NotyNotes that live on the edge of your screen.
Noty sleeps as a thin stripe against the screen edge. Reach over and it fans into paper tabs; click one and the note pulls out full size, right where it sat.
macOS 15 or later · Apple silicon · 1.6 MB · updates itself · ad-hoc signed, so right-click → Open the first time
It stays out of the way until the moment you want it.
The deck moves between three states as your pointer does. Nothing is docked, nothing is windowed, and there is no icon to hunt for.
A thin stripe
A 12 pt pill on the edge, one coloured dash per note. No window, no Dock icon.
It fans
Notes shingle down the edge 45 ms apart, each keeping its colour and its own slight lean.
The note pulls out
Full size, level with its own tab, carrying it along. Typing writes to disk 250 ms after you stop.
Small enough to forget, there when you turn your head.
Five at a time
Tabs lap over each other like roof tiles, so the deck takes about half the screen height while every label still reads. The rest wait behind a +N tab.
Checkbox tasks
⌘T puts a box on the line. Click the box to tick it and the line strikes through. Return carries the list on.
Archived, not deleted
Archiving pulls a note out of the deck but keeps it. Deleting gives you ten seconds to change your mind.
One deck per display
Every screen gets its own dormant pill. The deck opens on whichever screen your pointer enters; the others stay shut.
Tidies itself away — unless you pin it
A fan you stop using collapses after a few seconds and an idle note closes after a minute. Pin a note and none of that touches it; it waits until you close it yourself.
Set in your hand
Notes are written in a handwriting face by default. Pick another from the pill's menu, and size it with ⌃+ and ⌃-.
Yours to take with you
Export as Markdown, plain text, one combined document, or a .stickies archive that round-trips colours, dates and archived state.
Your notes stay on your Mac.
No account, no sync, no server holding your notes. The app makes exactly one kind of network request, and it has nothing to do with what you write.
- Note bodies are encrypted. AES-GCM via CryptoKit, 256-bit. Titles, colours and dates stay readable so lists render without unsealing every row.
- A plain SQLite file. In ~/Library/Application Support/Noty/ — yours to inspect, back up or delete.
- No permissions asked. Global shortcuts go through the system hotkey API, which needs no Accessibility access.
- One request, ever. The updater fetches a public XML file to see whether a newer version exists. Switch off Check automatically and it never fires again.
don't take my word for it —
# the body column is ciphertext sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Noty/notes.db \ "SELECT hex(substr(body,1,24)) FROM notes;" # and a line from a note never appears in the file strings ~/Library/Application\ Support/Noty/notes.db \ | grep "something you wrote"
Reachable without the pointer.
The three global shortcuts work from any app. Copy, paste, undo and select-all work everywhere too.
Built with swiftc, not Xcode
One compiler invocation over a folder of Swift files, plus a script that assembles the bundle and signs it. Around 3,000 lines, no third-party packages.
git clone https://github.com/aimen08/noty cd noty ./scripts/fetch-sparkle.sh # once ./build.sh # → build/Noty.app open build/Noty.app