search engines are told not to index it.
Public	Anyone can read it, search engines may index it, link previews show its title and the start of its text, and it’s listed on your site’s page.
Password	Readers see the title and a password box. Search engines are told not to index it.

The sheet starts on Public, so check the choice before you publish. To change a published note, open the sheet again (the ••• menu now says Published…) and click Update. Locked notes can’t be published.

Passwords

Once a reader enters the right password, their browser won’t ask again for seven days.
To keep a note’s password when you update it, leave the password box blank. A new password asks every reader again.
Wrong guesses are limited, and MindLake’s servers keep only a salted, peppered hash of the password, never the password itself.

Publishing uses your MindLake account, the same one that holds your licence. It has no password. The first time you publish, the sheet asks for your email address:

Type your email and click Email Me a Code.
Find the sign-in code in your email. It works for an hour.
Type the code and click Sign In.

Signing in the first time creates your account. If the code doesn’t arrive, click Send another code. You can also sign in from Settings ▸ Publishing, which lists the notes you’ve published from that Mac, with buttons to open or copy each address. If you already have a sign-in token, choose Have a token instead? there, paste it and click Use Token, with no code needed.

Each Mac signs in separately and keeps its sign-in in the macOS Keychain. Sign Out, in Settings ▸ Publishing, signs out that Mac only. It also takes your licence off that Mac, and anything you’ve published stays up until you unpublish it.

What gets published

Sent: the note’s text, the pictures it shows, its title, date, tags and summary, its folder names (they’re part of the address), and your appearance settings.
Not sent: the transcript, the recording and the rest of the note’s details, such as its people, speakers and sources. Other notes and files embedded in it appear as their names only.
Pictures: uploaded with the note. Large ones are resized, formats a browser can’t show are converted, and a photo’s location is removed first. If a picture can’t be included, the sheet names it and says why, and the rest of the note still goes up.

Appearance

Settings ▸ Publishing ▸ Appearance sets how your notes look on the web. Changes apply the next time you publish or update a note.

Setting	What it does
Use my editor typography	On unless you turn it off. Uses the fonts, size, line height, width and spacing from Settings ▸ Typography. Readers without your fonts get the nearest font of the same kind. Off, notes use a serif body and a sans title.
Theme	Auto unless you choose Light or Dark. Auto follows the reader’s own setting.
Match my highlight colour	On unless you turn it off. Links and the navigation marker use your highlight colour from Settings ▸ Theme.
Headings navigation	Off unless you turn it on. Lists the note’s headings beside the text on wide screens, and as a Contents menu on narrow ones, when it has two or more.
Show the date	On unless you turn it off.
Show tags	On unless you turn it off.

The address

Address

publish.mindlake.app/<site>/<folder>/<note>

Site: one per account, named after your account’s handle the first time you publish. If that name is taken, a number goes on the end.
Folder: the note’s folder in your vault, each part in lower case with spaces and punctuation turned into hyphens, so ICB/Plans 2026 becomes icb/plans-2026. A note at the top of the vault has no folder part.
Note: a name made from its title the first time you publish it, the same way, so “Weekly sync” becomes weekly-sync. If that name is taken in the same folder, a number goes on the end, as in weekly-sync-2.

The note’s part stays the same when you update or rename the note, and if you unpublish it and publish it again later, it comes back at the same address. If you move the note to another folder and then update it, its address moves to the new folder and the old one stops working.

publish.mindlake.app/<site> lists your Public notes, newest first. Notes for anyone with the link and password-protected notes are never listed. Notes published before 25 September 2026 lived at mindlake.app/<name>; those links now lead to the note’s new address.

Unpublish

Open the sheet from the note and click Unpublish. The page comes down straight away, and the published copy’s text and password are deleted from MindLake’s servers, along with any pictures no other published note uses. Your note on your Mac is untouched. See Privacy and data for what the servers keep.