Take quick notes on Mac without committing to a notes app

You don’t want a second brain. You don’t want a knowledge graph. You want somewhere to drop a sentence — a confirmation number, half a thought, a list of three things — without picking a folder, a tag, or a sync account.

Two paths

Native macOS. Three options come in the box. Stickies is the closest to “no commitment” — pin a yellow square to the desktop, type in it, leave it. The catch: no markdown, no list of past notes, easy to lose under a window. TextEdit gives you a real text file but every note becomes a save-as decision (filename, folder, format). Notes.app is great if you actually do want a notes app, but it pushes you toward folders, tags, and iCloud sync — exactly the commitment you were trying to skip.

Scratch. Hotkey-summoned, autosaving, with one running list of past notes in a sidebar grouped by date. No folders, no tags, no account.

Drop a note in under five seconds

1. Press ⌃⌥⌘S from any app. Scratch slides into focus.
2. Press ⌘N for a fresh note (or just start typing in the existing one — whatever was open re-appears).
3. Type whatever you need to remember. Markdown is optional; plain text is fine.
4. Press ⌃⌥⌘S again to dismiss. The note is saved as a real .md file on disk — no save dialog.
5. Find it later by re-summoning Scratch and scrolling the sidebar. Today's notes are at the top, grouped by date.

What you’re not committing to

No account, no syncing-with-the-cloud handshake on first launch, no folder structure to design. Notes live in ~/Library/Application Support/Scratch/Notes as plain markdown files. If you ever decide you do want a “real” notes app later — Obsidian, Bear, anything — point it at that folder and you’ve imported your whole history in one step. The lack of commitment is the feature.