Blink — Spatial notes for your Mac

BLINK(1)General Commands ManualBLINK(1)

NAME

blink — spatial notes for your Mac

SYNOPSIS

⌃⌥⇧⌘N→borderless glass note, summoned anywhere

⌃⌥⇧⌘B→blink every panel in / out of view

⌃⌥⇧⌘C→grid overlay — survey the whole board

DESCRIPTION

A menubar app for macOS. Press Hyper+N in any application and a note lands on your screen — placed in space, and remembered there. Each panel persists its position, size and sheet across launches, so your desk becomes muscle memory.

Notes are frontmatter markdown files in a folder you own. No account, no sync service, no lock-in — and external edits reconcile live, so your agents read and write the same files you do.

↓ download for macOS view on github ↗

exit 0 · free & open sourceos: macOS 14+arch: Apple Silicon

~/Desktop— spatial surface · live demo

⌃⌥⇧⌘N

click anywhere — or press N — to drop a note in space

panels: 0/0

drag panels · state persists (x, y, w, h)

fig. 1 — the spatial model, running in your browser. Panels remember (x, y, w, h); the real thing renders as native NSPanel glass.

hotkeys

carbon

global chords, no accessibility grant

runtime

native

Swift + AppKit, zero Electron

format

.md

yaml frontmatter, utf-8

identity

uuidv5

deterministic identity from slug

sync

live

external edits reconcile in place

cloud

none

no account, notes stay local

//01 — ARCHITECTUREblink(1)

Native bones, web typography.

No Electron shell around a web app — an AppKit panel hosting exactly one web view, writing exactly one file format. Every layer is replaceable because the filesystem is the contract.

layerimplementation

window

NSPanel + NSVisualEffectView

borderless, non-activating HUD glass; floats above workspaces without stealing focus

hotkeys

Carbon RegisterEventHotKey

three chords reachable from any app; hyper = ⌃⌥⇧⌘, every binding rewritable

editor

CodeMirror 6 — no react

a lean web view inside the native shell; flip read ⇄ edit in place, scroll preserved

render

marked (GFM)

github-flavored markdown, tables and [[wiki-links]] included

storage

frontmatter md · atomic writes

write tmp → rename; a note is never half-written, saved before create() returns

watch

directory watch + reconcile

directory watcher merges outside edits live — they type themselves in, caret included

fig. 2 — data flowswift · appkit

One process, one folder. The CLI and any agent tooling hit the same markdown store the panels render — directory changes flow back through the same reconciliation path.

//02 — SHEETSblink(1)

Every note is its own surface.

Five render sheets, assignable per note or as your default. Set one key in config.json and Blink hot-applies it to every open panel in under a second.

preview — weekly-review.mdsheet: glass

Weekly review

Ship v2 · port the palette

Notes land where you leave them.
see [[roadmap]]

// hot-applied to all panels <1s
"panel": { "sheet": "glass" }

//03 — AGENT-FIRSTblink(1)

The filesystem is the API.

Built to be driven by more than a keyboard. A CLI, a hot-reloading config file, and live reconciliation mean your agents read and write the same notes you do — no plugins, no integrations.

blink — the notes CLI

❯ ▊

zsh · replay loopstdin: tty · stdout: piped

standup.mdtyped by claude

— waiting for filesystem events…

External edits don't just appear — they type themselves in, with a caret and a soft tick, so you notice without a notification stealing focus.

blink new|append|search

scriptable CRUD over the notes folder

--json on everything

pipe into jq, fzf, or an agent loop

exit codes, no daemon

the CLI talks to files, not a server

//04 — CONFIGURATIONblink(1)

Configured by a file, not a settings pane.

Theme, hotkeys, motion, sheets — one JSON file. Any process can edit it; Blink watches the directory and hot-applies changes to every panel. The settings window is just a view over it.

~/Library/Application Support/Blink/config.jsonjsonc · annotated

1{
2  "hotkeys": {          // global chords, any app
3    "newNote": "hyper+n",  // summon a panel anywhere
4    "blink": "hyper+b",     // every panel in / out
5    "grid": "hyper+c"     // survey the board
6  },
7  "panel": {
8    "sheet": "dotted",   // glass·card·dotted·bracket·marginalia
9    "defaultWidth": 420,
10    "defaultHeight": 340
11  },
12  "motion": {
13    "entrance": "shimmer", // panel spawn animation
14    "durationMs": 260,
15    "enabled": true           // Reduce Motion is always honored
16  },
17  "editor": {
18    "fontSize": 13,
19    "lineHeight": 1.75
20  }
21}

watching for changes…hot-apply < 1s

one source of truth

The GUI settings window reads and writes this file — no hidden state, no plist shadow copy.

scriptable by anything

Your dotfiles manager, an agent, a sed one-liner. If it can write a file, it can reconfigure Blink.

atomic + watched

Edits are applied to every open panel in under a second, with the same reconcile path as note content.

git-friendly

Check it into your dotfiles repo. Diffable, reviewable, revertable — like everything else here.

//05 — KEYBOARD INTERFACEblink(1)

Everything is a keystroke away.

Three global chords reach Blink from any app; the rest act on the panel you're in. Hyper is ⌃⌥⇧⌘ — a modifier no app already owns. Every binding is rewritable in config.json.

global — from any application

new note, anywhere

panel spawns on the active space

⌃⌥⇧⌘N

blink — all notes / none

clear the screen, recall on repeat

⌃⌥⇧⌘B

grid overlay

every panel, tiled for a survey

⌃⌥⇧⌘C

in a panel

flip read / edit

in place, scroll position preserved

⌘⇧P

focus — quiet everything else

dims all other panels

⌘.

step down — leave edit, drop focus

one level per press

⎋

close panel

file stays; the panel goes

⌘W

hyper = ⌃⌥⇧⌘remap: "hotkeys": { "newNote": "cmd+shift+j" }no accessibility permissions required

//06 — INSTALLblink(1)

Free, open source, and yours.

A single native app for macOS. No account, no sign-in — download it, press ⌃⌥⇧⌘N, and start.

release — latest

Blink.dmg

Apple Silicon · notarized

native app

arm64

↓ download for macOS source on github ↗

# or from your terminal
❯ open -a Blink # then: ⌃⌥⇧⌘N, anywhere

free & open source

on GitHub

native macOS app

swift + appkit

no account

notes stay local

requirements — blink(1)

osmacOS 14 (Sonoma) or later

archApple Silicon

appsingle native bundle

runtimemenubar resident — no dock icon

permissionsglobal hotkeys only

networknone — no account, no cloud

SEE ALSO — github.com/arach/blink · releases