A scratch note that opens with ⌘⇧N from anywhere. Type something, copy it out or save it, close it. It uses the shared dot-app visual system: paper-white surfaces, ink-black JetBrains Mono, and a cobalt-blue cursor.
One Swift file, no dependencies, no Xcode project. About 490 lines, runs as a background agent — a small j. in the menu bar is the only permanent footprint. Left-click it to pull your notes up (or start one); it appears in ⌘-tab only while a note is open.
I kept wanting a blank text box for a few seconds at a time:
- somewhere to paste a paragraph and fix the line breaks before pasting it back
- reading command output that scrolled past
- a thought I'd lose before a real notes app finished launching
- a phone number, for ten seconds
Notes are throwaway by default. ⌘W closes without asking. If the pane had unsaved text it gets dropped into a trash folder (last 20 kept), so closing one never actually loses anything.
Needs macOS 13 or later.
./build.sh
That compiles it, installs to ~/Applications, writes a launch agent so it starts at login, and runs it.
It's ad-hoc signed, not notarized, so the first launch gets a Gatekeeper warning. Right-click the app → Open, or:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine ~/Applications/jot.app
To restart it later: launchctl kickstart -k gui/$(id -u)/ai.mckinnon.jot. Don't open it while the launch agent is running, or two copies will fight over the hotkey.
⌘S writes a .txt. ⌘⇧S writes a .md with a bit of frontmatter. Files are named by date plus the first line. The first save picks the name and folder; after that either key overwrites that same file.
Defaults are iCloud Drive/Jot for text and ~/Documents/Jot for markdown. To change either, make a ~/.config/jot/config:
text-dir = ~/Notes
markdown-dir = ~/vault/inbox
I point markdown-dir at my Obsidian inbox so ⌘⇧S drops straight into the vault.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| ⌘⇧N (global) | New note window |
| ⌘T / ⌘N | New tab / new window |
| ⌘S / ⌘⇧S | Save text / markdown |
| ⌘D / ⌘⇧D | Split right / down |
| ⌘H ⌘J ⌘L | Focus split left / bottom / right |
| ⌘W | Close split, then tab, then window |
| ⌘⇧] ⌘⇧[ / ⌘1–9 | Tab navigation |
| ⌘+ ⌘− ⌘0 | Font size |
| ⌘K | Clear note |
To change the hotkey, edit kVK_ANSI_N and cmdKey | shiftKey in main.swift and rebuild.
There's a jot script that opens a note prefilled from an argument or stdin:
jot "call the dentist"
pbpaste | jot
some-command | jot
Put it on your PATH. It uses the jot:// URL scheme, so Shortcuts, Raycast, or AppleScript can open notes the same way.
There's an optional Raycast extension in raycast/ that searches your saved notes. Run cd raycast && npm install && npm run build, then import it from Raycast.
MIT.