Frequently Asked Questions

Search…

If your question is not answered here, please don't hesitate to send us an email or shoot us a tweet.
Purchasing Questions
Where can I get Soulver 3 for Mac?
Soulver 3 is available on the Mac App Store or direct from us at Soulver.app. 
We offer a 30-day trial, after which you can still view your sheets but editing is disabled. 
If you have purchased Soulver 3 directly from us in the past, you can re-download it from here.
Do you offer upgrade pricing for Soulver 2 users?
Not this time, no. Upgrade pricing is not supported on the Mac App Store.
We think Soulver 3 is still a great deal. It is a single purchase, and this is the first paid update in about 10 years. 
Is there a difference between the direct and App Store versions of Soulver?
We try to keep both versions as similar as possible but there are some differences:
The direct version has a Share to Mail feature (that isn't possible in the App Store version due to technical limitations)
The App Store version lets you subscribe to additional services, like Soulver Stocks. We only offer services in the App Store version so that subscribers will have access to these services in the upcoming iOS versions of Soulver 3.
Can I transfer my direct license into an App Store license?
No, Apple doesn't give developers a way to do this. If you have an App Store license and would like a direct license instead, shoot us an email.
Is Soulver available for iOS?
Soulver is only available on macOS right now. Future platforms are in the works 😉. Stay tuned.
I purchased Soulver 2 in the past, can I download it again?
Sure, download your free copy of Soulver 2 from here. This version doesn't require a serial number, and works on macOS 10.10+ and is native on both Intel and Apple Silicon.
Technical Questions
Can you sync sheets between Macs using Soulver 3?
Yes. Move the sheetbook into a synced folder like Dropbox or iCloud. Detailed instructions on how to set this up are here.
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 saving it to a synced location like Dropbox or iCloud Drive.
How do I turn off notation in answers?
By default Soulver formats your answers with SI notation:
M stands for million
To disable notation go to the Format menu and untick Notation for Large & Small 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 
Preferences > Calculator > Answer Formatting
and disable Notation for Large and Small Numbers
How do I get Soulver to ignore certain numbers?
Use a comment (// this is a comment), or a label (this is a label: ), or put the number in parenthesis (provided another word is present):
Labels & comments in Soulver
Soulver tells me 1 GB is 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 prefix
Wikipedia
The gist of it is that special units were introduced to represent base-2 binary units (KiB, MiB, GiB), so that units like k, MB & GB are able to behave like normal base-10 units.
Why isn't Soulver remembering my window positions?
Soulver supports "Resume", a feature in macOS which restores the position of your windows on launch. For Resume to work correctly, it's important you don't close your windows when you quit Soulver.
Ensure that the "Close windows when quitting an app" setting is disabled in the macOS General System Preferences:
Make sure you're not closing Soulver's windows when you quit the app!
Soulver is crashing on launch, help!
There is a known bug in the macOS feature "Resume" where the "restorable" state of a window can become corrupt. If you run into this bug, you'll see the following text in the crash report produced by macOS:
NSGenericException: The window has been marked as needing another Update Constraints in Window pass, but it has already had more Update Constraints in Window passes than there are views in the window.
Until Apple fixes the problem in a macOS update, one workaround is to delete the folder containing Soulver's window restoration state. It's located here:
~/Library/Saved Application State/app.soulver.mac.savedState
Don't worry - you won't lose sheets or any other data when you delete this folder.
Does Soulver use machine learning/AI?
Soulver is powered by SoulverCore, which scans expressions for pre-defined syntaxes and evaluates any valid mathematical expressions it finds. It does not use machine learning algorithms. 
If you're curious about how to build something like SoulverCore, read Crafting Interpreters. You could also watch this great talk by Nick Lockwood, and check out his example of a math parser.
Was Soulver the first notepad calculator?
The first Soulver (released in 2005) was the first notepad calculator to use an answer column on the right side of the text field, and allow words to be used alongside numbers.
The first notepad calculator we're aware of is MathPad by Mark Widholm, which was originally released for Macintosh in 1993.
Is Soulver available for Windows & Android?
Not officially, however there are numerous Soulver clones available on the web and other platforms:
​OpalCalc (for Windows)  - Thank you for the acknowledgment 💛
​NoteCalc (for the web) - Thank you for the acknowledgment 💛
​Parsify (for Mac, Windows & Linux - Electron) - Thank you for the acknowledgment 💛
​CalcNote (for Android) - Thank you for the acknowledgment 💛
​Numbr (for the web) - Thank you for the acknowledgment 💛
Numi (for Mac) - No acknowledgment 😔
Caligator (for Mac, Windows & Linux - Electron) - No acknowledgment 😔
If you create your own Soulver clone, we'd really appreciate if you would please acknowledge Soulver as the source of the idea.