Scratch
Customizable hotkey
It sits idle until you reach for it, then opens on top of whatever else is on screen. The thought lands before the moment passes.
The scratchpad macOS was missing.
A simple and powerful way to quickly capture and draft, while keeping your knowledge base clean.
Alpha release soon
Not a notebook.
More like a buffer.
Scratch holds the messy and the quick. The things on their way somewhere, or on their way to evaporating. Your notebook is for what you decide to keep. Scratch is for everything before that decision.
- Capture everything
- Keep what's worth it
- The rest evaporates
Thoughtful and intuitive features.
A handful of decisions that make Scratch worth reaching for.
Capture text
Drag a rectangle around text on screen — a slide, a PDF, terminal output. Apple's Vision framework reads it locally and drops it into the buffer.
Markdown
Headings, bold, code, links, tables, checklists — formatted in place, source restored on the line you're editing.
Inline calculations
Type an expression and the result appears as you go. Press Tab to keep it, with variables carried across lines.
Full-text search
Keep as many buffers as you want. Search across all of them; nothing leaves your machine to make it work.
Structure & title
Paste a wall of dictation or a stream of bullets. Scratch can shape it into headings, lists, and tasks — and name it once there's enough to name.
Rewrite in place
Highlight a sentence and run /concise, /professional, /softer, or /grammar. The selection is replaced with a rewrite on the same line.
Send anywhere
Export a buffer to a Markdown file, the clipboard, Obsidian, or Apple Notes — one keystroke or one click.
Local only
Buffers live as plain Markdown in your user data folder. No account, no sync, no server-side copy.
Make it yours.
You'll spend real time in here. The defaults are considered — and every one of them is yours to change.
Accent
Theme
Type
Density
Line height
Cursor
Pricing
One-time purchase. No subscription.
$9.99
Lifetime access
Unlimited updates.
Alpha release soon
Frequently asked questions
A few things people ask before they reach for it.
People who already keep a notebook and want somewhere quicker for the things that aren't ready for it yet — a follow-up mid-meeting, a phone number, a thought that arrived sideways. If you don't keep a notebook, Scratch can be that too.
As plain Markdown files in your user data folder. No account, no sync, no server-side copy. If you want them backed up or shared, point Obsidian or iCloud at the folder.
No. Everything — editing, search, OCR, on-device intelligence — runs locally. The only network calls are license activation and, if you enable it, an opt-in update check.
Those are notebooks — they reward organization because you go to them to retrieve. Scratch is a buffer: it sits between thinking and saving, holds the messy and the quick, and exports cleanly to whichever notebook you keep.
A one-time purchase of $9.99 for lifetime access on your Mac, with unlimited updates. No subscription, no seats, no upsell tier.
Optionally. A handful of features — rephrase, summarize, title — run on-device through Apple's Foundation Models on supported Macs. They're off by default and can be turned on per feature. Nothing leaves your machine.