How Building a Jira App Led Me to Create PeekNote — a Minimal macOS Notes Tool for Developers
Hi! I’m a UX/UI designer who once decided to step out of Figma and dive into the world of code. That decision led me to build Risk Radar, a risk assessment tool for Jira — despite having zero JavaScript experience.
But during that process, I ran into an unexpected, very practical problem that sparked a second project: I needed a simple way to save, edit, and copy code snippets without cluttering my screen.
That’s how PeekNote was born — a lightweight, always-on-top notes app for macOS.
The Real Problem: Where Do You Put Your Working Snippets?
While building Risk Radar, I found myself copying and editing bits of code, formulas, and API calls constantly — switching between VS Code, Notion, Apple Notes, and browser tabs. It was messy and frustrating.
What I really wanted was:
- A small, always-on-top window
- A way to quickly save and reuse text or code
- Something faster and lighter than Notion or Obsidian
- A clean, focused design
So… I built it myself.
What Is PeekNote?
PeekNote is a minimal notes app that stays on top of all windows — perfect for text fragments, code, or even quick thoughts.
Each tab holds a separate text block. You can add code, emojis, formulas — whatever you need to keep in sight and copy fast. It’s not trying to replace full-blown editors — just be a focused utility that’s always there when you need it.
Key features:
- Multiple color-coded tabs for organization
- Resizable text input (custom-built, since SwiftUI’s
TextEditordoesn’t support resizing) - Clipboard paste support (from browser, IDEs, anywhere)
- Font size settings
- No cloud — all data is stored locally on your Mac
Back to SwiftUI (a Breath of Fresh Air)
After working in JavaScript and Atlassian Forge, I missed the comfort of Swift and SwiftUI. (Let’s be honest — sometimes you just want things to break in familiar ways 😅).
Having already built Type Switch — a macOS app for language switching — I felt at home in this environment. So while juggling Forge limitations and console.log()s, I started building PeekNote on the side using SwiftUI + a bit of AppKit, keeping it dependency-free and lightweight.
Final Thoughts
PeekNote started as a personal experiment — just something to make my dev life a little less chaotic. Now I use it every day, whether I’m working on a macOS project or something in JavaScript.
Could I live without it? Probably. But why would I want to?
Sometimes, the smallest tools make the biggest difference.
👉 Want to try it out? You can download PeekNote on the Mac App Store
