pinFiy: colored sticky notes for the Mac, with a small pin in the menu bar

What is pinFiy?

pinFiy is an open-source sticky notes app for macOS. Each note is its own colored window. The app itself is a small pin in the menu bar and does not appear in the Dock, so it stays out of the way until you need a note.

It handles Arabic and English side by side. Text direction follows the first strong character of what you type: Arabic runs right to left and English runs left to right, in the same app and even on neighboring notes.

What it does

• One window per note, so you can place each note where you need it.
• Pin keeps a note on top. A pinned note stays above normal windows and does not cover the menu bar. The pin corner follows the text direction: right for Arabic, left for English.
• Twenty colors: ten light and ten dark. The default is a warm amber (#F3C15B). Dark text sits on light colors and light text on dark ones.
• Font size from 12 to 36 for each note, and from Settings for new notes or for every note.
• Lock a note to block changes to its text, color, size and position, and to stop it from being closed.
• A safety net: closing a note that has text asks for confirmation first.
• Open at login, from Settings or from the pin menu.

Where your notes live

Notes are stored on your Mac, in ~/Library/Application Support/pinFiy/notes.json, with a backup file. According to the README there is no account, no cloud sync and no network access. The repository includes a privacy policy and a security policy.

Shortcuts

• New note: the plus button, ⌘N, or the pin menu.
• Close a note: the close button or ⌘W.
• Keep above windows: the pin button or ⌘P.
• Settings: ⌘, or the pin menu.
• Quit: ⌘Q or the pin menu.

Install

pinFiy needs macOS 13 or later and Swift 5.9 or later, which the toolchain that ships with Xcode includes. Clone the repository from GitHub, run swift test, then ./scripts/build-app.sh, and open PinFiy.app. The script signs the app ad hoc. That is not an Apple Developer signature and not an App Store release.

Open source

pinFiy is released under the MIT license. The code is split into a core library for the model and storage, with no AppKit in it, and an app target for the note windows and the menu bar. The core has XCTest tests.

Emad Alhamou, the author of this site, publishes pinFiy on GitHub. The repository has contribution guidelines and a code of conduct, and security issues are reported privately as its security policy describes.