Thursday — a crowded page
standup notes idea: menu bar scratchpad ⌃⌥N — summoned, typed, gone 38 words · autosaved
214 characters● autosaved
A field notebook for the Mac · Nº 1
Thoughts, caughtinstantly.
Notewright lives in your menu bar — a scratchpad for the thoughts that arrive mid-sentence and vanish by the paragraph. Summon it, type, and a second later the words are safe in today’s Markdown note. No windows to find, no app to open, no thought lost.
⌃⌥N· Free forever· macOS 13+· No account · no tracking
Saturday — today's page
⌃⌥N — and the page is already open. half a thought at 2 a.m.? caught. mine to keep, mine forever.
Free forever38 words · 214 characters● autosaved
From the studio
Built the way it had to be.
Notewright is built the way it had to be: a real TextEditor in an NSPopover — genuine AppKit text handling with native spellcheck, undo, and text services. No Electron, no webview, no background daemons. It opens in a blink and sips almost no memory.
The hotkey, Ctrl+Opt+N, is registered the old Carbon way — RegisterEventHotKey — so the system hands it to Notewright without asking for Accessibility or Input Monitoring permission. And your notes are plain yyyy-MM-dd.md files, written with a one-second debounced autosave: readable in fifty years, in any editor ever made.
Finally, the part we’re proudest of: zero network requests. No analytics, no crash reports phoning home, no sync server that could leak. Your half-formed 2 a.m. thoughts never leave your Mac — they couldn’t if they tried.
— The Cloverwright studio
100%Swift
~260 KBOn disk
0Network requests
1Global hotkey
Everything it doesTrick Nº 01 Trick Nº 02 Trick Nº 03 Trick Nº 04 Trick Nº 05 Trick Nº 06
An index of six tricks.
Six entries, each doing exactly one job well — taped to the desk so you can see them all at once.
One-hotkey summon
Ctrl+Opt+N from any app and the scratchpad is there. Press it again and it's gone. No Dock icon to hunt, no window to find — the thought never has to wait.
Autosaving scratchpad
Type and keep typing. A second after you pause, your words are written to disk. Crash, reboot, accidental quit — the note survives all of it.
Daily Markdown files you own
Every day gets its own plain .md file in Application Support — 2026-09-26.md and friends. Open them in any editor, back them up, grep them. No database, no lock-in.
Word & character count
A live count ticks away in the panel footer as you write. Handy for morning pages, standup notes, commit messages, and anywhere a word limit lurks.
Reveal in Finder + Export
One click selects today's file in Finder. Export… saves any day's note anywhere as Markdown — ready to paste into a doc, a PR, or your journal.
Private & offline
Zero network requests, zero telemetry, zero accounts. Your half-formed 2 a.m. thoughts never leave your Mac — they couldn't if they tried.
The daily ritual
Three day passes.
Three small habits, repeated every day — this is the whole of Notewright. Nothing to learn, nothing to configure, nothing in the way.
From anywhere on your MacSummon the page
Press Ctrl+Opt+N and the scratchpad appears over whatever you’re doing. Press it again and it slips away. No Dock icon to hunt, no window to find — the thought never has to wait.
Admit one thoughtNº I
As fast as you thinkWrite without ceremony
A plain, native panel with real spellcheck and undo. Type and keep typing — a second after you pause, your words are written to disk. Crash, reboot, accidental quit: the note survives all of it. A live word count ticks quietly in the footer as you go.
No queues, no linesNº II
One file per day, yoursClose the day, keep the page
When the day ends, it settles into its own Markdown file — 2026-09-26.md in ~/Library/Application Support/Notewright/. Tomorrow opens a fresh page; yesterday’s pages are yours to keep, grep, and back up. No database, no lock-in.
Keep the stubNº III
The price
It costs nothing.
Notewright is a gift from the studio — a small, perfect tool, priced like one. No trial, no subscription, no catch.
- Every feature — hotkey, autosave, day switcher, export
- Daily Markdown files you own, forever
- Adjustable font size and launch at login
- Complete Xcode project source included
- Free updates, whenever the quill learns new tricks
Asked in the margins
Pencilled in, answered in ink.
The questions everyone writes in the margin — answered properly.
Where are my notes stored?
In ~/Library/Application Support/Notewright/, as plain Markdown files — one per day, named like 2026-09-26.md. Use “Reveal in Finder” in the panel footer to jump straight to today's file.
What format are the notes in?
Plain UTF-8 Markdown. No database, no proprietary format, no export step needed to own your words — the files on disk are the notes. Open them in any editor, now or in fifty years.
Will Notewright work on Apple Silicon?
Yes — it's a universal Swift binary that runs natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs running macOS 13 (Ventura) or later.
Can I change the hotkey?
Ctrl+Opt+N is fixed in 1.0, chosen to avoid clashing with common shortcuts. The full Xcode project ships with the download, and the hotkey is six lines in HotkeyManager.swift — remap it to whatever you like and rebuild.
Does it sync with iCloud?
No — deliberately. Notewright is offline and private by design, so there's no sync server involved. Because your notes are ordinary .md files in a normal folder, any backup or sync tool you already trust works with them unchanged.
Is it really free?
Yes — free forever, no account, no upsell, no “pro” tier. It's a small gift from the studio, and the complete source code comes with it.
Take the notebook home.
Free for macOS 13 and later. One hotkey, and your thoughts are caught.
This build ships as a complete Xcode project — open it, press ⌘R, and the quill moves into your menu bar. A signed, double-clickable release is on the way. Notewright is a Cloverwright product.