A place for all your quick thoughts, billion-dollar ideas, AI prompts, and markdown notes.
Frosted sticky notes for macOS. One hotkey, 30 MB of RAM, plain markdown on disk.
Free · open source · ★ on GitHub
The product
Three motions.
Zero friction.
01 · Pin
Always in sight.
Frosted windows float above your IDE, your browser, your terminal. The prompt you're iterating on. The query that won't compile. One glance — still there.
02 · Capture
One hotkey from anywhere.
Slack, VS Code, Safari, your terminal — a frosted note appears on top. Type. Escape. Saved as markdown before the thought fades. No menus, no spinner.
03 · Own
Your notes. Your disk.
Plain .md files in ~/Documents/Raynote — readable by any editor, forever. Zero telemetry, zero cloud, zero lock-in. Sync with iCloud or Git if you want to. Never because you have to.
30 MB idle RAM <1 s to capture 0 telemetry 100% open source
The weight
The lightest thing
on your Mac.
Idle memory, measured on the same machine with the same notes open.
The verdict
"Raynote replaced four apps in my menubar. It's the first notes app that doesn't feel like an app — it feels like part of the OS."
"I keep my AI prompts pinned as a floating note. It's the productivity hack I didn't know I needed."
"Finally a notes app that respects my keyboard: a one-second capture loop from anywhere."
"30MB. Read that again. Not 300, not 3000. Thirty. It's how all macOS apps should be built."
Good questions
Before you download.
What is Raynote?
A lightweight macOS sticky notes app that stays out of your way until you need it — about 30MB of RAM, a global hotkey for instant capture, and frosted windows that float above everything.
Is Raynote really free?
Yes. Raynote is open source under the MIT license and free forever. No account, no email, no trial that expires.
Where are my notes stored?
Every note is a plain markdown file on your Mac, in ~/Documents/Raynote. Zero telemetry, zero cloud. Sync with iCloud, Git, or Dropbox only if you want to.
Does Raynote work on Intel Macs?
Yes. Raynote ships as a universal binary for Apple Silicon and Intel, on macOS 13 and newer.
Can I use Raynote for AI prompts?
That's one of its best uses — pin a frosted prompt scratchpad above your editor and iterate without switching windows. Code fences get syntax highlighting for 180+ languages.