Frequently asked questions

Spillway is a quick-capture tool for Obsidian. On your Mac, a system-wide hotkey opens a small overlay from the menu bar — type or dictate a note and Spillway files it into today's Obsidian daily note, with links and tags already suggested. On iPhone, the app, the share sheet, and Shortcuts do the same thing from your phone. It runs locally and needs no account for the free tier.

Yes. Spillway writes into an Obsidian vault — a folder of Markdown files on your device. It appends each capture to your daily note, so you need a vault for captures to land in.

Install Spillway from the Mac App Store and launch it. On first run the app walks you through connecting your Obsidian vault and granting the permissions it needs.

Yes. Spillway uses a configurable system-wide hotkey on Mac — set it in Settings ▸ Capture. You can also register a second optional shortcut for follow-up–style captures.

Yes. Spillway appends captures to today's daily note without rewriting the rest of the file. You can choose which heading they land under — for example a ## Inbox or ## Captures section — or leave it unset to append at the end.

Not on iPhone or iPad. Spillway works with vaults on iCloud Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Working Copy (Git), and any other sync service that exposes your vault as a folder in the iOS Files app. Obsidian Sync is the exception: it stores your vault inside Obsidian Mobile's own sandboxed container, where other apps — including Spillway — cannot read or write. This is a limit of how iOS isolates apps, not something Spillway can engineer around.

If you use Obsidian Sync today and want Spillway on iPhone, you can move your vault to iCloud Drive (Obsidian Mobile offers this under Settings ▸ Files & Links ▸ Manage Vaults). Obsidian Sync's selective-sync and version-history features won't carry over, but core sync will keep working and Spillway can write alongside it.

On Mac only, the sync provider doesn't matter — your vault lives as files on disk and Spillway reads and writes them directly. Obsidian Sync is fine for Mac-only use.

On Mac, yes — your vault is a folder of files, and the sync provider is invisible to Spillway. On iPhone and iPad, yes as long as the vault folder is visible in the Files app. iCloud Drive, Dropbox (with the Dropbox app installed), OneDrive, Working Copy, and most other File Provider extensions qualify. If you can browse to your vault in Files, Spillway can write to its daily notes. The one exception is Obsidian Sync.

Yes. The iPhone app writes captures directly into your Obsidian daily note — no Mac required — and they appear in Obsidian Mobile immediately. If you also run Spillway on a Mac that can see the same vault folder, the Mac can enrich those captures in place later, adding links and tag suggestions. The Mac is an optional enhancement, not a requirement.

In the app, pick your vault folder through the iOS Files app. Spillway keeps a security-scoped bookmark to that folder — it's the only way an iOS app can read and write a folder it doesn't own. Each connected vault needs its own Files selection; Spillway has no other way to reach your folder. If a vault is stored somewhere Files can't show (see Obsidian Sync), Spillway can't write to it.

Yes. Spillway includes a Share extension, so you can send selected text or a link from another app straight into your daily note, and it exposes Shortcuts actions for capturing from automations, widgets, or the Action button. These use the same write path as the main app, so captures land in the same daily note.

Free covers everyday local capture: the capture overlay, dictation, link and tag suggestions, and the daily-note writer, all writing to one enabled destination in one connected Obsidian vault.

Pro adds multiple named destinations across up to two locally connected Obsidian vaults, per-capture destination selection, Calendar context and Calendar-based routing, and Apple Reminders that are bound to a destination (Copy or Sync). One subscription covers Mac and iPhone. See plans and pricing.

A destination is a named place a capture can go — a specific daily-note path inside a connected vault. Free gives you one enabled destination. Pro lets you define several, across up to two locally connected vaults, and pick which one a capture goes to at the moment you capture it, without reconnecting folders.

With Pro, and only if you grant Calendar access, Spillway can attach the meeting you're in to a capture and route captures to a destination based on your calendar. It uses the calendars and accounts you choose. It does not read or infer anything from meeting titles, attendees, or your note text to decide routing — routing follows the rules and calendars you set. Calendar access stays optional.

With Pro, tasks in your captures can create linked Apple Reminders bound to a destination, in a Reminders list you choose. There are two modes:

• Copy (one-way) Spillway creates and updates Reminders from your note tasks. Changes you make in Reminders don't edit your notes, and any linked Reminders that go missing are flagged for review.
• Sync (two-way) Linked note tasks and Reminders stay updated in both directions. Brand-new tasks you create directly in Reminders aren't imported into your notes.

On iPhone, this reconciliation is best-effort in the background: it runs when you open Spillway and when iOS grants the app background time — not continuously, and not instantly.

Spillway Pro is $4.99 per month or $39.99 per year. Both are auto-renewing subscriptions billed to your Apple Account through the App Store, and both unlock the same features. There is no lifetime option and no free trial. One subscription covers Mac and iPhone; if you already subscribed on another device, use Restore Purchases in Settings ▸ Account.

Manage or cancel anytime in your Apple Account subscription settings. Cancelling stops future renewals — Pro stays active until the period you've paid for ends. Refunds are handled by Apple.

Nothing is deleted. Local capture continues in your active vault, any additional saved vaults and destinations remain unchanged but locked, and Reminders that Spillway already created stay in Apple Reminders. Pro features resume if you subscribe again.

Your captures, vault paths, calendar event titles, access tokens, and folder bookmarks stay on your device. Suggestions and daily-note writing happen locally. Voice capture on iPhone and iPad uses Apple's on-device speech recognition. Calendar routing uses only the calendars and accounts you pick and never infers from meeting titles, attendees, or your note text. Purchases are handled by Apple — Spillway only learns whether a Pro entitlement is active. Diagnostics you export are redacted. See the full Privacy Policy.