name	value
description	make a site from Apple Notes on macOS
rating	★★★
width	wide

Alto.so is a web service that allows you to use alto.computer (a macOS application) to publish a simple website straight from Apple Notes. It appears to be maintained by one person, so I am providing this report mostly to be helpful to Anton, the dev, and others who are tinkering with this budding service.

What I tested

• Publishing a site from an Apple Notes folder
• Nested collections (not yet supported but I was curious)
• Layout customizations
• Custom domain setup
• Media (photos, gifs, videos, and embeds)

How I tested

Very informally: I used it for several months and use it for this site.

UI Issues I found

Sometimes typography comes out weird inexplicably

It seems to be related to spacing within the Notes app, but it's very inconsistent.

Here is an example with a header:

The parser clearly sees it's meant to be a subheading, but it doesn't get the HTML output for some reason. View from the Notes app:

Another example with a bulleted list (first view from the site, second from the Notes app):

I think this last example is a matter of preference, but undefined values parse as "undefined" rather than as empty strings.

Tables do not remain in their containers.

Whether it's on mobile or desktop, they overflow.

Customizing layouts has more friction than you'd think

In theory, you can set a key-value pair in the metadata to switch between layout options for a specific collection view. On the root index metadata, this key is collectionViews (source) and on the indices of any directories within the site, the key is layout.

The formatting breaks if you use emojis

If you try to use emojis to clarify or visually break up blocks of text, it may destroy any formatted text that comes after like links or lists.

This is what it looks like when the formatting is fucked up. It'll look fine in your notes but publish like this.

Issues with the documentation I found

### Integrations don't work as documented

integration	works?	docs
spotify	no	https://docs.alto.so/integrations/spotify

The gallery feature works but not how the docs say

The docs tell you to right-click the attachment and "View As" > "Small" but that does't work to get the photos on one line in Apple Notes. You need to go to the Apple Notes menu bar and find View > Attachment View > Set All to Small for the gallery feature to work.

The metadata feature doesn't work the way the docs say it should

There are multiple pages related to metadata that say different things: 1, 2 (This link is for Montaigne, but it's listed in the Customize Site docs for Alto.),

Does the metadata option work?

name	works?	notes
showInFooter	no
showBreadcrumbs	yes	works when used on root index, setting does carry to other pages
showInMenu	no
layout	no
previewProps	partial	works on the root index and propagates down. Does not work on collection page root indices.
externalLinksInNewTab	no
titleColor	yes	works when used on root index, setting does carry to other pages

Many links and pages are broken or outdated

- The tags link in the site footer - Ellie Day's site on the List of Alto sites - The list of customization options linked on the Customize Site page.

Issues with menus:

• The custom menu page says to use the keys "Menu", "URL", and "Type" (or "menu", "url", and "type"), but what actually works is "link" not "url".

Things I enjoyed

I like that it works with Apple Notes

The workflow of getting things into my notes and then into git is too cumbersome for me. It adds a lot of extra work to my life, and I am not interested in needless extra work. I love that this effectively enables me to publish to the web using my voice, and that makes life soooooo much easier for me.

It's as fast as it claims to be.

I never had any issues with delays in pushing updates. It does not rely on iCloud to sync, so it takes less than a minute. It feels about as fast as a hot reload in a dev environment. For better or worse (usually worse), this is how I use it.

Updating the menu and metadata is intuitive

While the actual values that you're supposed to use is confusing, the idea of having a table in the note for this purpose is easy and simple.

Recommendations

• Update the docs

  • This will allow make the expectations of new users more in line with where the functionality of the service is.

  • Alternatives

    • Set up a forum or space aside from public.me and Twitter where people can help each other. I've seen a site that used Discord Threads to power a public Knowledge Base that didn't require people to login to see the information.
    • Allow people to help you (I'd love to!)