Pinned Notes
A scratchpad that opens over whatever you are doing, takes the thought, and gets out of the way. One keystroke from anywhere. No document, no folder to choose, no save.
Free to use. Pro unlocks recording, summarising and Notion export. macOS 13 or later, Apple silicon and Intel.
Maths as you type
Write guests: 12 on one line and cost per guest: 34 on the next,
and the line guests * cost per guest answers itself in the margin. Names can be
ordinary words with spaces in them, because that is how you would write it on paper. Change a
number and every line that depends on it changes with it.
Lists that keep their state
Type /x at the end of a line to tick it off. Start a line with #
to make it a heading. What is on disk stays plain text you could open in any editor, so a
ticked item is still a readable line rather than a database row.
Where it lives
In the Dock
A normal window with a normal Dock icon, if that is how you keep track of things.
Or in the menu bar
Turn the Dock icon off and it becomes a menu bar app: notes open in a popover under the icon. The keyboard shortcut works either way.
Above everything
It can float over other windows while you copy something across, or hide the moment you click another app.
Nothing to save
The note is written as you type it. There is no unsaved state to lose and no dialogue asking you about it.
The AI runs on your Mac
Record a thought and have it transcribed. Speech recognition runs on your own machine, not on a server.
Summarise a long note, tidy it up, or give it a title. On a Mac running macOS 26 this uses Apple Intelligence and runs on device. Below macOS 26 that model does not exist, and the app says so rather than quietly sending your note somewhere.
You can point it at a model you host yourself instead. Anything speaking the OpenAI chat format works, including Ollama or llama.cpp on your own machine, which needs no key. Leave the settings empty and nothing is sent anywhere.
What we can see: nothing. Pinned Notes has no account, no sign-in and no analytics. The only network requests it ever makes are the ones you configure yourself: your own AI endpoint, and Notion.
Send it to Notion
Push a finished note to a Notion page or a database in one step, with your own integration token. It is off until you set it up, and it is the only integration that leaves your Mac.
Create an integration at notion.so/my-integrations, then open the page or database in Notion, choose Connections, and add it. Without that last step Notion answers 404 for a page that plainly exists.
Pro
Writing notes, the maths, the lists and every placement option are free and stay free. Recording with transcription, summarising, and Notion export are Pro. It is a subscription through the App Store, so it is cancelled the same way everything else there is.
The rest of the family
Pinned: Network Monitor puts your network, processor, memory and disk in the menu bar. Pinned Tools snaps windows from the keyboard. Pinned Type finishes your sentences with a model running on your own Mac.