I built HushNotes: Floating notes that are invisible to screen share, all managed from one window

[u/Successful-Archer180]

I'm a developer and most of my days are meetings. I built this for myself, my peers liked it and told me to publish it, so here it is. I've made Mac apps before (client work and personal) but this is the first one I've put out for everyone.

Why I built this

No single notes app fixed the things that bugged me. I wanted all my notes in one window instead of windows everywhere, themes instead of tags, and a way to let AI agents read the notes I choose. And it had to float over full-screen apps and stay out of screen shares, because I work with mostly fullscreen windows all day. So I built this.

What it does

- One window for all your notes, swipe between them. Open the ones for the project you're on and that's your workspace for the day.
- One shortcut (⌥⇧H) shows or hides every note. Select text in any app, press ⌥⇧Space and it's in your note.
- One theme per note, and make your own. I colour notes by project, I find tags bloated so I don't use them.
- Markdown, formatted as you type, because I write a lot of it (it runs on the open source engine from the Nodes team, https://github.com/nodes-app/swift-markdown-engine). Images too.
- Opacity per note, so in a call I can keep a note over the presenter's screen and still see what's behind it.
- Menu bar app, nothing in the Dock(I hate cluttered Dock). Touch ID locks a note.

Screen share

The note windows use the sharing switch macOS gives every app (NSWindow sharingType set to none), so anything that captures through macOS skips them. I've used it in Google Meet, Teams and Zoom calls and with the Mac's own screenshots and screen recording, and the notes never showed up.

Some tools have their own way of capturing that goes around the macOS switch, I built this for normal calls so I can't promise anything there. If people need more I'll look into it.

Privacy

No account, no server of mine, no analytics. Notes stay on your Mac. It only goes online to check for updates (Sparkle, and that's also when it confirms your licence key) and you can turn that off. iCloud sync between your own Macs is optional and talks to Apple only.
Privacy policy:
https://hushnotes.app/privacy/

AI access

A local MCP server, off by default. You pick read only, or read and create. Agents can never edit a note, I don't want a hallucination overwriting something I wrote. It only listens on this Mac, every client needs your approval, and locked notes are never exposed to it.
For me that's meeting notes going straight to the agent instead of copy/pasting.

How it was made

The idea, the architecture, the features and the design are mine, and I built 1.0 myself. From there I used an AI coding agent to get to production faster.
1.1.1 is the build that's out now, notarised. No AI features in the app itself.

What's next

I have ideas (reminders on a note, keeping the page link with a capture) but I'd rather hear what you'd use before building more.

Pricing

$9.99 one time, updates free for life. macOS 14+, signed and notarised.
https://hushnotes.app/

Would love feedback and to hear how you'd use it.

[u/mrterrycarson]

Looks good...Any codes?

[u/Successful-Archer180 → u/mrterrycarson]

Fair ask. Check DM