NotePanel

A small macOS menu-bar app for scratch-pad notes that render Markdown. Stickies doesn't render Markdown, and I wanted something a bit more organized—so I vibed out this sidebar panel.

Note: I'm not a Swift dev. This is not intended to be an App Store product, this is a personal project I built for myself, to fill a gap I had. It's MIT-licensed if you want to fork or learn from it.

Requirements

• macOS 14+
• Xcode 16+
• XcodeGen (brew install xcodegen)

NotePanel.xcodeproj is not committed. After cloning, run xcodegen generate to create it. Swift Package dependencies resolve on the first build.

Setup (one time)

1. Install Xcode from the App Store and open it once.
2. Install command line tools if needed:

   xcode-select --install

3. Generate the Xcode project:

   xcodegen generate

4. Open NotePanel.xcodeproj in Xcode once to confirm signing (select your Apple ID under Signing & Capabilities if prompted).
5. Build and run with Cmd+R to verify.

Build from the command line

xcodegen generate
xcodebuild \
  -scheme NotePanel \
  -configuration Debug \
  -destination 'platform=macOS' \
  -derivedDataPath .build/DerivedData \
  build

open .build/DerivedData/Build/Products/Debug/NotePanel.app

Usage

• Left-click the menu bar icon to toggle the side panel.
• Right-click the menu bar icon for the full menu.
• A global shortcut toggles the panel (even when another app is focused) — ⌘⇧P by default, configurable in Preferences….
• ⌘N creates a new note when NotePanel's menu is active.
• Click a note title or body to edit; Done, Escape, or ⌘Return saves.
• Edit the note title directly in the card header. Titles are plain text and do not render Markdown.
• Use the chevron in a note header to collapse or expand a note. Collapse state is saved locally with the note.
• Drag a note by the grip icon (≡) in its header to reorder.
• Delete via the × button or context menu; Copy Note in the context menu copies a note as Markdown.
• Preferences… (⌘,) adjusts panel width, top spacing, and launch at login.

Privacy

The app runs in the macOS App Sandbox. Notes are stored locally on your Mac via SwiftData, in the app's container (Application Support/NotePanel). Nothing is sent to a server.

Markdown previews do not load remote images. Links in notes remain clickable and will open in your browser.

Install from source

Build a Release app, copy it to /Applications, and launch it:

./scripts/install.sh

To build without installing:

./scripts/build-release.sh
open dist/NotePanel.app

Launch at login

After installing to /Applications, open Preferences… from the menu bar and enable Launch at login. macOS may also list NotePanel under System Settings → General → Login Items.

Launch at login is off by default until you turn it on.

Create a DMG (optional)

For a drag-to-Applications disk image on your machine:

./scripts/make-dmg.sh
open NotePanel-*.dmg

The DMG filename uses the app version from Info.plist (for example, NotePanel-1.1.dmg).

DMGs built this way are ad-hoc signed and not notarized. They are meant for personal use or for others building from this repo on their own Mac—not as a pre-built binary you distribute without Apple Developer ID signing and notarization.

Third-party dependencies

• MarkdownUI (Swift Package Manager)

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Project structure

App/           AppKit shell (menu bar, panel, hotkey, settings)
Models/        SwiftData models
Views/         SwiftUI UI
Utilities/     Markdown rendering, notifications
scripts/       Build, install, and DMG helpers