v4.1.19 · available now

Your notes, one scroll away.

Shady Notes slides down from the menu bar like a window shade. No windows cluttering your desktop — scroll near the top of the screen and your notes are there; scroll up and they're gone.

Underneath, it's honest: every note is a plain .md file on your disk, in a vault Obsidian and every other editor can open.

Start free Download for macOS

macOS 13+ · pure Swift, zero dependencies · notarised · no Mac App Store

Shady Notes: a beach umbrella shading a deck chair with an open notebook and pen, drawn as glowing green neon code

A look inside

What it looks like in use.

The shade — Sidebar, tabs and a live markdown editor, hanging under the menu bar.

The shade — Sidebar, tabs and a live markdown editor, hanging under the menu bar.

The shade

Notes that live just above your screen.

A notes app you keep open costs you a window. A notes app you have to launch costs you the thought. Shady Notes costs you a flick of the scroll wheel.

Scroll down near the menu bar

The shade slides down over whatever you're doing. Scroll up, it's gone. Direction is configurable and auto-detects mouse vs trackpad.

One global hotkey

Ctrl+Opt+Cmd+↓ (rebindable) toggles the shade from inside any app — no window switching, no Dock, no Cmd+Tab.

The amber pull tab

A small tab hangs below the menu bar while the app runs. Click to toggle; it shrinks to a quiet yellow dot when your mouse leaves.

Pin, window, minimize

Pin the shade so clicks outside don't close it, detach it into a regular window, or strip the chrome for a distraction-free surface.

Plain files

No lock-in. Just markdown.

Every note is a standalone .md file in a folder you choose — default ~/Documents/ShadyNotes/. Point Obsidian at the same vault. Edit a note in VS Code and watch it reload in the shade. Grep it. Back it up. It's your disk.

Only metadata is scanned at launch; content loads lazily, so a vault with thousands of notes opens as fast as one with ten. External edits are picked up automatically. 

$ ls ~/Documents/ShadyNotes/
projects/      journal/       plugins/
ideas.md       groceries.md   meeting-notes.md

$ cat ideas.md
# Ideas

- [x] a notes app with no window
- [ ] that opens with a scroll
- [ ] and never holds my files hostage

The editor

Markdown that renders as you write.

A WYSIWYG editor over real markdown source — never a proprietary format with a markdown export bolted on.

Live WYSIWYG

Syntax markers hide while you type and reveal dimly when your cursor enters the paragraph. Press ⌃E for raw markdown any time.

Interactive checkboxes

Native-looking tick boxes in lists, standalone, even inside table cells. ⌘T toggles context-aware; click to tick without moving the cursor.

Real tables

Auto-aligned columns, borders, inline markdown in cells, Tab/Shift+Tab cell navigation, Shift+Return for a new row.

Slash commands

Type / on a blank line (or ⌘. anywhere) for dates, todos, headings, tables, code blocks, and more.

Code fences that highlight

Nine languages: Swift, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Bash, JSON, HTML, CSS, Rust.

Callouts, wikilinks, images

Obsidian-style > [!TIP] callouts, [[wikilinks]], pasted screenshots with drag-to-resize.

Stay organised

Tabs, stars, search — the works.

  • Tabs that persist

    Open notes side by side, drag to reorder, Ctrl+Tab to cycle — restored exactly across restarts.

  • Starred notes

    Pin your most-used notes to the top of the sidebar.

  • Vault-wide search

    Filename first, then full content, async with no typing lag.

  • Find & replace

    A VS Code-style find bar with match counts, ⌘G navigation, and fast Replace All.

14 themes

Ten dark, four light — including Solarized, Dracula, three Catppuccins, Nord, Gruvbox, Tokyo Night, and Rose Pine. Light themes flip the whole UI, not just the editor. Hover to preview live, ⌘⌥T to switch.

Plugins

Your vault is a database. Plugins are the views.

Three plugins ship in the box — Daily Notes (a journal timeline), Kanban Board (cards are just .md files with front matter), and Tasks (every checkbox across the vault, in one list).

Then build your own: a plugin is a single .md file with a YAML front-matter DSL — schema, queries, layout, actions — rendered with 30+ native components. Need more? A WebView escape hatch exposes the whole vault API to JavaScript via window.shady. 

---
plugin: my-reading-list
name: Reading List
schema:
  type: reading
  fields:
    - name: status
      type: select
      options: [want, reading, finished]
  group_by: status
---

Native · private

A Mac app. An actual one.

Shady Notes is pure Swift with zero external dependencies — AppKit and SwiftUI, no Electron, no bundled browser. Your notes live on your disk and nowhere else: there's no server, no account, no sync service holding your data. The app is signed and notarised with a Developer ID and ships as a direct download.

Pricing

One small subscription. Zero hostages.

Free

$0 · forever

A complete basic notepad — and the first 14 days unlock everything.

Personal

$4 / month

Every theme, plugins, revision history, all updates — on a vault that stays yours forever.

Supporter

$8 / month

Same app plus early builds, priority support, and a heavier vote on the roadmap.

Compare plans →

Ready to keep your notes one scroll away?

Shady Notes is out now. Every plan starts with 14 free days of the full app — and your notes stay plain markdown files either way.

See pricing