QuickNotes
A macOS menu bar note-taking app with rich text editing and persistent storage.
What You’ll Build
A productivity app that:
- Lives in your menu bar for instant access
- Supports multiple notes with rich text formatting (bold, italic, headings)
- Saves everything automatically — your notes survive restarts
- Launches at startup so it’s always ready
This is a real productivity tool. Something you’ll reach for every day to capture ideas, meeting notes, and to-do lists.
Why This Project
QuickNotes is your first full productivity app. Unlike a simple utility, you’re building something that manages user data over time — creating, editing, organizing, and persisting content. This project teaches:
- SwiftUI on macOS
- Menu bar (status bar) apps
- Rich text and Markdown editing
- Data persistence and state management
- App lifecycle (auto-save, restore state)
By the end, you’ll have a working app you can build, install, and use daily.
Before You Start
Make sure you have:
- Xcode installed (from the App Store)
- Claude Code running
No iOS device needed — this runs on your Mac.
The Steps
- Starting — Create the Xcode project
- Menu Bar — Set up the menu bar icon
- Note Editor — Build the editor with rich text formatting
- Persistence — Save notes automatically
- Polish & Ship — Refine, build, and distribute the app
Technical Notes
Menu bar apps work differently from regular apps. They don’t have a main window — they have a popover or panel attached to the menu bar icon. Claude handles the SwiftUI setup for this.
QuickNotes also introduces data persistence — your app needs to read and write data to disk. This is a pattern you’ll use in almost every real app you build.
If You Get Stuck
See Getting Unstuck for troubleshooting tips.
Let’s Start
cd ~/Desktop
mkdir QuickNotes && cd QuickNotes
claude