Quick Capture

A simple and fast note-taking application to quickly capture thoughts and save them as Markdown files.

Features

• Quick Capture: A plain multiline text area for capturing thoughts
• Markdown Support: Input is interpreted as Markdown
• Daily and Standalone Notes: Save thoughts to daily notes or as standalone notes
• Path Configuration: Set the path for daily notes and standalone notes via input fields
• Automatic Draft Saving: Your input is automatically saved as a draft while you type
• Draft Restoration: Drafts are restored when you reopen the app
• Formatting Shortcuts: Use keyboard shortcuts for common Markdown formatting
• Font Size Adjustment: Increase or decrease the font size of the input area
• Quick Mode Switching: Toggle between daily and standalone modes with cmd+, (Mac) / ctrl+, (Windows)

Installation

1. Download the latest release for your platform
2. Move the application to your Applications folder
3. Launch the app

Usage

1. Set Save Mode: Choose between "Append to Daily Note" or "Save as Standalone Note" using the dropdown
2. Set Paths: Enter the path to your daily notes folder or the desired location for standalone notes
3. Capture Thoughts: Type your thoughts into the text area
4. Save: Press cmd+enter (Mac) or ctrl+enter (Windows) to save your thought

Save Modes

Append to Daily Note

• Appends the thought to a daily note file named YYYY-MM-DD.md
• Creates the daily note file if it doesn't exist
• Creates intermediate folders if they don't exist
• Adds a date header to the file if it's newly created
• Appends the thought with an H2 timestamp heading

Save as Standalone Note

• Saves the thought as a standalone note file named YYMMDDHHMM.md
• Creates a backlink in the daily note file (if a daily path is provided)
• Uses the first 10 alphanumeric characters of the thought as the link description
• Adds an H1 timestamp heading to the standalone note

Keyboard Shortcuts

Action	Mac Shortcut	Windows Shortcut
Save thought	cmd + enter	ctrl + enter
Toggle mode	cmd + ,	ctrl + ,
Bold text	cmd + b	ctrl + b
Italic text	cmd + i	ctrl + i
Create link	cmd + k	ctrl + k
Create todo item	cmd + l	ctrl + l
Increase font size	cmd + +	ctrl + +
Decrease font size	cmd + -	ctrl + -

Note: Formatting shortcuts add formatting to the selected text or at the cursor position. Applying a shortcut multiple times adds multiple formatting marks.

Examples

• Bold: **selected text**
• Italic: *text*
• Link: [selected text](|) or [](|) if no text is selected
• Todo: - [ ] selected text or - [ ] if no text is selected
• The | indicates where the cursor will be placed after hitting the shortcut

Screenshot and Screencast

screencast.webm

Icon The app has an icon as well

Limitations

• Only tested on MacOS 14.7.1 (x64) and 14.3 (Silicon)
• Works only with absolute paths; ~ is not supported
• No WYSIWYG editor (#18)
• No tag autocompletion (#19)
• Static save format (#17)

Building from Source

Build Steps

# If no rust installed yet
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

# If no node and npm installed yet
# For MacOS
brew install node
# For Ubuntu
sudo apt install nodejs npm
# For Windows
choco install nodejs

# Install Tauri CLI
cargo install tauri-cli

# Build CSS
npx tailwindcss -i ./src/in.css -o ./src/out.css --minify

# Build application
cargo tauri build

The builds will be available in the /target folder.