FinderNotes 1.0

A quick-capture scratchpad for macOS, by Jesper GB Henriksen.

Press a global shortcut, a small floating editor appears, you write, you copy, it is gone again. Notes stay as cards in a rail below the editor and can be called back any time.

Menu bar only, no Dock icon. Native SwiftUI and AppKit, universal, about 1 MB.

Shortcuts

Key	Action
⌃⌥Space	Show or hide the panel, from any app
esc	Hide; focus returns to where you came from
⌘N	New note
⌘1 … ⌘9	Open the 1st to 9th card in the rail
⇧⌘C	Copy the whole note and close
⌘L	Into the side panel, or back

The shortcut is rebindable from the menu bar icon, and combinations already claimed by macOS or another app are greyed out rather than silently failing.

Install

Open the disk image and drag FinderNotes to Applications.

Requires: macOS, Apple silicon or Intel. Signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarised by Apple, so it opens without a Gatekeeper warning.

It asks for no permissions. The global shortcut uses RegisterEventHotKey, so macOS never prompts for Accessibility access.

Notes are stored in one file: ~/Library/Application Support/FinderNotes/notes.json

Project page: https://jesperh.cv/apps/findernotes.html