Notes for Mac with nothing to file.
One keystroke opens a box wherever you are. Type or speak the thought, and it is out of your head and into a memory that already knows who and what it is about.
Stilou Notes is a quick-capture note app for macOS. One keystroke opens a small box over whatever app you are in — type or speak the thought, press return, and it is banked. There are no folders, tags or notebooks to pick, because each note links itself to the people and projects it mentions and stays searchable on your Mac.
What is a quick capture note app?
A quick capture app exists to shorten the distance between having a thought and keeping it. The idea is old and simple: the moment writing something down requires you to open an app, choose where it belongs and give it a title, most people do not write it down. So the category optimises for one thing — a keystroke that takes you from anywhere to a blank line, and back again.
macOS already has two decent answers. Apple Notes is free, syncs across your devices, and handles drawings, tables, attachments and shared notes better than any small utility will. Drafts built a following by inverting the flow entirely — every capture starts in the same blank note, and you decide afterwards where it goes. Both are good tools, and if what you need is a tidy notebook you can flip through, either one will do the job.
What neither solves is the second half of the problem. Capture is easy; retrieval is where notes die. After a few hundred entries you have a folder tree you no longer trust, notes filed under a heading that made sense in March, and a search box that only finds the words you happened to use. The filing you did at capture time was a guess about how future-you would look for it, and future-you almost never guesses the same way.
Stilou takes the filing step out. A note is not put somewhere — it is read, and connected to the people, clients and projects it mentions, alongside everything else you captured about them: dictations, screenshots, meetings, threads. You do not remember which note the thought was in. You ask about the client, and the thought is there with the rest of the story.
How to capture a note on a Mac with Stilou
Four steps, and after the first one you never think about it again.
- Install Stilou and open the Notes hotkey settingsDownload the app, drag it to Applications, and open it. The capture hotkey is set on first run; you can change it to whatever your hands already reach for.
- Hit the hotkey from wherever you areA small box appears over the app you are in — a browser, a call, a spreadsheet, a terminal. You do not switch windows and you do not lose your place.
- Type it, or hold to speak itWrite the thought in whatever half-sentence form it arrived in. If your hands are busy or the thought is long, dictate it instead and let it come out as finished text.
- Press return and carry onThe box closes and the note is banked. Stilou reads it and links it to the people and projects it mentions. There is no folder to choose and no tag to invent.
Tip. Do not tidy the note. Half a sentence and a name is enough — the links come from what you wrote, not from how neatly you wrote it, and a note you had to phrase carefully is a note you would not have made.
What you get for not filing anything
Capture without leaving the app you are in.
The box opens over your current window and closes again on return. No app switch, no new tab, no waiting for a note app to load a sidebar you did not ask for.
Speak it when typing would be slower.
The same box takes dictation. Long thoughts, ones you would not have bothered typing, arrive as punctuated text rather than as a voice memo you will never listen to.
It links itself to what it is about.
Names, clients and projects mentioned in the note become the connections. The note joins everything else you have captured about them instead of sitting in a folder of its own.
Ask for it the way you remember it.
"That thing I noted about the pricing tiers" is a workable search here, because retrieval runs on meaning and connection rather than on you recalling the exact phrase you typed.
Notes resurface when the topic does.
When a project or a person comes up again — in a meeting, in a thread, in a question you ask Neo — the notes you made about them are already in scope. You do not have to go looking.
Private mode needs no network.
Notes are written to a local index on your own disk. In Private mode nothing leaves the Mac to make a note work, and the egress counter in the app stays at zero.
Stilou vs Apple Notes
Apple Notes is free, already installed and syncs to your phone, so the honest question is what a second note app is actually for.
| Stilou | Apple Notes | |
|---|---|---|
| Capture from any app | Global hotkey, box over your window | Open the app, or use a quick note corner |
| Filing | None — notes link themselves | Folders, tags and pinning, by you |
| Dictation built in | Yes, in the same box | System dictation |
| Search | By meaning and connection | By keyword |
| Rich notes — drawings, tables, attachments | Plain text, deliberately | Yes, and better than most |
| iPhone and iPad | No — macOS only | Yes, synced across devices |
| Connected to meetings, screenshots and threads | Yes, in one brain | No, notes stand alone |
| Price | Free tier, paid plans for more | Free |
If you want a notebook you can browse, sketch in, share with family and read on your phone in a queue, keep Apple Notes — Stilou is not trying to replace that and does not sync to iOS. The case here is narrower: thoughts you have while working, that you want back later without having decided in advance where they belong. Plenty of people run both.
Where your notes actually live
On your Mac. Notes are stored and indexed locally, and the connections between them are computed from your own files rather than assembled on a server somewhere.
In Private mode nothing is sent anywhere to make a note work — reading it, linking it and finding it again all happen on the machine. In Connected mode, only what a specific request needs is sent to a hosted frontier model, and only when you ask for something that needs one. If you bring your own key, that text goes from your Mac straight to your provider and never through our relay.
Your notes are never used to train a model, by us or by the providers. The index is a set of files on your own disk, which means you can back it up, move it, or delete it, and it is gone.
Frequently asked questions
What is the fastest way to take a quick note on a Mac?
A global hotkey that opens a capture box over whatever you are already doing — which is what Stilou's Notes does. The measure that matters is not how nice the note app is but how many keystrokes stand between the thought and it being saved. Anything that requires switching apps loses most thoughts before you get there.
Do I have to organise my notes into folders?
No. There are no folders, notebooks or tags to maintain. Stilou reads each note and links it to the people, clients and projects it mentions, so retrieval works from the subject rather than from where you filed it.
Can I dictate a note instead of typing it?
Yes. The same capture box takes voice, so you can hold the key and speak a long thought and get punctuated text back rather than a voice memo. This is the same dictation engine used everywhere else in Stilou.
How is this different from Apple Notes or Drafts?
Both are better notebooks; Stilou is a better memory. Apple Notes and Drafts store what you wrote and leave organisation and retrieval to you. Stilou connects each note to the rest of your captured work, so a note surfaces alongside the meeting, screenshot or thread it relates to.
Can I get my notes out again?
Yes. Notes are text in files on your own disk rather than rows in a database we hold, so nothing is locked in and there is no export request to file.
Are my notes private?
Yes — they stay on your Mac. In Private mode nothing is sent anywhere at all. In Connected mode only the text a specific request needs is sent to a hosted model, nothing is retained for training, and the mode you are in is visible in the interface rather than buried in settings.
Does it sync to my iPhone?
No. Stilou is macOS only, and notes live on the Mac you captured them on. If cross-device sync is the thing you need most, Apple Notes does that well and the two can happily coexist.
What do I need to run it?
A Mac running a current version of macOS, and disk space for the local index. Dictation into the note box needs microphone permission, which macOS will ask for the first time you use it. Local processing in Private mode runs best on Apple silicon.