NoteSquirrel

A fast, local note-taking application built with Rust and egui. NoteSquirrel provides a clean interface for writing and organizing markdown notes with live preview.

Features

• Clean, distraction-free interface with sidebar note list and split editor & live markdown preview
• Markdown editor with syntax highlighting
• Interactive checkboxes in markdown preview
• Find and replace with regex and case-sensitive search support
• Match highlighting in editor
• Undo/redo support
• Quick list and checkbox insertion with automatic indentation
• Searchbar to quickly find notes
• Unsaved changes warning on exit
• Acts like an editor (Ctrl+S to save, not auto-saving)
• Cross-platform support (Linux, macOS, Windows)
• Configurable fonts, colors, and styling
• Low resource usage and snappy performance

Keyboard Shortcuts

File Operations

• Ctrl+N / Cmd+N: Create new note
• Ctrl+C / Cmd+C: Copy note content to clipboard (when not focused on editor)
• Ctrl+D / Cmd+D: Delete current note (with confirmation)

Editing

• Ctrl+Z / Cmd+Z: Undo
• Ctrl+Y / Cmd+Y: Redo
• Ctrl+, / Cmd+,: Insert list item with proper indentation
• Ctrl+. / Cmd+.: Insert checkbox item with proper indentation

Find & Replace

• Ctrl+F / Cmd+F: Open find/replace dialog
• F3: Next match
• Shift+F3: Previous match
• Alt+R: Replace current match (when find dialog is open)
• Alt+A: Replace all matches (when find dialog is open)
• Escape: Close find dialog

Other

• Double-click: Rename note in the list

Configuration

NoteSquirrel stores its configuration in OS-appropriate locations:

• Linux: ~/.config/NoteSquirrel/config.toml
• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/NoteSquirrel/config.toml
• Windows: ~/AppData/Roaming/NoteSquirrel/config.toml

Configuration Options

The configuration file will be created automatically with default values on first run. You can customize:

• notes_folder: Directory where notes are stored (default: ~/local-notes)
• editor_font_size: Font size for the editor pane (default: 14.0)
• list_font_size: Font size for the note list (default: 14.0)
• rendered_font_size: Base font size for rendered markdown (default: 14.0)
• markdown_styles: Colors and sizes for all markdown elements including:
  • Headers (h1-h6) with individual colors and sizes
  • Paragraph text, strong, emphasis, strikethrough
  • Inline code and code blocks with background color
  • List bullets and other elements

Installation

Pre-built Binaries

Download the latest release for your platform from the releases page.

You may need to make the binary executable before running it (Linux and macOS):

chmod u+x NoteSquirrel

macOS Note

macOS may block or delete the binary because it is not signed with an Apple Developer certificate. To allow it to run:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine NoteSquirrel

Then right-click the binary and select Open, or run it from the terminal.

Build from Source

1. Clone the repository
2. Install Rust if not already installed
3. Run cargo build --release
4. The executable will be in target/release/

Development

• Run with cargo run for development
• Build with cargo build --release for production
• Icons are automatically generated from the source image during build