Average RAM. Always on.
Open source · MIT · 12.4k★ on GitHub
The fastest sticky notes
The fastest sticky notes
ever built for macOS.
Raynote is the lightweight, always-on macOS sticky notes app for power users. About 30MB RAM. Built with Tauri for an efficient shell: about twice as fast as Apple Notes when you're navigating around the app. Instant capture for thoughts, AI prompts, and your next billion dollar idea. Built for developers and founders who think faster than their apps.
Raynote performance stats: 30MB RAM, sub-60ms keystroke latency, 0ms cloud delay, 100% open source
Cloud sync delay. It's local.
Open source. Forever.
Features
Everything a macOS notes app should be.
Nothing it shouldn't.
Raynote is engineered like a system tool, not a productivity app. Built with Tauri for an efficient shell, sub-second capture, always-on-top frosted windows, markdown-on-disk, and about 30MB of RAM that stays out of your way until you need it.
Floating, frosted, always on top
Raynote windows blur the desktop with macOS vibrancy. Pin the AI prompt you're iterating on. Pin the SQL query you keep tweaking. Pin the bug you can't solve. Pin the idea that won't let go. Always above your IDE, always one glance away.
Capture in under one second with a global hotkey
Press your global hotkey from anywhere (Slack, VS Code, your terminal, your browser) and a frosted Raynote sticky note appears on top of every window. Type. Hit escape. It's saved as plain markdown to disk. No menus, no clicks, no friction.
30MB always-on. The lightest notes app on macOS.
Apple Notes uses ~400MB. Notion eats over a gigabyte. Raynote sits in your menu bar at 30MB of idle RAM and never touches your MacBook battery.
Markdown-native, plain-text on disk
Code fences, lists, tables, links: every Markdown feature you know. Each note is a plain
.md file in ~/Documents/Raynote. No proprietary database. No lock-in.
Ever.
Built with Tauri
Raynote uses a compact Tauri shell so it stays efficient with memory and feels quick when you're hopping between notes (about twice as fast as Apple Notes for navigation around the app).
Local-first & private (zero cloud)
Zero telemetry. Zero analytics. Zero cloud. Notes live as plain text in
~/Documents/Raynote. Sync with iCloud Drive, Git, Dropbox, or Syncthing only if
you choose to.
Open source under MIT
Read every line of code on GitHub. Fork it. Send a pull request. Self-host the sync server. Built in public, audited by the community, free forever.
For power users
If you live in your keyboard,
Raynote was made for you.
Whether you're a senior engineer, a keyboard-first power user, or a founder racing to write down the idea before it disappears, Raynote is the macOS sticky notes app built around your workflow.
Raynote for macOS developers
Drop in a code fence and get instant syntax highlighting in 180+ languages. Pin the SQL query you keep tweaking. Stash the CLI commands you can never remember. Raynote stays out of your tabs and out of your way.
- Syntax highlighting for 180+ languages
- Inline shell command snippets
- One-click copy on every code block
- Plain Markdown files, version-controllable with Git
Raynote for keyboard-first workflows
Raynote lives behind one global hotkey. Move through your notes about twice as fast as Apple Notes when you're hopping between them. Train muscle memory once and capture gets invisible.
- Global hotkey from any app
- Quick sidebar search and navigation
- AI prompt scratchpad for Claude & GPT
- Hotkey-trigger any saved snippet
Raynote for founders & builders
Capture the idea before it's gone. Tag the customer feedback. Draft the cold email. Raynote opens faster than your brain can talk itself out of writing it down.
- Always-on capture overlay above every app
- Tag, search, and link notes in milliseconds
- Export to Notion, Obsidian, or anywhere
- iCloud, Dropbox, or Git sync (your choice)
The math
Raynote vs. Apple Notes vs. Notion vs. Obsidian.
We benchmarked Raynote against the four most-used macOS notes apps in 2026: RAM, note navigation speed, always-on-top behavior, plain-text fidelity, and price. Raynote wins on every spec.
Raynote
Apple Notes
Notion
Obsidian
Idle RAM
30 MB
~400 MB
~1.2 GB
~600 MB
Navigate notes vs Apple Notes
~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
Loved by power users
Built for the way you actually work.
Engineers, designers, founders, and PMs at the world's best teams use Raynote every day to capture thoughts, AI prompts, code snippets, 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."
Mira Chen Staff engineer · Vercel
"I keep my AI prompts pinned as a floating note. It's the productivity hack I didn't know I needed."
Daniel Kovac Founder · Mealclub
"Finally a notes app that respects my keyboard: a one-second capture loop from anywhere."
Aiyana Reeve Principal · YC W26
"30MB. Read that again. Not 300, not 3000. Thirty. It's how all macOS apps should be built."
Tomás Vidal Performance lead · Cloudflare
"I use it for meeting notes, dev logs, and morning pages. One hotkey, every time. Frictionless."
Priya Anand PM · Linear
"The frosted overlay alone is worth it. It feels like the future of macOS productivity tools."
Marc Steiner Designer · Stripe
Download Raynote for macOS: free & open source.
Free forever. Open source under MIT. Universal binary for macOS 13 Ventura and newer on Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3, M4) and Intel.
v1.0.4 · 8.2 MB · Universal binary · Notarized by Apple · Released April 15, 2026
FAQ
Questions about Raynote, answered.
Everything you need to know about Raynote: pricing, privacy, sync, supported Macs, and how it compares to Apple Notes, Notion, and Obsidian.
Raynote is an ultra-lightweight macOS sticky notes app built with Tauri that runs always-on in about 30MB of RAM. It's built for developers and founders who need instant capture for thoughts, AI prompts, and ideas without a Notion-sized app eating their battery. It's always there for your next billion dollar idea.
Yes. Raynote is 100% free and 100% open source under the MIT license. We don't sell your data, we don't run ads, and we don't have a 'pro' tier. The app you download from raynote.sh is the app we use ourselves every day.
Apple Notes is a great consumer app. Raynote is a power-user tool: a lean Tauri app that's quite efficient with memory, about twice as fast as Apple Notes when you're hopping between notes and folders, uses far less RAM, supports global hotkeys, stores notes as plain markdown, and floats on top with frosted glass. Always there for your next billion dollar idea.
All notes are stored as plain markdown files in
~/Documents/Raynote on your Mac. There is no cloud, no telemetry, and no analytics. You can sync that folder yourself via iCloud, Dropbox, Git, or Syncthing. You always own your data.Forever. 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 have today will never be paywalled.
Yes. Raynote ships as a universal binary and runs natively on Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3, M4) and Intel Macs running macOS 13 Ventura or newer.
That's one of the most common use cases. Pin a floating note with your favorite Claude or GPT prompts, iterate on them, and copy them with one click. Many of our users keep a 'prompt library' Raynote window open all day.
Yes. Raynote is built specifically as a lightweight, keyboard-first alternative to Apple Notes for people who want plain markdown files, global hotkeys, always-on-top windows, and zero cloud lock-in.
Download the universal .dmg from raynote.sh, drag Raynote.app into /Applications, launch it, and grant Accessibility permission so the global hotkey works. The whole flow takes under 60 seconds.
Stop losing
your best ideas.
Download Raynote for macOS, the fastest sticky notes app we ship for Mac, and capture the next idea, AI prompt, or code snippet in under a second.
Download for macOS (free)