Craft is a document-first note-taking app for Mac, iPhone, and iPad, built by Luki Labs, that combines block-based editing with genuinely beautiful typography and layout tools.
What is Craft?
Craft is a native Apple-platform writing environment where documents are the unit of thinking — not plain-text files, not database rows, but rich, shareable pages you'd actually be proud to send someone. It sits in a category alongside Notion and Obsidian, but it feels unmistakably at home on macOS in a way those tools never quite manage.
Luki Labs built Craft from the ground up in Swift, which shows in every interaction: keyboard shortcuts snap, scrolling is buttery, and the app respects system features like Focus modes, Handoff, and Stage Manager. It's the rare productivity app that feels like Apple made it.
What does Craft do best?
Craft excels at turning rough thinking into polished, shareable documents without a separate publishing step. The block editor handles everything from quick daily notes to multi-section design briefs, and the export options — web share links, PDF, Markdown, Word — are the most friction-free I've found in any note-taking tool.
- Block-based editing with drag-and-drop reordering, nested pages, and inline code blocks
- Craft Docs share links — publish any document to a gorgeous public URL in one click, no account required for readers
- Backlinks and document graph for building a connected knowledge base (Obsidian-style, but with better formatting)
- Native widgets and Quick Note for capturing without opening the full app
- AI writing assistant (Craft AI) baked into the editor — summarise, expand, rewrite, translate
Where Craft consistently surprises me is in the details: column layouts that actually render correctly, cover images that don't look like an afterthought, and a table implementation that doesn't make me want to switch to a spreadsheet.
How much does Craft cost?
Craft is free to download and genuinely usable without paying — the free tier gives you unlimited personal documents, synced across your Apple devices. The paid Craft+ subscription unlocks version history, advanced collaboration (shared workspaces, comments), priority AI credits, and a few export features. There's also a Teams tier aimed at small businesses. Pricing is competitive with Notion's personal plans, and Craft's free tier is meaningfully more capable than Notion's equivalent.
Who should use Craft?
Craft is the right tool if you write things that other people will read. Designers writing briefs, indie developers drafting changelogs, consultants producing client reports, researchers building a linked knowledge base — anyone whose output needs to look considered, not just typed. It's less suited to pure database workflows (Notion wins there) or heavily code-linked PKM pipelines (Obsidian has the edge). But for prose-heavy work where presentation matters, Craft has no real equal on the Mac.
I'd also point power users toward Craft's URL scheme and Shortcuts integration, which make it scriptable enough to fit into advanced automation setups without needing plugins or a self-hosted server.
What are the best Craft alternatives?
The three main competitors each make different trade-offs. Notion wins on relational databases and team wikis but feels sluggish on Mac and lacks native fidelity. Obsidian is the PKM champion — local-first, plugin-rich, graph-obsessed — but its documents look like text files unless you invest serious time in themes. Apple Notes is free, fast, and deeply integrated with iCloud, but tops out quickly for structured writing. Bear sits closest to Craft in aesthetic sensibility, though it's more text-file-oriented and lacks Craft's block flexibility.
If your work lives inside Markdown files and you want full control, Obsidian. If you need a shared team database, Notion. If you want documents that are fast to write, beautiful to read, and easy to share on Apple hardware, Craft.
How does Craft compare to Notion?
Craft is faster, more native-feeling, and produces better-looking output; Notion is more powerful as a relational database and team wiki. Craft's block editor has noticeably lower latency on Mac — opening a large Notion doc versus a large Craft doc in the same meeting is an embarrassing comparison. Craft also handles offline editing gracefully, where Notion still struggles. The gap closes if you need Notion's database views, but for writing-first use cases, Craft is the better Mac citizen.
