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A stripped-back, distraction-free note canvas built for one thing: listening to your lecturer. No badges, no pings, no sidebar — just warm paper, your words, and the lecture waveform.
No credit card required · 10 recordings free every month
Organic chemistry — Reaction mechanisms III
SN2 is bimolecular — rate depends on both substrate and nucleophile. Backside attack means stereochemistry inverts.
SN1 forms a carbocation intermediate → loss of stereochemistry → racemization observed in product mixture.
⟶ prof said this will be on exam
Nothing else is happening. Just this page.
Lecture Mode is Distill’s distraction-free canvas for when a class is actually happening. You tap a single button and every other UI element vanishes — no sidebar, no navigation bar, no badges, no notifications, no autocomplete, no Zooming animations. Just a warm, paper-textured page, a quiet waveform showing that recording is on, and your words as you type them. It’s the zen mode for studying that students have been jury-rigging with ‘focus mode’ hacks for years — built in, on purpose.
The design is deliberately analog. The typeface is a readable serif, the background is off-white with a faint paper grain, the cursor is a calm amber, and the animations are measured in tens — not hundreds — of milliseconds. Autocomplete, emoji pickers, spelling corrections, and any other interrupting micro-interactions are silenced. Scrolling is long-form and calm. It feels closer to writing on a reMarkable than to typing in a browser.
Underneath the paper, the lecture is still being transcribed, summarized, flashcarded, and mapped — you just don’t see any of that work while it’s happening. The moment you tap ‘done’ and exit Lecture Mode, all your automated artifacts are ready: transcript, summary, concept map, flashcards, quiz. The best of both worlds — total focus now, total leverage later.
Not another note app. A real shortcut from lecture to long-term memory.
Before: Modern note apps are full of pings, badges, and sidebars — they were built for knowledge workers, not listeners.
With Distill: Lecture Mode removes every interrupting element. The only signal you see is the quiet recording indicator.
Before: Bright screens and sans-serif typography are cognitively draining across a 90-minute lecture.
With Distill: Warm off-white background, serif type, reduced contrast — the interface fatigues your eyes less and feels analog.
Before: Choosing between focus and AI help usually means losing one of them.
With Distill: Transcription, summaries, flashcards, and concept maps all run in the background — ready the second you exit Lecture Mode.
From first tap to ready-to-study — a few minutes, max.
From any Distill screen, tap the 📜 icon in the corner to enter Lecture Mode. Auto-starts recording.
Sidebar, nav bar, badges, notifications — all silenced. The OS even suppresses incoming alerts while you’re in Lecture Mode.
Type your own notes alongside the auto-transcript, or just listen — it’s all being captured either way.
Tap the small × at the top and Distill reveals the full studio view — summary, flashcards, concept map, quiz, all ready.
Built as a first-class citizen on every device — but especially good on iPad and e-ink-style setups.
Hundreds of students use reMarkable, Obsidian focus mode, or iA Writer for this. Here’s the honest comparison.
| Feature | Koydo Distill | Otter.ai | Notta | AudioPen |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paper-like typography & theme | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Records & transcribes in background | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| System-wide DND auto-toggle | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Apple Pencil handwriting → OCR | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Markdown + LaTeX inline | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Built-in AI summary after session | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Works on every device (not hardware-locked) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Price of hardware | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Real cost (vs reMarkable @ $399) | Free / $6 mo | $8.33/mo | $8.25/mo | $99/yr |
Comparison based on publicly listed features as of 2026. Data sourced from vendor pricing pages.
Here's how different learners put this feature to work.
iPad-first student
Anya writes by hand in Lecture Mode on her iPad. Pencil strokes are OCR’d into searchable text in the background, and the lecture audio is transcribed alongside — two sources, one artifact.
Neurodivergent learner
Mateo has ADHD and finds regular note apps overwhelming. Lecture Mode’s single-plane interface, quiet colors, and zero notifications lets him actually finish a 90-minute lecture without opening 14 tabs.
E-ink fan
Paola uses Distill’s web view on her Boox Note Air. The e-ink theme is pure B/W high-contrast, strokes are captured, and her lectures sync back to her phone as rich summaries.
“I was about to spend $399 on a reMarkable. Lecture Mode on my iPad does 90% of what I wanted, plus it actually records and transcribes. Cancelled the pre-order.”
“As an autistic student, distraction-free apps usually feel like a feature bolt-on. Lecture Mode actually feels designed for quiet focus, not ‘productivity’.”
“I recommend Distill Lecture Mode to every one of my tutees. It’s the first app I’ve seen that respects that the point is to *listen*, not to type.”
On iOS and Android, Distill can request permission to auto-toggle system Do-Not-Disturb when you enter Lecture Mode. The setting is remembered, and DND is automatically turned off when you exit.
Optionally. There’s a small ‘hear-the-words’ toggle that shows a one-line live caption at the bottom of the page — useful if you missed something. You can disable it for pure focus.
Yes. Apple Pencil input is first-class on iPad — write naturally and Distill OCRs in the background. Handwriting is preserved in the exported PDF, searchable by keyword.
Yes. Besides the default warm paper, Distill ships eggshell, sepia, dove grey, midnight ink (dark mode), and a pure-black-on-white e-ink theme tuned for Boox, Supernote, and reMarkable web views.
Fast. The editor is a heavily tuned contenteditable with zero reflow animations, under 10ms keystroke latency on a 2020 iPad Air. Scrolling is 120fps on ProMotion devices.
Yes. Tap the small microphone icon to stop recording — Lecture Mode keeps working as a plain writing surface. Good for reviewing, not just live lectures.
Distill is more than lecture mode— it's a whole studio for your lectures.
Join thousands of students who stopped re-reading slides and started actually learning.