InklingBest Quick Notes App for Mac in 2026: 6 Options Compared
If you only jot something down now and then, use Apple’s Quick Note: press Globe-Q and a note opens over whatever you’re doing. It’s free and already on your Mac. If you capture all day and want the same notes on your iPhone, Drafts is the most complete capture-first app, and Tot is the simplest scratch pad. If you’d rather the note live in the MacBook notch, Inkling and Notchkin both do that, at $12 and $4.99. If you already use Raycast, its free Notes feature is a hotkey away.
The rest of this page explains how we judged them, what each one is good at, where each falls short, and what it costs. Prices are as listed on each app’s own site or App Store page at the time of writing (October 2026). Inkling is ours, so read its section with that in mind; we’ve tried to give it the same treatment as the others, limits included.
What to look for in a quick notes app
A quick notes app has one job: get a thought out of your head before the next notification takes it. A full notes library is a different job, and plenty of good apps do that one. For quick capture, four questions matter more than any feature list.
Can you open it from anywhere with one key or one movement? If you have to switch apps and find a window, it isn’t quick.
Does it open over your work rather than replacing it? A floating window or panel lets you glance back at the email or call you were in.
Does it save without asking where? A save dialog or a folder picker is the moment ideas go soft.
Can you find the note again later? Quick capture is pointless if everything lands in a pile you never open.
After that, the practical questions: does it need to reach your iPhone, does it cost money every month or once, and where do the notes live.
1. Apple Quick Note (and Stickies): built in and free
Quick Note is part of the Notes app. Press and hold the Fn or Globe key and press Q, or move the pointer into the bottom-right corner of the screen, which is the default hot corner for it. A Notes window opens on top of whatever you’re doing. Close it and the note is saved in a Quick Notes folder in Notes. In Safari you can also send a link or highlighted text to a Quick Note from the Share button or the Control-click menu. Apple’s Quick Note guide covers the details.
Stickies, in the Applications folder, is the other built-in option: notes that stay on the screen and save as you type.
Good at: costing nothing and needing no install. Because Quick Notes land in Notes, they reach your iPhone and iPad if you already use iCloud for Notes. By default Quick Note reopens the last one, so it can work as a single running page.
Falls short: the hot corner is easy to trigger by accident when you reach for the Dock. If you switch off “Always resume to last Quick Note” in Notes settings, every capture becomes its own note, and the folder fills with one-liners. Stickies notes stay on the one Mac, and Stickies has to be open already.
Price: free, built into macOS.
2. Drafts: capture first, decide later
Drafts is built around one idea: it opens to a blank page with the keyboard ready, and you work out what the text is for afterwards. It runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch. On the Mac there’s a capture window you can open from the Drafts menu bar item or with a global shortcut (Shift-Command-2 by default, changeable in settings) while Drafts is running.
Good at: capturing on every Apple device you own and getting text out to other places through its actions. If ideas arrive on a walk as often as at the desk, it’s the strongest option here. The free version is not a demo: Drafts says it’s “free to use, with unlimited ability to create, edit and sync drafts.”
Falls short: the extra power is a subscription. Some capture-window features, such as appending to an existing draft, need Pro. The depth that makes it great also means more to learn than a simple pop-up note.
Price: free; Drafts Pro is $2.99 a month or $24.99 a year, with a 7-day free trial on the yearly plan. One Pro subscription covers iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch.
3. Tot: seven scratch pads, no more
Tot, from The Iconfactory, gives you seven color-coded dots, each one a page of text. That limit is the point: there’s nowhere for notes to pile up. It can be run from the menu bar, you can record a hotkey to show and hide it, and it syncs through iCloud between Mac, iPhone and iPad, with a companion for Apple Watch. It handles rich or plain text and can turn text into Markdown.
Good at: being a scratch pad you clear out, rather than an archive you tend. It’s free on Mac, iPhone and iPad.
Falls short: seven pages is a feature until you need an eighth. It’s text first, so anything structured (a table, a checklist you tick off for weeks) fits better elsewhere. On the Mac it needs macOS 14 or later.
Price: free; on the Mac, a $19.99 in-app purchase unlocks premium features such as text dividers and custom smart bullets.
4. Inkling: a note that lives in the notch
Inkling is our app. The note lives in the MacBook notch: hover over the notch or press Option-N, type, and press Command-Return to tuck it away. Ink, a pair of eyes that lives in the notch, gives a nod so you know it went in. The window you were working in never moves, and the same note is waiting next time, so a running list grows in one place.
Good at: opening from a spot your eyes already know, with nothing to remember but a hover. A note can grow past a scribble: headings, checkboxes, links, highlights, quotes, code and tables (Tab moves between cells, and you can paste cells from a spreadsheet). There are templates (daily scratchpad, meeting, project, journal, or save your own), pinned notes, search, tags and links between notes, and earlier versions of a note to go back to. Notes live on your Mac, writing and searching work offline, and sync between your Macs is optional, through your own private iCloud, off until you switch it on. There’s no Inkling account and no analytics. It imports Markdown and exports Markdown, rich text or PDF, and keeps daily local backups. On a display without a notch it shows a virtual one.
Falls short: it’s Mac only, with no iPhone or iPad app, so ideas that arrive on your phone need somewhere else to land. There’s no sharing or collaboration, and no AI features. It needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later. At $12 it costs more than Notchkin, and the trial is 24 hours, not days. After the trial, every note stays readable, searchable, copyable and exportable, but writing and editing need a license. If you type accented letters on a US keyboard, Option-N is also how macOS types the tilde in ñ, so you may want to change the shortcut in Settings.
Pick something else if: you capture on your phone as much as your Mac (Drafts or Tot), you want free (Quick Note or Raycast Notes), or you want the cheapest notch notes app and don’t need sync, tables or templates (Notchkin).
Price: $12 once for up to 3 Macs, with free updates. Free for 24 hours, no card needed. 7-day refund policy.
5. Notchkin: notch notes for $4.99
Notchkin is the other notch notes app worth knowing. Hover over the notch and a panel slides down; type, and the note is saved to your Mac. It shares the notch with a sticky-note mascot that, in its developer’s words, offers commentary “somewhere between helpful and passive-aggressive.”
Good at: costing less than half of Inkling. Its App Store listing covers rich text (bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, highlights, links), checklists and lists, hashtags with tag filters, search across notes and find within one note, pinned notes, and export to RTF or Markdown with full backup and restore. Quick Capture works from any app with a global shortcut, and Paste as New Note turns the clipboard into a note in one step. Notes are stored locally, with no accounts.
Falls short: there’s no cloud sync, so notes stay on one Mac. Its listing doesn’t mention tables, templates or version history. The mascot’s tone is a matter of taste. It needs macOS 14 or later.
Price: $4.99 once on the Mac App Store.
6. Raycast Notes: free, if you live in Raycast
Raycast describes itself as a collection of productivity tools inside an extendable launcher, and Raycast Notes is one of them. A hotkey brings up a floating notes window above your other apps; from the menu bar, a click shows your notes and Option-click starts a new one. Notes use Markdown and can be exported as plain text, Markdown or HTML.
Good at: being free and unlimited. Raycast says notes are “unlimited on every plan, including Free, and no account is required.” If Raycast is already your launcher, there’s nothing new to install.
Falls short: if you don’t use Raycast, you’re adopting a whole launcher to get a notes window. Its notes page describes a Mac app only. Seeing your notes on another Mac takes Cloud Sync, which isn’t in the free plan.
Price: Notes are free. Cloud Sync comes with Raycast Pro, $10 a month or $96 a year.
Comparison at a glance
| App | Price | Free to use? | Opens with | Devices | Sync |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple Quick Note | Free, built in | Yes | Globe-Q or a hot corner | Mac, plus iPhone and iPad through Notes | iCloud, through Notes |
| Drafts | Free; Pro $2.99/month or $24.99/year | Yes, unlimited drafts | Capture window, Shift-Command-2 | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch | Yes |
| Tot | Free; $19.99 Mac unlock | Yes, seven dots | Menu bar or a hotkey you record | Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch | iCloud |
| Inkling | $12 once, 3 Macs | 24-hour trial, then read-only | Hover the notch or Option-N | Mac (macOS 14+) | Optional, your own iCloud |
| Notchkin | $4.99 once | No free version listed | Hover the notch, or a capture shortcut | Mac (macOS 14+) | None, local only |
| Raycast Notes | Free; Cloud Sync on Pro ($10/month) | Yes, unlimited notes | A hotkey or the menu bar | Mac | Cloud Sync on Pro |
Which one to pick
You take a note now and then. Quick Note. It’s free, it’s already there, and it syncs if you use iCloud for Notes. Jotting down a quick thought without opening an app walks through setting it up, hot corner included.
Ideas arrive on your phone as often as at your desk. Drafts if you want capture plus somewhere to send the text afterwards; Tot if you want a handful of scratch pads and nothing else. Both run on iPhone, iPad and Mac.
You want the note in the notch, with room to grow. Inkling, if tables, templates, version history, PDF export or sync between Macs matter to you. A scratchpad that’s always one key away shows the running-note habit it’s built around.
You want the notch at the lowest price. Notchkin. One Mac, no sync, $4.99.
Raycast is already open all day. Raycast Notes. It’s free, and Pro adds sync if you need a second Mac.
Questions
What is the fastest way to take a note on a Mac? Apple’s Quick Note: hold Fn or Globe and press Q, type, and close the window. It saves itself in the Notes app’s Quick Notes folder. Any of the apps above with a global shortcut is about as fast; the difference is where the note ends up and what you can do with it afterwards.
Which quick notes apps for Mac are free? Apple Quick Note and Stickies are built in. Drafts, Tot and Raycast Notes are free to download and use, with paid upgrades: Drafts Pro, Tot’s Mac unlock, and Raycast Pro for Cloud Sync. Inkling has a 24-hour free trial, and Notchkin is a paid app.
Do I need a MacBook with a notch for a notch notes app? For Inkling, no: on a display without a notch it shows a virtual one, so it works on an external monitor too. A notch on a Mac that has no notch explains how. Notchkin’s listing doesn’t say how it behaves without a notch, so check with its developer if that matters to you.
Which of these keep notes only on my Mac? Notchkin stores notes locally with no sync at all. Inkling stores them on your Mac and syncs only if you switch on iCloud sync, through your own private iCloud. Raycast Notes reaches another Mac only through Cloud Sync, a Pro feature. Drafts and Tot are built to sync between devices. Notes that stay on your Mac goes into the trade-offs.