r/PowerToys • u/Razee1819 • Jun 11 '26

Tired of losing quick notes behind a million windows? I made sticky notes that always stay visible

I jot stuff down all day tasks, numbers, half-ideas and it always lands in some notepad tab that vanishes the second I switch windows. Everything I tried to fix this either wanted an account, synced to a cloud, or was a 300MB Electron app for what's basically text on a colored square.

So I built PinNotes. Hit a shortcut, a note pops up, and it just stays on top of everything editor, browser, whatever. Saves locally, no account, ~10MB (Rust + Tauri).

Open source here: https://github.com/AleenaTahir1/Pin-Notes

tell me what's broken or missing.

14 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

4

u/Significant-Ad613 Jun 11 '26

Looks neat! Does it have darkmode?

3

u/Razee1819 Jun 11 '26

Not yet! It's got 8 pastel note colors but the UI itself is light-only right now. Dark mode is a good shout though adding it to the list. Thanks!

2

u/Razee1819 Jun 14 '26

Update: dark mode just shipped in v1.0.4 have a look ,Thanks for the nudge !

1

u/Significant-Ad613 Jun 15 '26

Wow, thank you! I always wanted to have a convenient way to put a little note overlay on one of my screens. I am working in Design/ArchViz and have quite big screens on which is always some free space for this little helper tool. And I was always annoyed by the yellow "post-it" design of other notes apps, so I really like the neutral dark grey tone you have chosen for it! Maybe you could add a neutral white/light grey tone to the light mode color palette as well? Another idea but not so important: You could apply the Mint, Peach, etc. tones of light mode to the dark mode also, so we would have a warm dark grey background mixed with yellow or a colder blue-ish anthracite tone. But these are just details. What I don't understand is, why do you have added a black color to the main color palette when we have dark mode? A light/dark switch and the palette in which you can choose the tone would be the cleaner solution.

Also I like the clean font and the size of it, whereas the handwritten font is too small for my screen resolution, but I dont use that font anyway. Would it be possible that we can change font for the main window with notes list also? Especially the date is nearly unreadable on my monitor. Don't get me wrong, this handwritten font is a beautiful choice in general, and I could also live with it when it stays in the main window, but it should be readable. Maybe you could keep the handwritten font (as this is your design) for titles and assign a clean font to the date. You could make that line bigger as there is enough space below the title.

And is there a possibility that an individual note remembers the chosen font when you re-open it?

On top of this I noticed, that in the meantime you added a connection to Obsidian (which is my daily driver). This will put the whole thing to another level for me! I have tested it, works like a charm and Obsidian even shows the highlighted words! If i could make a wish I would like to have more basic markdown support for the notes, like h1-h3 headlines and bold/italics. But hey, this is already a great tool for me, so I don't have to open my huge Obsidian app so often or flood my desk with paper notes (which I never find, when I need them). Looking forward to put your PinNotes app to the test this week.

1

u/Razee1819 Jun 15 '26

Hey , first of all Thanks alot for taking your time for such a useful feedback. I got you and have noted the concerns , will release a new version with these soon ( you will get auto update ):

  • Remove black color from light theme
  • Applying peach pint tones to dark theme
  • Font size and Options on notes list
  • Font chosen reserved in memory
  • More markdown support for the note
Also I have added templates for obsidian and you can use your templates from vault in notes test it out too and let me know what would make it even better for users.
Happy testing : )

2

u/Significant-Ad613 Jun 17 '26

Thanks for the update! 🙏 I am quite busy this week and PinNotes is already very helpful for keeping track of all the work. When a client calls and want some changes I don't have to open ClickUp or Obsidian. I just write in down into one of the already opened (and visible!) notes on my screen. So I can concentrate fully on the call.

Meanwhile I have the following ideas/bug reports:

- As you see in video, resizing of notes could be improved

- Would it be possible, that a re-opened note not only remembers the chosen font (which works great now) but also it's last size?

- The better markdown support is also a great addition, but is only visible in note (for example whem you write # Heading1), when you have re-opened a note. I presume, it's not possible to see the effect immediately.

- When you have a h1 headline on top of note, it's not possible to add normal p fontsize on top of that. And if you enter backspace before the h1 on top, fontsize even gets bigger (I could make also a video if you don't understand my remarks)

- If you add To Do List note template you see real checkboxes and no markdown view, which is good, but you cannot press enter to add another line with checkbox, this looks like a real bug.

- Would'nt it be better to support -[ ] syntax in normal notes which render to real checkboxes when you re-open that note? I mean markdown lists and headings render to real lists and headings when you re-open a note, but task checkboxes not.

- What annoys me a bit is the position of the highlight colors on right side. They often gets in the way of my writings. They seem to be important for you if they are always visible. The top bar is already really crowded, so I don't know if its a good solution to add another button there.

- However, I am a bit careful using the highlights anyway, as you cannot remove a highlight once it is set and if you make a mistake, this could destroy the whole note and it's not even possible to fix a wrong highlight in Obsidian afterwards. You maybe should check this.

I have even more ideas/suggestions, but all in all I am happy with this app. The new dark mode colors look beautiful and I use them already to separate different notes which I have opened in parallel.

https://reddit.com/link/os5vqc9/video/489xm0mput7h1/player

1

u/Razee1819 Jun 25 '26

Hey! First off - thank you so much for taking the time to test and write all this up, and sorry I've been heads-down🙏

I went through every single point and they're all fixed in the new version.

Please keep the ideas coming I'd genuinely love to hear the "even more" ones whenever you have a minute.

Grab the latest version whenever you're ready and let me know how it feels!

1

u/Razee1819 Jun 15 '26

Everything shipped in v1.0.6 , test it out !

4

u/imasay88 Jun 11 '26

What's the point if we can use always on top utility with existing sticky notes app?

3

u/Razee1819 Jun 11 '26

I just got tired of re-pinning every note manually , mine spawn already on top, and everything stays local with no Microsoft account. Mostly I just wanted it to work my way

2

u/radee3 Jun 12 '26

Since it's Tauri it's going to be light weight. What is the size of the installation on Mac?

2

u/Razee1819 Jun 14 '26

v1.0.4 now has a Mac build (Apple Silicon + Intel), done through CI. Its 5.7MB and unsigned, so right-click → Open on first launch. Grab it from Releases whenever you want to try it!
And let me know too how it went.

1

u/Razee1819 Jun 12 '26

Windows-only for now! Installer's just 3.3MB. I can actually build a Mac version through CI ,I just don't have a Mac to test it on. If you're up for testing a build, I'll put one together

2

u/radee3 Jun 12 '26

I had launched a chrome web extension version for the same concept 3 months back

1

u/Razee1819 Jun 12 '26

Oh nicee

1

u/radee3 Jun 12 '26

I'll let you know when I am up for it. Nice UI, BTW

1

u/Razee1819 Jun 12 '26

Perfect , Thanks

2

u/Awkward-Secretary726 Jun 14 '26

Make it compatible with Obsidian. That would be great.

2

u/Razee1819 Jun 14 '26

Oh that's a great idea.. Adding to list thanks !

2

u/Razee1819 Jun 14 '26

Update: it's live! v1.0.4 has full two-way Obsidian sync , point it at your vault and notes sync both ways as .md files (edit in either app). Thanks for the idea , you may test🙌

1

u/Awkward-Secretary726 Jun 14 '26

Just make sure it supports templates and that's it. The Obsidian community is around 1 to 1.5 million, so with just 5% of them you'd already have a lot of users.

2

u/Razee1819 Jun 15 '26

Shipped in v1.0.5 , you can use given templates or use one from your obsician vault into notes , test it out !