Scrappy

A quick capture notes app for macOS. Press a hotkey from anywhere, type, press Cmd+Enter, and the note is a Markdown file in a folder you own.

Scrappy exists because opening a new editor window to hold a scrap of text is fast, but the scraps get lost. Scrappy keeps them, as plain files, with no database and no account.

What it does

• Capture from anywhere. Ctrl+Option+Space opens a small floating panel over whatever you are doing, including fullscreen apps on other Spaces. Cmd+Enter saves. Esc hides and keeps what you typed as a draft.
• Plain files. Every note is a .md file in a folder you pick. Edit them in any editor. Put the folder in git or a synced drive if you like. Scrappy notices outside changes.
• A small main window. Notes grouped by day, a filter box, and a Markdown editor with light inline styling that saves as you type.
• Menu bar icon. New capture, open the window, preferences, quit. Closing the window keeps the hotkey working.

Install

Scrappy is not yet signed with an Apple developer certificate, so macOS will block the first launch of a downloaded copy.

1. Download Scrappy.app from the releases page, or build it yourself (see below).
2. Move it to /Applications and open it.
3. If macOS refuses, open System Settings, Privacy & Security, and click Open Anyway next to the Scrappy message. This is needed once.
4. On first launch, pick a folder for your notes. ~/Scrappy is the default.

Apple Silicon only for now.

Use

Action	Key
Open or hide the capture panel, from any app	Ctrl+Option+Space
Save the capture	Cmd+Enter
Hide the capture and keep the draft	Esc
New note in the main window	Cmd+N
Move the selected note to the Trash	Cmd+Backspace with the note row focused
Preferences	Cmd+,

Preferences hold the vault folder, the capture hotkey, launch at login, and whether to show the Dock icon.

How notes are stored

• The vault is one folder. Notes are .md files directly in it. Scrappy never writes anything else there.
• New notes are named by creation time, 2026-09-29-143501.md, and never renamed. The title shown in the list is the first non empty line of the file.
• The list is sorted by modified time. Editing a note moves it to the top.
• Deleting moves the file to the macOS Trash. Nothing is deleted outright.
• Settings and the capture draft live in ~/Library/Application Support/scrappy, outside the vault.

Build from source

Needs Node 22 or newer.

git clone https://github.com/cdnicoll/scrappy.git
cd scrappy
npm install
npm run dev        # run with hot reload
npm run package    # write dist/mac-arm64/Scrappy.app

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the layout, the rules, and the development knobs. The design is written down in SPEC.md.

Built with

Electron, TypeScript, React, CodeMirror 6, chokidar, electron-vite, electron-builder.

License

MIT