Untitled Notes App
Quick Note-Taking for macOS
Untitled Notes is a minimalist macOS app that's always one keystroke away. Inspired by RayCast Notes and Apple's Notes, it combines instant accessibility with thoughtfully revealed features for deeper note-taking sessions. This app is a collaborative effort between Harris McCullers who leads development and myself leading design.
Design Process
Untitled Notes prioritizes speed above all else. The application opens and closes with a keystroke and sits on top of a users' open windows. Taking these constraints into consideration I set out to build a minimalistic interface, letting details do the heavy lifting when it came to creating a delightful final product.
Design Decisions
Our vision for a note-taking app was deceptively simple: create an interface minimal enough for lightning-fast captures, yet powerful enough for deeper note-taking sessions. At the heart of our design philosophy was a commitment to reducing cognitive load—actively removing clutter from the note-taking space to help users focus on their current thoughts. This apparent simplicity, however, forced us to confront several challenging design decisions.
The first challenge was balancing novelty with familiarity in the interface. From the start, we knew we wanted users to begin with a clean slate while keeping their previous notes easily accessible. Drawing inspiration from physical notebooks, we designed a system where notes gracefully fade into history. Each time a user opens the app, their previous note moves into the history, presenting them with a clean space to write. The history pile remains just a scroll away–a deliberate choice based on the assumption that users typically want to retrieve recent notes rather than older ones.
Balancing minimalism with functionality required careful consideration of features like formatting and check lists. With our initial release targeting developers, we opted for markdown syntax over traditional formatting buttons–a natural choice for our audience's workflow. Following Apple Notes' convention, these formatting options are also accessible through a context menu for users who prefer visual interfaces.
Check lists posed a particularly intriguing problem: how could we maintain persistent reminders within an ephemeral note system? The solution expanded the app both literally and conceptually. Drawing inspiration from Things's sidebar, I designed a hidden drawer that displays reminders chronologically for seven days after creation. Users can toggle this drawer freely, allowing the app to adapt to their needs—from minimal to full-featured. This progressive disclosure approach lets the interface evolve naturally as users engage with the app.
Learnings
Designing my first native macOS application offered a fresh perspective on a familiar platform. What I took for granted as a daily Mac user became fascinating design decisions that required careful consideration. Working within Apple's Human Interface Guidelines while trying to innovate taught me to be more intentional about when to follow platform conventions and when to thoughtfully break them.
The project also challenged my assumptions about feature complexity. What initially seemed like simple requirements—"just add a checklist feature"—often revealed intricate design problems that touched the core user experience. These requirements taught me to better anticipate how seemingly small features can impact the broader system.
Most valuably, I learned that designing for speed doesn't always mean minimizing clicks or touches. Sometimes it means making an interface that feels effortless because it matches users' mental models and muscle memory. This insight continues to influence how I approach interaction design across all platforms.
Looking Forward
Early user feedback has shaped our current development priorities. We're expanding keyboard shortcuts to further streamline the capture process, exploring advanced text manipulation features, and continually refining the interaction model to better balance speed with functionality.