Your address book,
with a memory.
Anecdote is a native Mac and iPhone contacts app built on your real iCloud address book — not another silo. It looks and behaves like the Contacts app you already know, and it quietly keeps track of who you’re overdue to call.
macOS 14 Sonoma or later · iOS 17 or later
It edits the address book you already have.
Most “personal CRM” apps ask you to import your contacts and then maintain a second copy forever. Anecdote doesn’t. It asks for Contacts permission on first launch and then reads and writes the real cards in your Mac and iCloud account, through Apple’s own Contacts framework. Edit someone here and the change is there in Contacts.app, on your phone, in Mail — because it is the same card.
The system store, synced by iCloud — no import, no export, no second copy to keep in step.
A three-column Mac window and an iPhone and iPad app, sharing one model layer.
No sign-up, no server of ours, nothing to subscribe to in order to open it.
The part Contacts never had.
Give anyone a cadence — weekly, every two weeks, monthly, quarterly, twice a year, annually — and their card starts telling you when the next touch is due. Let it slip and the date turns red. When you finally do call, one tap on Contacted Today restarts the clock.
- A Keep in Touch list in the sidebar collects everyone who's due.
- Follow-ups keep what you said you'd do for someone — due in a week, a month or six, or on a date you pick — in a list of their own, soonest first.
- A notification each morning on your Mac and your iPhone names who's due and what's on the list for today.
- A Birthdays list does the same for the dates you keep forgetting.
- Cadences, follow-ups and last-contacted dates sync between your Mac and your phone.
A full Contacts app, not a wrapper.
Anecdote rebuilds what Contacts.app does — the three columns, the alphabetical sections, the inline editor, the keyboard shortcuts — and then keeps going.
A card that holds everything
Phones, emails, URLs, addresses with a geocoded map thumbnail, birthdays, anniversaries, related names, social profiles, phonetic names — every field the address book has, laid out the way Contacts lays it out.
Look for duplicates
Finds clusters of likely duplicates by name, email or phone, shows you exactly what will be merged, and unions their fields into one card.
Search that reaches the notes
Names, companies, job titles, departments, nicknames, notes, emails, phone numbers, URLs and addresses — all of it, as you type.
Look up on the web
One click opens a search for this person on Google, LinkedIn, Instagram, Gmail, X or Facebook — for when you know the name and nothing else.
Lists and smart lists
Create, rename and delete lists in the sidebar; drag a contact onto one to add it; email a whole list at once from its context menu.
vCards in and out
Import .vcf files by menu or by dropping them on the list, drag a contact to Finder to get a vCard back, and export the whole address book in one go.
Printing that still works
Contact cards, lists, mailing labels, envelopes and a pocket address book — the standard layouts, from the standard ⌘P.
Notes that survive
The context you keep about someone — where you met, what they're working on — kept with the card and synced across your devices.
Record a note
Say what you talked about straight after the conversation and watch it turn into text. Nothing is recorded or kept but the words.
Meetings on the card
The calendar events you and someone were both invited to, read from your own calendars and shown in their history.
Files with the person
Keep a contract, a deck or a photo on someone's card. Files sync between your Mac and iPhone; on the Mac, drop them on the card.
Favorites
Star the people you reach for most and keep them, in your own order, at the top of the sidebar on every device.
Widget and Siri
A Who's Due widget on your home screen, and Siri and Shortcuts to add a note or a follow-up, or ask who's due, without opening the app.
Share what you choose
Share a card with only the details you pick, or show your own as a QR code that anyone can scan into their contacts.
Scan business cards
Point your iPhone at a business card and Anecdote reads it into a new contact for you to check before it's saved.
Introduce and invite
Introduce two people in one message, or invite someone to Anecdote, from their card.
Two apps, one model layer.
The same store, the same address-book bridge and the same sync engine, with a window’s worth of views on the Mac and a phone’s worth on iOS. Your contacts sync the way they always did — through iCloud Contacts. Everything Anecdote adds of its own — notes, cadences, last contacted, follow-ups, files, favorites, My Card, smart lists, display preferences — travels through a private CloudKit database that only your devices can read.
Stay in the system Contacts store, synced by iCloud Contacts — exactly where they were before you installed anything.
Lives in a small overlay on each device and syncs through your own private CloudKit database. It is never copied to a server of ours.
Your address book never reaches us.
There is no Anecdote account, no Anecdote server and no analytics SDK. The app talks to two things: Apple’s Contacts framework on your device, and your own private iCloud container. Nobody at Anecdote can see a name, a number or a note — there is nowhere for them to arrive.
Contacts permission is requested on first launch and can be revoked at any time in System Settings or iOS Settings. If you revoke it, the app simply stops being able to read the store.
Questions
- Does Anecdote replace Contacts.app?
- It sits alongside it. Both read and write the same system address book, so you can keep using Contacts, Mail or your phone's dialler exactly as before — Anecdote just gives you a better window onto the same data, plus the things Contacts doesn't do.
- Will it move or copy my contacts?
- No. Your contacts stay in the system Contacts store and keep syncing through iCloud Contacts. Anecdote reads and edits them in place. The only thing it stores of its own is a small overlay — notes, keep-in-touch cadences, My Card, smart lists and preferences — which syncs through your private CloudKit database.
- Where are my notes kept?
- In Anecdote's own store, not in the note field of the contact card. That keeps them dated, lets them hold more than plain text, and means a note can't be overwritten by another app editing the same card. They sync between your devices through your private CloudKit database.
- Is there an Undo?
- Deliberately not. The app edits the live system address book, where an undo stack could desync from iCloud and quietly resurrect a card you meant to delete. Instead, every destructive action — deleting a card or a list, merging cards — asks first and says exactly what will be removed.
- What does it cost?
- Anecdote is free to use, with notes, follow-ups and keep-in-touch for up to 20 people. Anecdote Pro, a yearly subscription, lifts that limit; one subscription covers your Mac, iPhone and iPad. Your contacts themselves are never limited.
- What do I need to run it?
- macOS 14 Sonoma or later on the Mac, and iOS 17 or later on iPhone and iPad.
Stop losing touch by accident.
Anecdote is in private beta on macOS and iPhone. Tell us a little about how you keep up with people and we’ll send you a build.
Request an invite