FastBall

Quick markdown capture, one keystroke away. Gotta Catch 'Em All!

A macOS menubar app that puts a note window in front of you from anywhere, and gets out of the way the moment you're done. Native Swift — AppKit + SwiftUI, zero dependencies, a ~480 KB binary.

1. Press Ctrl+Cmd+, from any app. The window appears centred on whichever screen your cursor is on.
2. Just start typing. Any printable key drops you into a new note, seeded with what you typed. There's no "New Note" button to find.
3. Press Cmd+Enter. The note is written to disk as plain markdown and the window disappears.

• Type-to-capture. From the list, the first character you press starts the note. Cmd+V starts one from the clipboard.
• Plain markdown files. Notes are .md files named YYYY-MM-DD-HHmmss.md in a folder you choose. No database, no lock-in — point Obsidian at the same folder.
• No Accessibility permission. The hotkey is registered through Carbon, not an event tap, so macOS grants it without sending you to System Settings.
• Auto-saving editor. Edits are written half a second after you stop typing, and flushed when you leave the note. Cmd+O hands the file to your real editor when you need more room.
• Stays out of the way. No Dock icon, no app-switcher entry. A ✎ in the menu bar, and a borderless floating panel that hides itself the instant it loses focus.
• Follows the system appearance. Light and dark, with a translucent panel material.
• Browse notes sorted by most recently modified, with a one-line preview of each.
• Settings for the notes folder, the global shortcut, your preferred editor, and launch-at-login. A shortcut that can't be registered is rejected and the previous one restored, so you can't lock yourself out.

macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later, Apple silicon or Intel. The Command Line Tools are enough to build it — Xcode is not required.

No Accessibility permission is needed. The hotkey goes through Carbon's RegisterEventHotKey rather than a global event tap, which is what would otherwise trigger the permission prompt.

git clone https://github.com/hernanflores/fastball
cd fastball
make run

make dmg

The .dmg appears in build/.

Cmd+W hides the window from any view, and Cmd+Q quits. The standard edit shortcuts (Cmd+Z, Shift+Cmd+Z, Cmd+X, Cmd+C, Cmd+V, Cmd+A) work inside the text views.

The app is keyboard-first but not keyboard-only: clicking a row opens that note, the gear in the list header opens Settings, and left-clicking the menu bar icon toggles the window.

~/Library/Application Support/FastBall/config.json, created on first run:

{
 "notesFolder": "~/Notes",
 "globalShortcut": "Ctrl+Cmd+,",
 "preferredEditor": ""
}

• notesFolder — ~ is stored literally and expanded when read. The folder is created if it's missing.
• globalShortcut — an accelerator string: Cmd, Ctrl, Alt/Option and Shift joined with +, then a key (a letter, a digit, punctuation, Space, Return, Tab, an arrow, or F1–F12).
• preferredEditor — a .app bundle or a CLI binary. Leave it empty to use whatever macOS opens .md files with.

Launch-at-login isn't stored here; it's registered with macOS through SMAppService and toggled from Settings.

Notes are plain .md files named YYYY-MM-DD-HHmmss.md; two captures inside the same second get a -2, -3 suffix rather than overwriting each other. Whitespace-only captures are discarded.

Right-click (or Ctrl-click) the menu bar icon for Open Notes Folder, Settings, and Quit FastBall.

FastBall/
├── main.swift NSApplication bootstrap
├── AppDelegate.swift wiring: panel, status item, hotkey, key monitor, edit menu
├── AppState.swift routes and note actions
├── KeyHandler.swift the single keydown switch, per view
├── NotePanel.swift borderless floating NSPanel, hide-on-blur, cursor-display centering
├── StatusItemController.swift the ✎ menu bar item and its right-click menu
├── HotKeyManager.swift Carbon RegisterEventHotKey
├── Accelerator.swift parses "Ctrl+Cmd+," accelerator strings
├── Config.swift config.json read/write
├── NoteStore.swift the .md files on disk
├── SelfTest.swift synthesized-NSEvent smoke test
└── Views/ SwiftUI views + theme
docs/ the GitHub Pages landing page (index.html, style.css, img/)

The ad-hoc signature uses a stable identity on purpose: macOS remembers the global hotkey and the login item per signature, so an unsigned rebuild would look like a brand new app every time.

Useful because the UI can otherwise only be reached by keyboard:

make test