Stik — Free Open-Source Quick Capture Note App for Mac

Capture anything.
Instantly.

One click. A post-it appears. Type your thought. Close it. Back to work in under 3 seconds.

Free · Apple Silicon · Intel Mac?

What is Stik?

Stik is a free, open-source quick-capture note app for macOS. Press ⌘⇧S from anywhere on your Mac, and a floating post-it appears instantly. Type your thought, press Escape, and you're back to work in under 3 seconds. Notes are saved as plain markdown files in ~/Documents/Stik/ — no account, no cloud, no sync setup required. Built with Tauri and Rust for native performance. Stik features on-device AI for semantic search and smart folder suggestions, all running locally with zero data leaving your machine.

Unlike heavyweight note apps such as Notion, Obsidian, or Bear, Stik is designed for one thing: capturing fleeting thoughts before they disappear. It stays out of your way until you need it, then vanishes the moment you're done. Every note is a plain .md file you own forever — no proprietary formats, no database lock-in, no vendor dependency. Share folders with your team via git, sync across Macs with iCloud Drive, or simply keep everything local. Stik is the fastest path from thought to saved note on macOS.

Built for keyboard warriors

Every action is a shortcut away. No clicking, no hunting through menus.

⌘⇧S

Quick Capture

A floating post-it appears instantly, anywhere on your screen. Type your thought, press escape, and you're back to work in under 3 seconds.

✓ Works from any app
✓ Auto-saves as you type
✓ Full markdown support

Remember to fix the auth bug before demo

~/Stik/Inbox/✓ Saved

Select Folder

Type to search or create...

↑↓ navigateesc close

⌘⇧M

Folder Selector

A Spotlight-style picker appears. Type to filter folders, use arrow keys to navigate, Enter to select. Create new folders on the fly.

✓ Fuzzy search filtering
✓ Keyboard navigation
✓ Create folders inline

⌘⇧P

Search Everything

Full-text search across all your notes with AI-powered semantic results. Find notes by meaning, not just keywords.

✓ Real-time text + semantic results
✓ Search across all folders
✓ On-device AI, no cloud needed

Work2 hours ago

Remember to fix the auth bug before demo

IdeasYesterday

Debug auth flow with new tokens

Inbox3 days ago

Check OAuth bug reports

↑↓ navigate↵ open

esc close

TODO: Call Mike about the contract before 3pm

~/Stik/Inbox/

Pin to Screen

Keep important notes visible on your desktop. Pinned notes stay on top of all windows and persist across app restarts.

✓ Always on top
✓ Persists across restarts
✓ Drag anywhere

⌘⇧1-9

Custom Folder Shortcuts

Assign any folder to a number key. Jump directly to Work, Ideas, or any folder with a single shortcut.

12345

6789

1→Work

2→Ideas

3→Personal

4→Projects

Configure in Settings•9 customizable shortcuts

Smarter than a post-it

On-device AI that understands your notes. No cloud, no API keys, no privacy trade-offs.

Smart Folder Suggestions

Start typing and Stik suggests the right folder based on your note's content. One tap to accept, or keep writing in Inbox.

✓ Real-time suggestions while typing
✓ Learns from your existing notes
✓ Runs entirely on your Mac

New feature idea for the onboarding flow

~/Stik/Inbox/✦ AI suggestion

Semantic Search

Find notes by meaning, not just keywords. Search for "authentication" and find your note about "login security" — even if the word never appears.

✓ Hybrid text + AI-powered results
✓ Similarity scores on every match
✓ Entirely on-device, instant results

WorkAuth token refresh logic

Handle expired JWT tokens with silent refresh...

WorkLogin security checklist87%

Rate limiting, 2FA setup, session management...

IdeasPasswordless sign-in UX72%

Magic links vs passkeys, user friction study...

Note Embeddings

Every note gets a numeric fingerprint — a 512-dimension vector that captures its meaning. This powers both search and suggestions, built silently in the background.

✓ Built automatically in the background
✓ Apple NaturalLanguage on-device
✓ Only re-embeds when content changes

Embedding Index42 notes indexed

WorkSprint planning notes

Git Sharing

Share folders with your team via git. Notes are plain markdown — git handles the sync. No accounts, no server, no sync infrastructure.

✓ Automatic background sync
✓ Works with GitHub, GitLab, any remote
✓ No git knowledge required

● Work/meeting-notes.md

● Work/project-plan.md

+ meeting-notes.md2m ago

+ project-plan.md5m ago

Capture Streak

Track consecutive days of note-taking. Build the habit of capturing your thoughts daily.

On This Day

Resurface notes from the same date in past years. A daily moment of reflection.

1 year ago

Started learning Rust for the first time...

Share Anywhere

Copy notes as rich text for Slack, plain markdown for devs, or image snapshots for social.

Rich TextMarkdownImage

iCloud Sync

Notes live in ~/Documents. Enable iCloud Drive and every Mac stays in sync. Zero config, no account needed.

Stik vs Other Quick Capture Apps

See how Stik compares to popular note capture tools on the features that matter most.

Feature	Stik	Apple Quick Note	SideNotes	Drafts	Simplenote
Time to capture	<3 sec	~5 sec	~4 sec	~3 sec	~5 sec
Global keyboard shortcut	⌘⇧S	fn+Q	Customizable	Customizable	No
Plain markdown files	Yes	No	No	No	No
Local-first / no cloud required	Yes	Partial (iCloud)	Yes	No (iCloud)	No (cloud)
On-device AI search	Yes	No	No	No	No
Open source	Yes (MIT)	No	No	No	No
Free	Yes	Yes	$9.99	$4.99/mo	Yes
Git-based sharing	Yes	No	No	No	No

Stik leads in 7 of 8 categories

Who is Stik for?

Stik is built for people who value speed, privacy, and ownership of their data.

Developers

Markdown files you own, stored in plain text, versionable with git, and searchable with grep. Your notes are just files — no proprietary format, no lock-in.

✓ Plain .md files on disk
✓ Git-based sharing & version control
✓ Search with grep, ripgrep, or Stik AI

$ ls Work/

●sprint-retro.md

●auth-bug-notes.md

●api-design-v2.md

$ git log --oneline

a3f8d21 add sprint retro notes

7c1e4b9 capture auth bug hypothesis

Privacy-conscious users

Zero data leaves your Mac. No accounts, no telemetry, no cloud sync required. Your thoughts stay yours — stored locally in plain files only you can access.

✓ 100% local storage, zero cloud
✓ No account or sign-up required
✓ On-device AI — no data sent to servers

Data sent to servers

0 bytes

AI processing

On-device only

Storage location

~/Documents/Stik/

Your data never leaves this Mac

Keyboard power users

Every action has a shortcut. Capture, organize, search, and navigate without lifting your hands from the keyboard. Zero mouse required.

✓ Global shortcuts from any app
✓ Keyboard-driven folder navigation
✓ Custom shortcuts ⌘⇧1-9 for folders

Anyone who finds Notion/Obsidian/Bear too heavy

Stik isn't a knowledge base — it's a capture tool. Open in under a second, type your thought, close in two. No setup, no config, no learning curve.

✓ Sub-second launch time
✓ Zero configuration needed
✓ 8 MB app vs 200+ MB alternatives

App launch speed

Native Rust/Tauri·8 MB total·No Electron

Real-world use cases

From fleeting thoughts to structured workflows.

Capture a fleeting idea in <3 seconds

Without leaving your current app. Press ⌘⇧S, type, press Escape. Done.

Call Sarah about the proposal before Friday

just now✓ Saved

Quick code snippets and debugging notes

Paste a stack trace, jot a hypothesis, and keep coding. Find it later with semantic search.

TypeError in auth middleware → Check token refresh logic

2 min ago✓ Saved

Meeting action items

Without opening a full note app. Pop a post-it mid-call, list the TODOs, close it, stay focused.

Send mockups to Mike Schedule QA review Update Jira tickets

during standup✓ Saved

Daily standup notes organized by folder

Assign your Work folder to ⌘⇧1. Each morning, capture your standup notes in one shortcut.

Done: API integration Doing: Auth flow Blocked: Design review

today 9:15 AM✓ Saved

Personal journaling with semantic search

Write short daily reflections. Months later, search by meaning — find entries about ‘feeling energized.’

Today felt productive. Finally cracked the performance issue that’s been bugging me all week…

yesterday87% match for “motivation”

Frequently Asked Questions

Everything you need to know about Stik.

Yes, Stik is completely free. It is also open source under the MIT license. There are no premium tiers, no subscriptions, and no in-app purchases. You can view and contribute to the source code on GitHub.

No. Stik requires no account, no cloud service, and no sync setup. It works entirely offline and stores everything locally on your Mac. Your notes never leave your machine unless you choose to share a folder via git.

Notes are stored as plain markdown (.md) files in ~/Documents/Stik/ on your Mac. Each folder in Stik corresponds to a real folder on disk. You can open, edit, move, or back up your notes with any tool — they’re just files.

Stik saves all notes as plain Markdown (.md) files. This means your notes are future-proof, portable, and compatible with any text editor. There is no proprietary format or database lock-in.

Yes. Stik features on-device AI for semantic search (find notes by meaning, not just keywords) and smart folder suggestions (automatically suggests the right folder as you type). All AI processing runs locally on your Mac using Apple’s NaturalLanguage framework — zero data is sent to any server.

Stik is designed for sub-3-second capture. Press ⌘⇧S, type your thought, press Escape to close. The app launches instantly thanks to its native Rust/Tauri architecture — no Electron overhead, no web app loading times.

Yes, Stik is fully open source under the MIT license. The source code is available on GitHub at github.com/0xMassi/stik_app. Contributions, issues, and feature requests are welcome.

The global keyboard shortcut is ⌘⇧S (Command + Shift + S). This works from any application — a floating post-it window appears instantly. Other shortcuts include ⌘⇧M for folder selection, ⌘⇧P for search, and ⌘⇧1-9 for jumping directly to assigned folders.

Unlike SideNotes ($9.99) and Drafts ($4.99/mo), Stik is completely free and open source. Unlike Apple Quick Note and Drafts, Stik saves notes as plain markdown files you fully own. Unlike all three, Stik includes on-device AI semantic search and stores everything locally with no cloud dependency. Stik is the only open-source option with git-based sharing for team collaboration.

Capture anything.Instantly.