Wisp

A dead-simple macOS scratchpad. ⌥Space to summon, type, Esc to dismiss.

Requires macOS 13 (Ventura) or later. Universal — Apple silicon and Intel.

Homebrew

brew tap sulemaanhamza/wisp
brew install --cask wisp
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Wisp.app

Direct download

Grab the latest zip from Releases, unzip, drag Wisp.app to /Applications, then:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Wisp.app

The xattr step is needed because Wisp isn't signed with an Apple Developer ID — it tells macOS the app is safe to open.

• ⌥Space to summon from anywhere (rebindable)
• Light / dark / system appearance — one-click cycle, follows macOS by default
• Six fonts to pick from (Charter, Iowan Old Style, Hoefler Text, Palatino, Optima, Avenir Next)
• Smart editing — lists auto-continue, --- becomes a divider, **bold** and *italic* render inline
• Checklists — - [ ] continues on Enter; click a box to tick it off
• Headings — #, ##, ### render styled with click-to-jump navigation
• Code — `inline` and ``` fenced blocks in monospace
• Find — ⌘F, with ↵ / ⇧↵ to step through matches
• Archive to Inbox — ⇧⌘↩ files the note by timestamp and clears the pad
• Emoji shortcodes — :rocket: :fire: :heart: :check: and more
• Bold / Italic — ⌘B / ⌘I
• Transparency — choose how much desktop shows through
• Version history — timestamped copies kept locally, so a bad edit is recoverable
• Auto-update — downloads new versions in the background
• Launch at Login — toggle in the right-click menu
• Plain markdown on disk at ~/Library/Application Support/Wisp/scratchpad.md
• Sync across Macs — point at any folder via the right-click menu (iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Syncthing all work)

Click the ? in the footer for the full keyboard shortcut list.

git clone https://github.com/sulemaanhamza/wisp.git
cd wisp
swift run

No Xcode needed — Command Line Tools are enough.

Run the test suite before sending a pull request:

swift run Wisp --test

See CONTRIBUTING.md for how Wisp is built and what gets merged, and ARCHITECTURE.md for how it fits together. Changes are listed in CHANGELOG.md.

MIT — see LICENSE.