After Thought

Quick notes for your Mac, with Notion-style blocks.
Open-source quick notes for productive people.

after-thought.dev

Features

• Always one shortcut away. ⌘⇧Space opens your last note from anywhere; press it again to hide.
• Notion-style blocks. Type / for headings, checklists, bullet and numbered lists, quotes, code blocks, and more.
• Folders. A resizable sidebar with folders; drag notes between them.
• Quick switcher. ⌘P to search every note.
• Built for your Mac. A menu bar app with a Liquid Glass window that stays put when you click away, fading back so it's out of your way.
• Hand notes to Claude. Right-click a note or folder and choose Copy for Claude to paste it as a .md attachment.
• Your notes, as files. Optionally keep a Markdown copy of every note in a folder you choose, with real folders to match.

Install

There's no download yet, so build it from source. You need:

• macOS 26 (it's only been tested there so far; older versions should get a plain blurred window instead of Liquid Glass, but that hasn't been tried)
• Xcode with the macOS 26 SDK
• Node.js 20.19 or newer

git clone https://github.com/dizzyjaguar/after-thought.git
cd after-thought
./scripts/build.sh
open build/after-thought.app

After Thought lives in the menu bar (look for ✦); there's no Dock icon. To start it when you log in, choose Launch at Login from that menu.

Shortcuts

Keys	What it does
⌘⇧Space	Show or hide the window, opening your last note
⌃⌥N	New note, from anywhere
/	Block menu: headings, lists, checklists, code, …
⌘T or ⌘N	New note
⌘P	Search notes (⌘⌫ deletes the selected one)
⌘\	Show or hide the sidebar
⌘⇧C	Copy the open note for Claude
⌘Z / ⌘⇧Z	Undo / redo
esc	Hide the window

In the sidebar, right-click a note or folder, or use its ⋮ button, to copy, rename, or delete it.

Where your notes live

• Notes are saved in ~/Library/Application Support/after-thought/.
• Markdown copy (optional): menu bar ✦ → Markdown Copy → Keep a Markdown Copy…, then pick a folder. After Thought keeps After Thought/<Folder>/<Note>.md up to date as you type. The copy is one way: edit your notes in the app, since changes made to the .md files get replaced.

Development

The code lives in these folders:

Folder	What's inside
web/	The editor: React + BlockNote, built with Vite
mac/	The app: Swift/AppKit for the window, hotkeys, menu bar, and saving notes
scripts/build.sh	Builds both and puts them together into build/after-thought.app
site/	The landing page at after-thought.dev (Vite + React, hosted on Cloudflare). Run it with npm --prefix site run dev

To work on the editor with live reload, run the dev server and point the app at it:

npm --prefix web install
npm --prefix web run dev
AFTER_THOUGHT_DEV_URL=http://localhost:5173 build/after-thought.app/Contents/MacOS/AfterThought

The editor also runs on its own in a browser at http://localhost:5173, saving to the browser's storage instead of the Mac.

Tests

npm --prefix web test      # editor: titles, copying for Claude, browser storage
swift test --package-path mac   # app: saving notes and folders, the Markdown copy

Commits follow Conventional Commits (feat:, fix:, chore:, …).

Credits

• Editor: BlockNote
• Menu bar icon: SF Symbols

License

MIT