Heynote

Heynote is a dedicated scratchpad for developers. It functions as a large persistent text buffer where you can write down anything you like. Works great for that Slack message you don't want to accidentally send, a JSON response from an API you're working with, notes from a meeting, your daily to-do list, etc.

The Heynote buffer is divided into blocks, and each block can have its own Language set (e.g. JavaScript, JSON, Markdown, etc.). This gives you syntax highlighting and lets you auto-format that JSON response.

Available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Features

Persistent text buffer
Block-based
Syntax highlighting
- C++
- C#
- Clojure
- CSS
- Erlang
- Go
- HTML
- Java
- JavaScript
- JSX
- TypeScript
- TOML
- TSX
- JSON
- Lezer
- Markdown
- PHP
- Python
- Ruby
- Rust
- Shell
- SQL
- XML
- YAML
Language auto-detection
Auto-formatting
Math/Calculator mode
Currency conversion
Multi-cursor editing
Dark & Light themes
Option to set a global hotkey to show/hide the app
Default or Emacs-like key bindings

Installation

Download the appropriate (Mac, Windows or Linux) version from the latest Github release (or from heynote.com). The Windows build is not signed, so you might see some scary warning (I can not justify paying a yearly fee for a certificate just to get rid of that).

Notes on Linux installation

It's been reported (#48) that ChromeOS's Debian VM need the following packages installed to run the Heynote AppImage:

libfuse2
libnss3
libnspr4

Development

To develop Heynote you need Node.js and you should (hopefully) just need to check out the code and then run:

> npm install
> npm run dev

Contributions

I'm happy to merge contributions that fit my vision for the app. Bug fixes are always welcome.

FAQ

Where is the buffer data stored?

The default paths for the buffer data for the respective OS are:

Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Heynote/buffer.txt
Windows: %APPDATA%\Heynote\buffer.txt
Linux: ~/.config/Heynote/buffer.txt

From version >=1.5.0, symlinks will be supported and you'll be able to configure the path where buffer.txt is stored.

Can you make a mobile app?

No, at the moment this is out of scope, sorry.

Can you add a feature for naming blocks and/or adding tags? (#44)

Currently, I'm not planning on adding this. The main reason is that it goes against the scratchpadness of the program.

I can totally see the usefulness of such a feature, and it's definitely something that I would expect from a more traditional Notes app. However a large part of Heynote's appeal is it's simplicity, and if that is to remain so, I'm going to have to say no to a lot of actually useful features.

Thanks!

Heynote is built upon CodeMirror, Vue, Electron, Math.js, Prettier and other great open-source projects.

3.5 KiB Raw Blame History