A note taking and journaling app for Surface Pro

Made on a Surface

I build Mementa on a 12 inch Surface Pro with a Slim Pen 2, and the first version was built on a Surface Go 3. Every pen feature in it was tuned by writing on that glass: how far a resting hand drifts, how light a deliberate dot can be, how fast a double-click on the side button really is. Mementa was not ported to a Surface from somewhere else. It started there.

That matters because a Surface is a strange machine to write on. It is a laptop until you fold the keyboard away, and then it is a sheet of glass with a pen. Most Windows apps were made for the laptop half. Mementa was made for the other half.

What a Surface needs from a notebook app

Your hand on the glass

You should be able to rest your palm on the screen and write, the way you do on paper. In Mementa the pen writes, a finger moves the page, and a resting hand leaves no mark and does not drag the page. On the Surface it was built on, the screen ignores touch while the pen hovers close, and Mementa covers the moment before that, as the pen comes in. See palm rejection.

The pen you already have

The Surface Pen and Slim Pen report pressure, and Mementa uses it: a light touch gives a light line, a fountain pen with an edged nib takes its width from the direction you write, and the pencil darkens as you press. See the pens.

Turn the pen over and the eraser end erases, whatever tool you were on. Click the side button in the air to reach the Cursor and click again to go back. Double-click it and Arc, Mementa's radial pen menu, opens your tools right under the tip, so your hand never crosses the screen.

A pen you can feel

On a Slim Pen 2, you feel each tool change: the pen gives a short buzz when the tool under it switches, and a small click when Arc opens. It needs Windows 11. See pen haptics.

Touch for moving, not for marks

A finger pans, pinch zooms, and swipes to turn the page when the page fits the screen. The pen drags any list or popup in the app, so you never put it down to scroll.

Native on Snapdragon and Intel

Surface Pro and Surface Laptop models with Snapdragon chips run Windows on ARM. Mementa runs natively on both ARM64 and x64, so on a Snapdragon Surface it is not running through emulation. The Microsoft Store gives you the right version automatically.

Write by hand, find it later

Handwriting recognition runs on the Surface itself. Lasso your writing and hold the pen still, and it becomes typed text in place. Search reads your handwriting in the background, so a word you wrote weeks ago comes up from the shelf. Nothing is uploaded. See handwriting to text and handwriting search.

Read and mark up on a Surface

Held upright, a Surface Pro is close to the shape of a page, which makes it a good reader. Textbooks, class handouts and comics open on the same shelf as your notebooks. Highlight with the pen, flip it over to rub a highlight off, and when you need to write all over a PDF, tap the pencil and it becomes a notebook. See the reader.

Not only Surface

Mementa is not tied to Microsoft hardware. Any Windows 11 PC with a pen that Windows recognizes as a pen gets the same tools: a 2 in 1 laptop that folds into a tablet, a convertible like a Lenovo Yoga or an HP Spectre x360, or a Galaxy Book with its pen. What changes from one machine to the next is the pen itself: how finely it reports pressure, whether it has a side button and an eraser end, and whether it has a haptic motor. Mementa uses whatever your pen has, and works without what it does not.

Getting started on your Surface

1. Get Mementa from the Microsoft Store. It is $4.99, paid once.
2. Check that Windows sees your pen, under Bluetooth and devices, then Pen and Windows Ink, in Settings.
3. Fold the keyboard back, hold the Surface upright, and choose Start a new notebook.
4. Pick a shape and a cover, open the first page, and write.

The very first launch takes a little longer while Mementa sets up your library, and the start screen tells you what it is doing. After that it opens in about a second. Saving is automatic.

Questions