Notey

A fast, keyboard-driven, workspace-aware note-capture app for your desktop.

Summon it with a global hotkey, capture a thought, hit Esc — it's gone until you need it again.

What is Notey?

Notey is a lightweight desktop notepad built for quick capture. It lives in your system tray as a small always-on-top window that you summon with a global hotkey, type into instantly, and dismiss with Esc. Notes are organized by workspace (typically a project directory), searchable with full-text search, and persisted locally in SQLite — no account, no cloud, no telemetry.

It's built with Tauri 2, a React 19 + TypeScript front end, and a Rust back end, so it starts fast, stays small, and runs natively on macOS, Linux, and Windows.

Features

• Instant capture — a global hotkey (default Ctrl+Shift+N) shows and focuses the window from anywhere; Esc hides it again.
• Workspaces — group notes by project directory; filter the list and search to the active workspace or view everything at once.
• Full-text search — SQLite FTS5 with BM25 ranking and match snippets.
• Tabs — keep several notes open at once, reorder them, and jump between them with the keyboard.
• Markdown or plain text — a CodeMirror 6 editor with per-note format toggle and auto-save (no save button, ever).
• Command palette — Ctrl+P for every action, fuzzy-searchable.
• Trash & restore — soft-delete with recovery and a configurable retention window.
• Export — dump your notes to Markdown files or a single JSON document.
• CLI — a notey command-line companion that talks to the running app over a local socket (add, list, search) with live desktop sync.
• Themeable — light / dark / follow-system, adjustable font, and floating / half-screen / full-screen layouts.
• Accessible & keyboard-first — full keyboard navigation, focus traps, and screen-reader announcements.

Screenshots

Command palette	Search	Note list

Settings	Trash	Dark theme

Install

Download the latest bundle for your platform from the Releases page, or build from source. See the installation guide for platform-specific notes.

Quick start

1. Launch Notey — it starts hidden in the system tray.
2. Press the global hotkey (Ctrl+Shift+N, or Cmd+Shift+N on macOS) to summon it.
3. Start typing. Your note auto-saves as you go.
4. Press Ctrl+P to open the command palette and discover everything else.
5. Press Esc to dismiss the window; summon it again any time.

New here? Read the user guide and the keyboard shortcuts.

Development

Notey uses npm for the front end and Cargo for the Rust back end.

# Prerequisites: Node.js 20+, Rust (stable), and the Tauri system dependencies
# for your OS — see CONTRIBUTING.md.

npm install            # install front-end dependencies
npm run tauri dev      # run the app with hot-reload (Vite + Rust watch)

Other useful scripts:

npm run build          # type-check + build the front end
npm test               # front-end unit tests (Vitest)
node e2e/run.mjs       # end-to-end tests (tauri-driver)
npm run screenshots    # regenerate docs/images/*.png from the live app

For the full contributor workflow, system dependencies, and project layout, see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Documentation

Guide	What's inside
Installation	Install per platform & build from source
User guide	Feature-by-feature walkthrough
Keyboard shortcuts	Full shortcut reference
Configuration	config.toml reference
CLI	The notey command-line companion
Architecture	How Notey is built
Roadmap	What's shipped and what's next
Changelog	Release history

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please read CONTRIBUTING.md and our Code of Conduct before opening a pull request. Security issues should follow SECURITY.md.

License

Notey is open source under the MIT License.