PicoNote

A super lightweight markdown notepad built in Rust to replace the now bloated "Notepad" applications shipped with all modern Operating Systems.

• PicoNote
  • Features
  • Releases
  • Building
    • For Development
    • For Production
      • macOS
      • Windows
  • Architecture
  • Dependencies

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Features

• Markdown syntax highlighting (basic + extended)
  • Headings, bold, italic, inline code, fenced code blocks
  • Blockquotes, lists, links, bare URLs
  • Strikethrough, highlight, tables, task lists
  • Footnotes, heading IDs, emoji shortcodes
• Dark and Light themes
• Configurable font size (10–28 px)
• Word wrap toggle
• Native file dialogs (Open, Save, Save As)
• Unsaved changes protection with Save / Don't Save / Cancel
• Keyboard shortcuts
  • Cmd/Ctrl+S — Save
  • Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+S — Save As
  • Cmd/Ctrl+O — Open
  • Cmd/Ctrl+N — New
  • Cmd/Ctrl+Plus/Minus — Adjust font size
• Status bar with line count, character count, and file path
• Cross-platform (macOS, Windows)
• Tiny binary (~5 MB release build)
• Preferences persist across sessions

Releases

Compiled releases are available in the Releases section on GitHub.

Building

Requires Rust 1.85+ (edition 2024) and Python 3.

For Development

python3 scripts/generate-licenses.py
cargo build
cargo run

For Production

The binary is fully self-contained with all license attributions viewable under Help > Third-Party Licenses.

macOS

Produces a .app package with the correct icon, bundle identifier, and Info.plist for Finder/Dock integration:

cargo install cargo-bundle
python3 scripts/generate-licenses.py
cargo bundle --release

The bundle can be found in: target/release/bundle/osx/PicoNote.app

Windows

The .ico file is embedded at link time via build.rs and winres (Windows only).

python3 scripts/generate-licenses.py
cargo build --release

The release binary can be found in: target/release/piconote

Architecture

src/
├── main.rs          Entry point, eframe window setup
├── app.rs           Application state, UI layout, menu bar, shortcuts
├── parser.rs        Line-by-line markdown tokenizer (no external deps)
├── highlighter.rs   Memoized highlighter producing egui LayoutJob
├── theme.rs         Dark/Light theme application
├── config.rs        Preferences persistence via confy
└── file_ops.rs      File I/O and native dialogs via rfd

Dependencies

Crate	Purpose
eframe/egui	GUI framework (glow backend)
rfd	Native file dialogs
serde	Serialization for config
confy	Config file management
font-kit	System font discovery
image	PNG decoding for runtime window icon