Quotepad

A Spotlight-style scratchpad for macOS. Press ⌘ ' anywhere, jot it down, and get back to work.

Why

Some notes don't deserve a Notes.app document: an email address you're about to paste, a command you'll run three times today, a phone number from a call. Quotepad is a single floating panel that appears over whatever you're doing and disappears when you're done. No windows to manage, no Dock icon, no sync, no accounts.

Features

• Global hotkey. ⌘ ' toggles the panel from any app, on any Space, even over full-screen apps.
• Tabs. Keep several notes side by side. Tab titles come from each note's first line.
• Markdown as you type. Headings, bold, italic, strikethrough, inline code, lists, quotes, rules and tables render in place. Tab and ⇧ Tab nest list items, and nested numbers can read 3.1, a. or 1. (Settings). The marks are hidden but stay in the text, so a note pasted from a chatbot or copied out of Quotepad is still plain Markdown.
• Pictures. Paste a screenshot or an image, or drag one in. Pictures are saved next to your notes in images/ and the note keeps a Markdown ![](images/…) line.
• Copyable boxes. Type /p and press Space for a one-line box for emails, API keys and shell commands, or /code for a multi-line code block that keeps indentation. Code blocks get VS Code-style syntax colors for C, Java, Python, Swift, C++, C#, JavaScript, TypeScript, Kotlin, Go, Rust, SQL, Shell, JSON and YAML. The language is detected as you type (or paste), and you can pick one from the block's header instead. Boxes scroll horizontally and have a one-click copy button. Smart quotes and autocorrect are off inside boxes, so what you copy is exactly what you typed.
• Survives crashes and power loss. Notes are saved 1 second after you stop typing (at most 5 seconds during non-stop typing) using F_FULLFSYNC and an atomic rename, and are flushed on quit, sleep and shutdown.
• Make it yours. Light/dark theme, seven background tints (sticky-note yellow included), background opacity, font size, and system, monospaced or serif fonts.
• Stays out of the way. Lives in the menu bar, hides when you click elsewhere (optional), remembers its size and, optionally, its position.
• Plain text on disk. Notes live in one JSON file, with pictures in an images/ folder next to it. Code boxes are stored as Markdown fences, so your notes are readable without the app.
• Tiny. One Swift package with AppKit and nothing else.

Install

Requires macOS 13 or later. Tested on macOS 26.6 (built with the macOS 27 SDK, Swift 6.4).

Download

1. Download Quotepad-<version>.dmg from Releases.
2. Open it and drag Quotepad onto Applications.
3. Quotepad isn't notarized by Apple yet, so the first launch is blocked. Open it once, then go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway. You only need to do this once.

Look for the note icon in the menu bar, then press ⌘ '.

Build from source

You need the Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install). The current tools work: the package targets macOS 13, and Quotepad renders the same whether macOS runs it in its macOS 13 compatibility mode (a swift build binary) or with current behavior.

git clone https://github.com/Ohjackson/Quotepad.git
cd Quotepad
./scripts/build-app.sh --install   # builds and installs to /Applications
./scripts/make-dmg.sh              # or: builds build.noindex/Quotepad-<version>.dmg

To start Quotepad at login, open the gear menu in the panel (or the menu bar icon) and turn on Launch at login.

Usage

Shortcut	Action
⌘ '	Show / hide the panel (works everywhere)
⌘ T	New tab
⌘ W	Close tab (hides the panel on the last tab)
⌘ ⇧ [ / ⌘ ⇧ ]	Previous / next tab
⌃ Tab / ⌃ ⇧ Tab	Next / previous tab
⌘ ,	Settings
Esc	Hide the panel
/p Space	Insert a one-line copy box (Return works too)
/code Space	Insert a multi-line code block (Return works too)
/help Space	Show commands, Markdown syntax and shortcuts

Settings → Shortcuts adds your own words for code blocks and one-line boxes (several, comma-separated).

Standard editing shortcuts (⌘ C/X/V/A/Z, ⌘ ⇧ Z) work as usual. Shortcuts are matched by key position, so they keep working with non-Latin input sources such as Korean.

Inside a one-line box, Return or ↓ moves to the line below, ↑ moves above, and Delete in an empty box removes it. In a code block, Return starts a new line with the same indentation, Tab indents, and ↑ on the first line or ↓ on the last line leaves the block. Copying a selection that contains boxes puts Markdown fences on the clipboard (``` for one-line boxes, ~~~ plus the language, like ~~~python, for code blocks), and pasting fenced text creates boxes.

Tabs close for good: there's no trash. Click the × on a tab, middle-click it, or press ⌘ W.

Note

The interface is currently in Korean. Localization pull requests are very welcome.

Where your notes live

~/Library/Application Support/Quotepad/tabs.json

Settings are stored in UserDefaults under dev.micheal.Quotepad. Settings → Open data folder reveals the file in Finder. If the file is ever unreadable, Quotepad moves it aside as tabs.corrupt-<timestamp>.json instead of overwriting it.

Development

swift build -c release
QUOTEPAD_DATA_DIR=/tmp/quotepad-dev ./.build/release/Quotepad

QUOTEPAD_DATA_DIR points a development build at a separate folder so it can run next to your installed copy without touching your real notes. Only one instance can use a given data folder at a time.

Path	Purpose
Sources/Quotepad/AppDelegate.swift	Panel, tabs, shortcuts, saving, global hotkey
Sources/Quotepad/CodeBlock.swift	One-line boxes and code blocks (TextKit 2 view attachments) and the note ⇄ Markdown codec
Sources/Quotepad/Markdown.swift	Live Markdown styling (hidden marks, tables, code chips, rules) and list continuation
Sources/Quotepad/SyntaxHighlighter.swift	Syntax colors and language definitions for code blocks
Sources/Quotepad/TabBarView.swift	Tab strip UI
Sources/Quotepad/DurableStore.swift	Crash-safe file writes
Sources/Quotepad/Settings.swift	Preferences, background tints, login item
Sources/Quotepad/SettingsViewController.swift	Settings popover
Sources/Quotepad/HelpPopover.swift	The /help card
Sources/Quotepad/ImageAttachment.swift	Pictures in notes and the images/ folder
scripts/build-app.sh	Builds the .app bundle; --install copies it to /Applications
scripts/make-dmg.sh	Builds a drag-to-install .dmg for releases
scripts/make-icon.swift	Regenerates Resources/AppIcon.icns and docs/icon.png

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for how to build, test safely, and send a change.

License

MIT © Jaehyun Ahn