SideNotes 1.6.6 — Mac version

SideNotes is a Mac app that keeps your notes in a panel tucked to one side of the screen, ready when you need them.

Edge capture — grab text, links, tasks or snippets without leaving the window you are in.

iCloud sync — notes follow you across your Macs with no extra setup.

Task checkboxes — turn a plain note into a small to-do list.

Custom folders — group notes your way instead of one long pile.

Code and images — store more than words; snippets and screenshots sit fine in a note.

Keyboard shortcuts — show or hide the panel without reaching for the mouse.

Day one: leave it pinned until the shortcut feels automatic

Spend the first day just leaving it open. Pin it to whichever side feels less cluttered — most people settle on the right if they read left-to-right, but try both. The muscle memory for the shortcut takes a day or two, so tape a sticky note to your monitor with the key combo until it sticks.

A few things worth doing early:

• Make one folder called inbox for anything you grab in a hurry. Triage it later.
• Pick a color for quick-spotting — yellow for reminders, blue for reference, whatever clicks.
• Drop the panel width to about a third of the screen. Full-width defeats the point.
• If you keep code snippets, turn on monospace for those notes straight away. It saves reformatting later.

One small gotcha: if you have used other note-takers that live in a full window, your instinct will be to switch into SideNotes. Try not to. The panel works best when you treat it like a scratchpad that lives beside your work, not a destination you visit.

Built for interrupted days full of grab-and-keep fragments

SideNotes suits people whose day is full of small interruptions that carry useful information — a link from a message, a quick idea during a call, a line of config you know you will need again. Programmers storing snippets, writers collecting quotes, support staff who reuse text blocks, anyone juggling research across browser tabs. The panel format means you capture the thing and carry on.

It is less natural for long-form writing or project planning. If your notes grow into multi-page documents, you will probably outgrow the side panel. But for the kind of note that takes three lines and saves ten minutes of searching, it fits.

Users who keep a Mac on a single small screen — a 13-inch laptop, for instance — may find the panel cramped. An external monitor helps, though the app is still usable at laptop scale if you keep notes short. People who already live in Apple Notes or a full-screen outliner sometimes take a few days to adjust; the side-docked habit is a different mental model.

Workflow: collecting research for a repair guide

Imagine you are writing a fix-it guide for a bicycle hub. You have manufacturer pages open, a forum thread with torque specs, and a video paused at the cutaway diagram. Normally you would juggle tabs, a text file and screenshots. Here is one way with SideNotes.

1. Set the panel to the right edge at about 30 percent width. Open a folder called hub guide.
2. Highlight the torque numbers from the forum. Hit the shortcut to grab them — they land as a new note. Tag it yellow and add a checkbox for “confirm NM values with Shimano doc”.
3. Drag the cutaway screenshot from the video frame into a note. The image sits inline. Add a caption underneath with the bearing code you spotted.
4. As you read the manufacturer page, copy-paste two short warnings about grease type. Each becomes its own note. Color them red so they stand out later when you draft the guide.
5. Before closing up, skim the folder. Reorder the notes by dragging — parts list at the top, warnings next, reference links last. The folder is now a tidy brief you can work from in your writing app.

Nothing left a browser tab. Nothing got lost in a catch-all document. The panel stayed visible the whole time, so you could glance at earlier notes while still reading the source material. That is the rhythm the app is built for.

Dropshare sharing — send a note out through Dropshare when that is your workflow.

• Release 1.6.6, dated 2026-09-21.

• macOS 13 or newer
• Apple Silicon or Intel Mac