Frequently asked questions
About Soulver (for Mac & iPad) - the world's best notepad calculator
Soulver 3 (for both Mac & iPad) is also available on Setapp. Setapp is a kind of "Netflix for apps". It offers 240 apps for $9.99/month.
No, they're all identical.
However, only the Mac App Store & iPad & Setapp versions include the (optional) Soulver Stocks subscription feature.
- Never pay for a major upgrade
- Get complementary access to Soulver Stocks & any future additional services
- Get (opt-in) early access to special pre-release versions with new features
Yes: all versions offer a no-commitment 30-day trial, after which you can continue to access any sheets you have created (although they will no longer be editable).
You are not charged automatically when the trial ends. You may purchase Soulver at any time, during or after the trial.
Soulver 3 for Mac requires macOS 11 (Big Sur) or later and works great on macOS 13 (Ventura). If you're still on macOS 10.14 (Mojave) or 10.15 (Catalina), you can download an older version of Soulver 3.
Soulver 3 for iPad requires iPadOS 15+ or later and works great on iPadOS 16.
It still works great on the latest macOS (13+ years of free updates & support!).
Not officially. However there are numerous Soulver clones available for other platforms & the web.
Some of them are pretty nice:
Great UI concepts are meant to be copied and innovated upon and we welcome Soulver clones on other platforms.
We only ask for an acknowledgment of Soulver of the source of this invention.
We're not doing upgrade pricing from Soulver 2 to Soulver 3.
Soulver 3 is still great deal for longtime customers. It's a single purchase (not a subscription), and is the first paid update in about 10 years.
We sell a best-of-class native (AppKit) Mac app, and a best-of-class (UIKit) app for the iPad. We don't use cross-platform technologies, instead creating individual versions from the ground up for each platform we build for.
Yes, you're able to share Soulver with your family when purchased on the App Store. The direct download version of Soulver can also be used on up to 5 Macs in a household (so feel free to share the license with your family).
No, Apple doesn't give developers a way to do this.
Ensure you're signed into the same App Store account that you used to purchase, and that any connection blocker software (like Little Snitch or Trip Mode) allows outgoing connections to RevenueCat.
Go to the General Settings (⌘-,) and select In iCloud under Sheetbook Location
Choose "In iCloud" in Soulver for Mac's General Settings
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.
Sure, use a comment (// this is a comment), or a label (this is a label: ):
Labels & comments in Soulver
Additionally, if the number is surrounded by parenthesis and accompanied by at least one other word, it will be ignored by Soulver.
Soulver conforms to the industry standard binary prefix system, which you can read about here:
The gist of it is that units like kB, MB & GB behave like normal base-10 SI units.
Additional units have been introduced to represent base-2 binary units (KiB, MiB, GiB, etc)
Yes, 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!
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 > Answer Formattingand disable
Notation for Large NumbersFor Soulver 1 our goal was to invent a better calculator interface for computers, where:
- 1.Your answer is calculated as you type - no "equals" press required
- 2.You can see, edit & reference all previous calculations
- 3.You can include words alongside numbers as "comments". These would add context to calculations, or you can declare variables to be used in further calculations.
We succeeded in these goals by placing an "answer column" alongside a notepad; inventing a new kind of notepad calculator in the process. Our approach also takes advantage of the powerful document & text editing available infrastructure on computers.
For Soulver 2 & 3, our goals have been to:
- 1.Make best-in-class native Mac & iPad apps (OS integration, lots of settings, lovely UI)
- 2.Provide useful calculation phrases & functions to make it easier to work through problems
- 3.Allow users to personalize their calculation environment (global variables, custom units, etc)
Soulver 1.0 (originally released in 2005) was the first notepad calculator to use an answer column on the right side of a text editor, and the first notepad calculator that allowed words to be used alongside numbers.
We prefer the Soulver-style UI approach as it evaluates your expression as soon as you type it. There is no extra calculation step (or ugly evaluation syntax cluttering up your sheet) required.
No. Soulver is powered by the calculation engine SoulverCore. It does not use machine learning algorithms.
SoulverCore scans inputted text for the syntaxes it already knows about (like a data detector), and evaluates the last mathematical expression it finds.
If you're curious about how to build something like SoulverCore, check out the wonderful Crafting Interpreters by Robert Nystrom.
Last modified 1mo ago