Your notes live at the edge of the screen

Sticky notes docked to the right edge of your Mac. Reach over and they fan out.

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50% off · One-time purchase, no subscription · 3 Macs included · macOS 15 or later

No account · No tracking · Works offline

🎬 Make a video, get Hold My Notes for free See how it works

Three states, one movement

The deck reacts to where the pointer is. Nothing is clicked until you want to write.

  1. Step 01

    At rest, a thin stripe

    The deck sleeps as a 12 pt pill on the screen edge, one coloured dash per note. No window, no Dock icon, and nothing running in the background.

    The right edge of a Mac desktop: a narrow vertical pill holding four coloured dashes, one per note.

  2. Step 02

    Reach over, and it fans

    The notes shingle down the edge, 45 ms apart, each showing its label. Every one keeps its colour and its own vertical tab.

    Four notes shingled down the right edge of the screen, each showing a vertical label: Office, Groceries, Hold, Side-projects, with a plus button below them.

  3. Step 03

    Open one where it sits

    The note slides clear of the deck at full size, far enough to read every line. Type and it writes itself to disk 250 ms after you stop.

    One note expanded out of the deck, showing the title Groceries and a handwritten list: apple, 4x banana, dry fruits, peanuts.

Archived, not deleted

Archiving pulls a note off the screen edge without losing it. It keeps its colour, its dates and its place in search.

  • Still searchableSearch runs over titles, bodies and tags, so an old note is one query away.
  • Out of the deckOff the screen edge, so the pill stays short and the deck stays the notes you are working on.
  • One keystroke back⌥⌘L opens the archive to read one again, or put it back in the deck.

Everything in one list

⌥⌘A opens every note in one window. Search across all of them, filter down to what is active or archived, then select any number and take them out.

The All Notes window: a searchable list of every note with its colour bar, state chip and edited time, filtered by All, Active or Archived, beside a pane showing the selected note in full.
  • MarkdownOne .md file per note.
  • Plain textOne .txt file per note.
  • Single fileEvery selected note in one document.
  • Sticky archiveA .stickies file that imports back with colours, states and dates intact.

Your notes stay yours

There is no account and no server of ours holding your notes. They live in a local SQLite database inside the app's sandbox container, and the body of every note is encrypted before it is written. Turn on sync and a copy goes to a folder you pick — your iCloud Drive, never to us.

  • Encrypted at restNote bodies use AES-GCM in the local database. The key sits in your login keychain, on this device only.
  • No analyticsNo telemetry, no crash reporting, no third-party SDKs in the app.
  • Sync is off until you askIt writes one plain file per note into a folder you choose. Put that folder in iCloud Drive and your Macs stay in step, through your account rather than ours.
  • Nothing comes to usThe only call the app makes is a licence check against the payment provider. Your notes are never part of it.
  • Sandboxed and notarisedThe only folders it can reach are the ones you hand it, for export or for sync.
  • No system permissionsNo Accessibility, no Input Monitoring, no Screen Recording.

Questions

Does it show over full-screen apps and Stage Manager?

Over full-screen apps, yes, once you turn on "Show over full-screen apps" in the pill's right-click menu. Stage Manager does not move the deck: it is a floating panel that joins every Space rather than a window Stage Manager manages.

What happens with two displays?

Each screen gets its own dormant pill on its right edge. The deck opens on whichever screen the pointer enters, and stays there while you use it.

How many notes can it hold?

The deck shows eight at a time and puts the rest behind a "+N more" tile you can scroll through; the All Notes window holds everything. Notes are stored in SQLite, so the practical limit is disk space rather than a number in the app.

Does it need Accessibility permission?

No. The global shortcuts are registered through the system hotkey API, which needs no permission, and the deck reacts to its own tracking areas rather than watching your pointer. Nothing in the app asks for Accessibility, Input Monitoring or Screen Recording.

Does it sync between Macs?

Yes, once you turn it on. Hold My Notes keeps your notes as one plain .hmnote file each in a folder you pick — by default a HoldMyNotes folder in iCloud Drive, which iCloud then keeps in step across your Macs. It is off until you choose that folder, and because the files are plain you can read, back up or carry them away without the app. Deleting on one Mac leaves a marker rather than removing the file, so a folder that has not finished downloading cannot erase anything.

What can I export and import?

Select any number of notes in All Notes and export them as Markdown (one .md per note), Plain text (one .txt per note), Single file (everything in one document), or a Sticky archive (.stickies). Import reads the .stickies archive back with colours, states and dates intact.

What are the keyboard shortcuts?

⌥⌘N makes a note, ⌥⌘A opens All Notes, ⌥⌘L opens the archive. Inside a note: Esc closes it, ⌘F finds in it, ⌘. cycles its colour, ⌘⌫ deletes it with ten seconds to undo.

How do I remove it?

Quit from the pill's right-click menu and drag the app to the Trash. Your notes stay behind in the app's container under ~/Library/Containers, so export anything you want to keep before you delete that folder.