FloatNote is a sleek, feature-rich floating sticky notes manager for macOS, designed to keep your thoughts, code snippets, and tasks accessible right from the menu bar. Built natively in Swift and SwiftUI, it offers fluid animations, premium custom card layouts, and complete keyboard shortcut customization.
- Floating Panels: Notes float above other applications and fullscreen spaces, letting you reference information effortlessly.
- Notes Dashboard: A clean split-view dashboard featuring a native sidebar of custom note cards, search query filters with instant keyboard focus, and a rich markdown text editor.
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Focus-Aware Auto-Hide: Notes automatically hide after
$N$ seconds of inactivity and instantly reappear when you click or start typing, keeping your workspace clutter-free. - Double-Click Collapsing: Double-click any note header to collapse it into a slim titlebar, keeping it on screen without taking up space.
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Lock & Pin Controls: Toggle notes to be Always-On-Top (
pin) or Read-Only (lock) to prevent accidental edits. - Markdown Preview: Instantly toggle between plain text editing and rendered Markdown preview.
- System Appearance Matching: Fully responsive to macOS Dark Mode and Light Mode, with explicit pastel paper contrast handling.
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Custom Shortcuts Builder: Map event modifiers (
⌘,⌥,⇧,⌃) and custom key combinations for actions like New Note, Close Note, Show All, and Save Note.
Customize key combinations directly inside the Preferences panel:
- New Note: Create notes with your custom modifiers + key.
- Close Note: Archive notes instantly.
- Show All Notes: Bring all hidden notes back to the screen.
- Save Note: Force-save changes to disk.
- Search Focus (⌘F): Instantly highlight the search bar in the Notes Dashboard.
Note: All shortcuts (except ⌘Q to Quit) are disabled by default to prevent key conflicts until you choose to configure them.
- macOS 11.0 or newer
- Xcode 15.0 or newer (or Swift 5.9+ Toolchain)
Clone the repository and build using the Swift Package Manager:
git clone https://github.com/owaiss0/FloatNote.git
cd FloatNote
chmod +x run.sh
./run.shThe app will compile and start in the background. Look for the note icon in your macOS Menu Bar.
The codebase is organized cleanly as a Swift Package:
Sources/FloatNote/App.swift: Handles the accessory lifecycle, status bar menu bar controller, and dynamic menu shortcut updates.Sources/FloatNote/Windows/:WindowManager.swift: Manages note windows, layouts, focus-aware notifications, auto-save state, and preference defaults.FloatingPanel.swift: CustomNSPanelsubclass configuration for transparent, draggable, and shadow-backed windows.
Sources/FloatNote/Views/:StickyNoteView.swift: Main sticky note view containing custom header controls, markdown toggle, and popover settings.DashboardView.swift: Dual-column Notes Dashboard with adaptive Dark Mode sidebar cards and details.PreferencesView.swift: Shortcut builder and color/opacity configuration interface.ScrollableTextView.swift: Text editor integration with custom AppKit scroll bars and line spacings.
This project is open-source and licensed under the terms of the MIT License.