Frequently asked questions
About Soulver - the world's best notepad calculator
Soulver 3 for Mac is available as a one-time (non-subscription) purchase on the Mac App Store or as a direct download on our website.
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).
Soulver 3 for Mac requires macOS 11 (Big Sur) or later, and works great on the latest macOS (Sonoma).
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 16 or later and works great on the latest iPadOS 17.
- 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
- Automatic updates in the background & no serial number to keep track of
- Family sharing included
- Ability subscribe to optional data services, like inline AI, Live Stocks & Advanced Weather
- Get Soulver for Mac and iPad as part of your Setapp subscription
- Never pay an upgrade fee for a major update (Soulver 4, Soulver 5, etc)
- Complementary access to AI, Live Stocks & Advanced Weather
- Early access to pre-releases of big updates (this is an opt-in feature in Setapp's settings)
Yes, Soulver 2 for Mac & iOS are unlisted (hidden from search) on the App Store but are still accessible.
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.
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 code 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.
Additionally, we don't use cross-platform technologies, instead creating individual versions from the ground up for each platform we build for. Soulver is a best-of-class native (AppKit) Mac app, and a best-of-class (UIKit) app for the iPad.
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 Formatting
and disable
Notation for Large Numbers
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.
The first notepad calculator we know of is MathPad by Mark Widholm, originally released for Macintosh in 1993.
Calca is a modern version of the MathPad design. Like MathPad, Calca prioritizes commenting over math, and uses a special symbol (=>) to manually invoke calculation.
We prefer the Soulver approach though, with your expression being evaluated as soon as you type it.
There is no extra calculation step (or ugly evaluation syntax cluttering up your sheet) required.
Actually, no. Soulver does not use machine learning algorithms, or even regular expressions.
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.
For the first Soulver (back in 2005) our goal was to invent a better calculator interface for computers, where:
- 1.Your answer would be calculated as you type - no "equals" press required
- 2.You could see, edit & reference previous calculations (unilke a traditional calculator)
- 3.You could use commenting words alongside numbers for added clarity & context.
- 4.You could 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. This approach also takes advantage of the powerful document & text editing available infrastructure on modern Macs.
For subsequent Soulver versions, including 3, our primary goals have been to:
- 1.Make best-in-class native apps (deep OS integration, and keeping up-to-date with interface design trends)
- 2.Add more and more useful calculation phrases & functions, to take a load off your brain when working through problems in your work & day-to-day life
- 3.To allow you to personalize your calculation environment (with global variables, custom units, & lots of settings)
Soulver is written in Swift, and we don't have plans to bring it to other platforms where Swift is not supported.
However there are numerous clones of Soulver available for these platforms.
For the Web
For Android
For Windows
Cross-platform Electron (Mac, Windows & Linux)
We welcome Soulver clones on other platforms. Everyone benefits when new UI concepts like Soulver are copied, evolved and innovated upon.
However, if you do make a product inspired by Soulver's interface, please leave an acknowledgment of Soulver as the source of the idea somewhere on your website, or in your application credits, and let us know so we can feature it here.
Last modified 1mo ago