Frequently asked questions

About Soulver - the world's best notepad calculator

If your question is not answered here, send us an email or a tweet. We're happy to help.

Availability & platforms

Where can I get Soulver 3?

Soulver 3 for Mac is available as a one-time (non-subscription) purchase of $34.95 on the Mac App Store and as a direct download on our website.

Soulver 3 for iPad ($20) and Soulver 3 for iPhone ($14) are available on the App Store.

All versions of Soulver are also available on Setapp (240 apps for $9.99/month).

What are the system requirements for Soulver 3?

Soulver 3 for Mac requires macOS 12 (Monterey) or later, and is compatible with the latest macOS 15 (Sequoia).

If you're still on macOS 10.14 (Mojave), 10.15 (Catalina), or macOS 11 (Big Sur) you can download an older version of Soulver 3.

Soulver 3 for iPhone & Soulver 3 for iPad require iOS 16/iPadOS 16 or later, and are compatible with the latest iOS 18 & iPadOS 18.

Can I try Soulver before purchasing?

Yes: we offer a no-commitment 30-day trial.

You are not charged when the trial ends. You may purchase or delete Soulver at any time, during or after the trial.

After the trial ends, you can continue to view any sheets you have created (although they will no longer be editable).

Should I buy Soulver directly from you, from the App Store, or from Setapp?

Benefits of the direct download version

• A single serial number works on up to 5 Macs, even with different App Store accounts

• We make slightly more per sale than from the App Store (and supporting indie developers is a good thing).

• We are able to refund your transaction if required, issue tax invoices, and offer student discounts

Benefits of the Mac App Store version

• Automatic updates in the background & no serial number to keep track of

• Option to subscribe to the optional data service "Knowledge Assistant, Stocks & Weather" ($26/year)

Benefits of the Setapp version

• Get all platforms (Mac, iPhone & iPad) as part of a single Setapp subscription

• Never pay an upgrade fee for a major update (for Soulver 4, Soulver 5, etc)

• Complementary access to "Knowledge Assistant, Stocks & Weather" (ordinarily $26/year)

Purchasing & licenses

Why are Soulver 3 for Mac, iPad & iPhone all separate purchases?

We craft Soulver individually for each platform we build for. Soulver is a best-of-class native Mac app (AppKit), and a best-of-class app for the iPad and for the iPhone (UIKit).

Some developers with a similar engineering approach charge a monthly or yearly subscription fee for access to all platforms (Bear & Fantastical for example). If you like this model, subscribe to Setapp and get all versions of Soulver (+240 other apps) for $10/month.

We prefer one-time purchases per major release. Like Things & iA Writer, we set appropriate prices for each platform. You save money by only paying for the platforms you need, and only paying once.

Each major release typically comes with years of free updates & support (our historical average is 6 years per major version on the Mac, and 14 years on iOS).

Can I use a serial number with the Mac App Store version of Soulver?

Unfortunately Apple doesn't allow this (or offer developers a way to migrate customers from other sales channels, to the App Store).

Use the direct download version of Soulver if you have a serial number.

My purchase of Soulver 3 via the App Store is not being recognized.

Ensure that you're signed into the same App Store account that you used to purchase originally.

You might also try logging out and back into your App Store account.

Sheets & Syncing

How do I sync my sheets using iCloud?

On Mac

Go to the General Settings (⌘-,) and select In iCloud under Sheetbook Location

Choose "In iCloud" in Soulver for Mac's General Settings

Why can't I see my sheetbook file in iCloud Drive?

You might be wondering why the sheetbook file doesn't appear inside iCloud Drive or Files (on iOS).

This is because it's stored in a private (not user visible) part of iCloud Drive reserved for Soulver.

You can still reveal the sheetbook in Finder in the Mac version, by clicking the little arrow button in the bottom right of General settings.

On iPad & iPhone

Tap the cog to go to Settings > then Sheets & Syncing and select in iCloud under Store Sheetbook

Choose "In iCloud" in Soulver for iPad's Sheets & Syncing Settings

Alternatively, if you just need to sync a single sheet, export it (by dragging it out of the sidebar, or going File > Export > Soulver 3 File), and save it to a synced location, like Dropbox or iCloud Drive.

How do I import my Soulver 2 files into Soulver 3?

On Mac

Go File > Open, click Show Options and tick "Import to Sheetbook".

If you synced your Soulver 2 files with iCloud, you can probably find them under iCloud Drive / Soulver.

Import Soulver 2 files into Soulver 3 via the Open dialog (⌘O)

On iPad & iPhone

Tap the Files button and choose "Import Soulver Files"

If you synced your Soulver 2 files with iCloud, you can probably find them under Files / Soulver.

Importing Soulver 2 files into Soulver 3 on iPhone

Why isn't Soulver for Mac remembering my sheets' window positions?

Soulver supports "Resume", a feature in macOS which restores the position of your windows on launch.

For Resume to work correctly:

• Don't close your window manually before you quit Soulver

• Ensure "Close windows when quitting an app" is disabled in the macOS Desktop & Dock settings

Make sure you're not closing Soulver's windows when you quit the app!

Common questions

Can I get Soulver to ignore certain numbers in my text?

Sure, use a comment:

Labels & other comment styles in Soulver

Can I turn off notation in answers?

By default Soulver formats your large answers with SI notation:

M stands for million

To disable this notation go to the Format menu and untick Notation for Large Numbers .

The answer with notation disabled.

You can also access line specific formatting settings by clicking the action button on an answer:

Contextual Menu on an Answer

To turn off notation for all lines, go to

Settings > Calculator > Number Formatting

and disable Notation for Large Numbers

In Soulver, 1 GB equals 1000 MB. But isn't 1 GB actually 1024 MB?

Soulver conforms to the industry standard binary prefix system, which you can read about here:

Binary prefixWikipedia

The gist of it is that new units (KiB, MiB, GiB) have been introduced to represent base 2 binary units, so that kB, MB & GB can behave like normal base 10 SI units.

Design, history & philosophy of Soulver

Soulver is a natural language calculator. Is it using machine learning (AI) to achieve this?

Actually, no. Soulver does not use machine learning algorithms, or even regular expressions.

Soulver is powered by a natural language calculation engine called SoulverCore.

SoulverCore scans text for particular phrases (much like a data detector), and evaluates the last valid mathematical expression on a line of text.

If you're curious about how we built SoulverCore, check out the wonderful Crafting Interpreters by Robert Nystrom.

What were the original design goals for Soulver?

For the first Soulver (released in 2005) our goal was to invent a better calculator interface for computers.

To us, this means:

1. Answers calculate live, with no explicit press of an equals button necessary

2. Support for commenting words alongside calculations, for extra clarity & context

3. The ability edit & reference previous calculations

We succeeded in these goals by placing an "answer column" alongside a notepad, inventing a new kind of notepad calculator in the process.

Multi-word variables (inspired by programming languages) & line references (inspired by spreadsheets) open up lots of additional workflows.

Finally, Soulver takes advantage of the powerful document & text editing infrastructure on Apple devices.

What are the current design goals for Soulver?

Since 2005, we constantly improve Soulver year-after-year, while ensuring it never becomes bloated or overly complicated.

For the last decade we've been focusing on:

1. Ensuring best-in-class apps on each Apple platform we support (i.e by using native technologies, and integrating deeply with the operating system)

2. Adding more natural language features for "taking a load off your brain" when working through problems involving calculation

3. More ways to personalize your calculation environment (like global variables, custom units, visual options, etc)

Was Soulver the first notepad calculator?

Soulver (originally released in 2005) was the first notepad calculator to use an answer column on the right side of a text editor with instant calculation.

Soulver 1.2 (released in 2006) was first notepad calculator that let you use words alongside numbers. And Soulver 2 (released in 2010) was the first notepad calculator to support live currency & stock rates, natural language functions & tokenizng line references.

The first notepad + calculator tool that we know of is MathPad by Mark Widholm released for Macintosh in 1993.

Calca is a modern app inspired by the MathPad design, in that it prioritizes comments over math, and requires you manually insert a special symbol (=>) to invoke calculation.

We prefer Soulver's approach, in which your expression is evaluated as soon as you type it (no explicit calculation step required).

Other platforms

Will Soulver ever be available for Windows or Linux?

Don't rule it out, especially with Swift now available on these platforms!

But on the meantime, there are numerous clones of Soulver available for other platforms & for the web:

Native Windows

• OpalCalc

Electron-based (compatible with Windows, Linux & Mac)

• Parsify

• Figr

Web-based

• Numbr

• NoteCalc

We support Soulver clones on other platforms: everyone benefits when great UI concepts are copied, evolved upon, and widely used.

If you make a calculator product inspired by Soulver, please do consider writing an acknowledgment of the source of this idea (somewhere on your website, or in your application credits perhaps).

Then let us know so we can feature it here 🙂.