EdgeNoted

A lightweight, always-available macOS companion for your Apple Notes and Apple Reminders. EdgeNoted slides in from the edge of your screen, lets you view and edit a single note instantly, and hides again — no app switching.

What it does

• Always-on-top edge panel. Slides in from the left, right, or bottom edge and stays above other apps, full-screen apps, and Stage Manager (.fullScreenAuxiliary window behavior).
• Three ways to invoke it.
  • Global keyboard shortcut (default ⌃⇧N, configurable)
  • Click the thin "Open Bar" strip at the screen edge
  • Hot Side: touch the chosen screen edge with the mouse
• Apple Notes, one-way writes (pull on demand). EdgeNoted does not store your notes. It lists your folders and notes, opens one note at a time, and writes your edits straight back to Apple Notes. Changes made in Apple Notes are pulled in once at startup and whenever you press the sync button in the panel; if you are editing when the remote note changes, you choose Keep Mine / Take Theirs / Open in Notes — nothing is overwritten silently.
• Apple Reminders. Browse lists, view/create/edit/complete reminders, set due dates and priorities, and quick-capture new ones. A horizon control in the panel header widens the view from overdue + due today out to overdue + 30 days, or everything.
• Themes: choose built-in themes or create your own.
• Extras: color-code preview (#rrggbb/#rgb swatches), interactive checklists (- [ ] / - [x]).
• Keyboard-first: ⌘N new note, Esc hide, all actions keyboard-accessible.
• Quit built in. No Dock or menu bar icon (by design), so quitting is explicit: the panel's power button or Settings > General > Quit EdgeNoted. Unsaved edits are flushed to Apple Notes first.
• File logging. Diagnostics are written to rolling files in ~/Library/Logs/EdgeNoted/ (EdgeNoted.log rotating to EdgeNoted-1.log … EdgeNoted-5.log at ~1 MB each). Note bodies, titles, and reminder contents are never logged.

Limitations (by design)

Apple Notes only exposes plain text through AppleScript. Therefore:

• Notes containing rich formatting/attachments are shown read-only with an explicit "Convert to plain text" opt-in (conversion is destructive).
• Images and attachments inside notes cannot be read or written by EdgeNoted.
• Reordering inside Apple Notes itself is not supported; order lives locally.
• This integration requires the Automation permission: the first time you use the panel, macOS asks for access to control "Notes" and "Reminders" (System Settings > Privacy & Security > Automation).

EdgeNoted is not sandboxed (the app-sandbox entitlement was removed). It must drive other apps through Apple Events, and the sandbox prevented its AppleScript helper from launching Notes/Reminders (-600) and blocked writes to ~/Library/Logs. As a utility that can never be distributed on the Mac App Store anyway, a non-sandboxed build is the correct trade-off.

Build & run (Command Line Tools only, no Xcode required)

Only the Xcode Command Line Tools are needed (xcode-select --install) — full Xcode is not required. Earlier builds depended on SwiftData, whose @Model/#Predicate macros ship only inside the full Xcode app; the local metadata store now persists to a plain JSON file instead, so any modern Swift toolchain can build it. The app icon is generated with sips + iconutil rather than Xcode's actool, and xcrun is not required at all.

make build       # compile with SwiftPM + create Build/EdgeNoted.app (signed)
make run         # build (if needed) and launch the app
make install     # build + install into ~/Applications (or double-click install.command)

First launch after this change starts with fresh local metadata (folders’ ordering, pins, colors). Nothing stored in Apple Notes is affected — Apple Notes remains the only source of note content.

Backing up your notes

make backup-notes          # or: bash Scripts/backup-notes.sh

Backs up every Apple Notes note to a timestamped folder under ~/Documents/EdgeNoted Backup/backup-<timestamp>/:

• The folder structure is mirrored (<Folder>/<Note>.html), including nested folders; notes outside any folder land in No Folder/.
• Each note is saved as its raw HTML body (the most faithful restore format) with deduplication, safe file names, and collision handling.
• A manifest.tsv lists folder, name, id, and file path for every note.
• It is read-only on Apple Notes — it only writes inside the backup folder.

Local-only, sensitive. This backup contains your complete Notes content in plaintext. Never commit, upload, sync, or share it; the script refuses to run inside the repository to prevent accidental commits. Delete old backup-* folders when no longer needed.

Common tasks

Or step by step:

swift build -c release
bash Scripts/build-app.sh
open "Build/EdgeNoted.app"

make test runs the full suite via SwiftPM — no Xcode required.

First-time setup

brew install swiftlint periphery pre-commit
pre-commit install

Common tasks

make build       # compile with SwiftPM + create .app bundle
make run         # build and launch the app
make backup-notes # back up all Apple Notes to ~/Documents/EdgeNoted Backup
make format      # auto-format all Swift files
make lint        # run SwiftLint syntax rules (--strict)
make dead-code   # scan every SwiftPM target for unused declarations (Periphery)
make test        # run unit tests via SwiftPM
make precommit   # format + lint + dead-code + test

Architecture notes

EdgeNoted/
├── App/            # App entry, AppState hub, ApplicationCoordinator (panel/hotkey wiring)
├── Windowing/      # Edge panel, Open Bar, Hot Side monitor, Carbon global hotkey
├── Integrations/   # AppleScript executor + Notes/Reminders services (protocols + AppleScript + fakes)
├── Sync/           # NoteDraftSync state machine + Debouncer
├── Persistence/    # SwiftData local metadata
├── Features/       # Panel, Notes, Reminders, Settings views
├── DesignSystem/   # Themes, hex color parsing
└── Utilities/      # Note body classifier + renderer (checklists, hex chips)

Key design decisions:

• AppleScript bridge is safe by construction. The script is a single constant string; all user data is passed as positional argv arguments, so note text is never interpolated into AppleScript source. Structured results come back as JSON.
• Apple Notes stays the source of truth. Only opaque IDs and presentation preferences are stored locally (SwiftData). Note bodies are never persisted.
• Conflict-safe sync. Local edits are debounced and written back; a pull (startup or the panel's sync button) that observes a remote change while edits are pending raises a conflict the user resolves explicitly.
• Hermetic test mode. Launch with -UITestFakeServices YES and the app uses in-memory fake Notes/Reminders services and disables real automation.

Manual acceptance checklist

After building, verify with disposable content:

1. First launch: approve the automation prompt for Notes and Reminders.
2. Hotkey, Open Bar click, and Hot Side each show/hide the panel exactly once.
3. Create/edit a text-only note in EdgeNoted and confirm it in Apple Notes; edit the same note in Notes and confirm the change is adopted after pressing the sync button (or a conflict banner appears if you were editing).
4. Create/edit/complete a reminder and set a due date and priority.
5. Export a note as a PNG and confirm the image renders.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.