Raynote floating sticky note showing a markdown code snippet
Raynote floating sticky note showing a long-form AI prompt
Raynote main window on macOS: a frosted-glass markdown editor with a sidebar of recent notes, syntax-highlighted code fence, and floating menu bar
Open source · MIT · 12.4k★ on GitHub

Sticky notes that
don't slow you down.

Raynote opens in under a second from anywhere on your Mac. 30MB RAM. Markdown on disk. Zero telemetry.

Download for macOS Source on GitHub
  • macOS 13+ universal binary
  • Apple Silicon & Intel
  • Zero telemetry. Ever.
  • Local-first markdown

The proof

Light on your Mac.
Heavy on what matters.

Raynote stays out of your way until inspiration hits — then it's there in under a second, using a fraction of the RAM your other apps hoard.

Idle RAM Barely there until you need it.
Hotkey to note Capture before the thought fades.
Telemetry Your notes never leave your Mac.
Open source MIT licensed. Free forever.

How it works

Three motions.
Zero friction.

Raynote is engineered like a system tool — not another tab to manage. Pin, capture, and move on. Your flow stays intact.

01 · Always visible

Pin what you can't afford to lose.

Frosted windows float above your IDE, your browser, your terminal. The AI prompt you're iterating on. The SQL query that won't compile. The idea that keeps pulling you back. One glance. Still there.

Raynote main window with sidebar and markdown editor

02 · Instant capture

Catch the thought before it's gone.

One global hotkey from anywhere — Slack, VS Code, Safari, your terminal. A frosted note appears on top. Type. Escape. Saved as markdown on disk. No menus. No loading spinner. No momentum lost.

Raynote floating capture window triggered by global hotkey

03 · Truly yours

Notes you own. Privacy you can trust.

Every note is a plain-text file on your Mac. Zero telemetry. Zero cloud. Sync with iCloud, Git, or Dropbox only if you want to — never because you have to. Built with Tauri for an efficient shell that navigates about twice as fast as Apple Notes when you're hopping between notes.

30MB footprint

A tenth of Apple Notes. A hundredth of Notion.

180+ languages

Syntax highlighting for every code fence you drop in.

Zero lock-in

Plain .md files in ~/Documents/Raynote. Yours forever.

MIT open source

Read every line. Fork it. Ship your own build.

Built for you

Whether you're shipping code
or shipping a company.

Raynote isn't for everyone. It's for people who feel the cost of friction — and refuse to pay it twice.

01 · Developers

For the code that's never quite done.

Drop in a code fence and get instant syntax highlighting. Pin the SQL query you keep tweaking. Stash the CLI commands you always forget. Raynote lives beside your IDE — not inside another tab.

  • Syntax highlighting for 180+ languages
  • One-click copy on every code block
  • Plain markdown, version-controllable with Git
  • Floating above VS Code, Xcode, and Terminal
02 · Keyboard-first

For hands that never leave the keys.

One global hotkey from any app. Navigate notes about twice as fast as Apple Notes. Train the muscle memory once — capture becomes invisible, like breathing.

  • Global hotkey from Slack, browser, or IDE
  • Instant sidebar search and navigation
  • AI prompt scratchpad for Claude & GPT
  • Hotkey-trigger any saved snippet
03 · Founders

For ideas that arrive uninvited.

Capture the insight before it's gone. Tag the customer quote. Draft the cold email. Raynote opens faster than your brain can talk you out of writing it down.

  • Always-on overlay above every window
  • Tag, search, and link notes in milliseconds
  • Export to Notion, Obsidian, or anywhere
  • Sync via iCloud, Dropbox, or Git — your call

Side by side

Your Mac deserves better
than a gigabyte of notes.

We measured Raynote against the apps most Mac users reach for. Same machine. Same workflow. Very different weight.

Raynote wins on every row that matters — memory, speed, always-on-top, and ownership of your data. No subscription. No cloud required.

Free & open source
Raynote
Apple Notes
Notion
Obsidian
Idle RAM
30 MB
~400 MB
~1.2 GB
~600 MB
Note navigation
~2× faster
Baseline
Varies
Varies
Always on top
Yes
No
No
Plugin
Frosted glass UI
Yes
No
No
No
Local plain-text
Yes
No
No
Yes
Open source
MIT
No
No
No
Price
Free
Free
$10/mo
$0–50

From the field

People who can't afford
slow tools.

Engineers, designers, founders, and PMs at the world's best teams — capturing thoughts, prompts, and ideas without slowing down their Macs.

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."
"I use it for meeting notes, dev logs, and morning pages. One hotkey, every time. Frictionless."
"The frosted overlay alone is worth it. It feels like the future of macOS productivity tools."

Get Raynote

Ready when you are.

Free forever. Open source under MIT. A universal binary for macOS 13 and newer — Apple Silicon and Intel. No account. No email. Just download and capture your next idea.

Download for macOS View source on GitHub

v1.0.4 · 8.2 MB · Universal binary · Notarized by Apple · April 15, 2026

FAQ

Good questions.

Everything worth knowing before you download — pricing, privacy, sync, and how Raynote compares to the apps you already have.

Raynote is 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. Built for developers and founders who can't afford to lose a thought to a slow app.
Yes. Raynote is 100% free and open source under the MIT license. No ads, no data selling, no 'pro' tier hiding the features you actually need. The app on raynote.sh is the same app we use every day.
Apple Notes is great for everyday jotting. Raynote is built for power users: global hotkeys, always-on-top frosted windows, plain markdown on disk, about 30MB of RAM versus Apple Notes' ~400MB, and navigation that feels about twice as fast when you're hopping between notes.
Every note lives as a plain markdown file in ~/Documents/Raynote on your Mac. Zero cloud, zero telemetry, zero analytics. Sync that folder with iCloud, Git, or Dropbox only if you choose to. Your data stays yours.
The core app is MIT licensed and will always be free. We may eventually offer an optional paid sync service for teams, but the desktop app you download today will never be paywalled.
Yes. Raynote ships as a universal binary for Apple Silicon (M1–M4) and Intel Macs running macOS 13 Ventura or newer.
It's one of the most popular use cases. Pin a floating note with your Claude or GPT prompts, iterate on them throughout the day, and copy with one click. Many users keep a prompt library open above their IDE all day.
If you want plain markdown files, global hotkeys, always-on-top windows, and an app that doesn't slow your Mac — yes. Raynote is the keyboard-first alternative Apple Notes was never built to be.
Download the .dmg from raynote.sh, drag Raynote.app into Applications, launch it, and grant Accessibility permission so the global hotkey works. The whole thing takes under a minute.

Stop losing
your best ideas.

Download Raynote — sticky notes that don't slow you down. Capture the next thought, prompt, or code snippet before it slips away.

Download for macOS — free

No sign-up. No email. No telemetry. Just a 30MB Mac app and your ideas.