LaTeX Stickies

Sticky notes for your desktop that render LaTeX and Markdown as you type. macOS, Windows and Linux.

Write $e^{i\pi} + 1 = 0$ and it becomes the equation. Click into it and the source comes back. There is no edit mode and no preview mode.

npx latex-stickies

Or install it so it stays around:

npm install -g latex-stickies
latex-stickies

If a launch fails, the launcher says so and shows the runtime's own output; the full log is kept at ~/Library/Logs/latex-stickies/launch.log on macOS, %LOCALAPPDATA%\latex-stickies\ on Windows, and $XDG_STATE_HOME (or ~/.local/state/latex-stickies/) on Linux.

Requires Node 22.12 or newer. The first run downloads the Electron runtime (~230 MB), so give it a minute; later launches are instant. On a Mac it also keeps a copy of the runtime carrying this app's name and icon in ~/Library/Application Support/latex-stickies/ -- on APFS that is a copy-on-write clone, so it costs almost no disk. On a Mac you can download a .dmg from Releases instead and skip Node entirely. It is not signed by Apple, so the first launch needs a right-click on the app and Open rather than a double-click.

Writing in a note

Everything renders while you write. Put the caret in an element to see the markdown behind it; move away and it renders again.

Maths — $…$ inline, $$…$$ on its own line. Delimiters have to hug their content, so prose like costs $5 and $6 stays text rather than turning into a formula. Broken TeX shows the source underlined in red with the parse error on hover, instead of blanking the note.

Markdown — headings, **bold**, *italic*, `code`, ~~struck~~, quotes, lists, and links that open in your browser. Tables render as tables, and their cells render maths. Task list checkboxes are clickable: tick one and [ ] becomes [x] in the file.

Code — fenced blocks are highlighted across eleven languages, labelled with the language, and each has a copy button.

Inside a fence the editor behaves like a code editor: Enter keeps your indentation and adds a level after : or {, Tab and Shift+Tab indent and dedent, and brackets and quotes auto-close. Outside one it behaves like a notes field — lists continue on Enter, and quotes are left alone so don't types normally.

Images of your maths — right-click a rendered equation for Copy as Image or Copy LaTeX. Cmd+Shift+C copies the whole note as an image, however long it is. Both go straight to the clipboard, ready to paste into Slack or an email.

Autocomplete (optional, local)

A grey suggestion appears after a pause in typing; Tab accepts it, Esc dismisses it. It runs entirely on your machine through Ollama — nothing is sent anywhere — and is off by default. Turn it on under Note → Autocomplete.

Pull a small model. This fires on every pause, so speed matters far more than size:

ollama pull qwen2.5-coder:1.5b

Measured on a MacBook: 0.06–0.5s with that model, against 0.4–3.5s for a 14B — and the small one wrote better prose. Choose yours under Note → Autocomplete Model; installed models are listed with their sizes.

It knows what this app is for. $$\int_0^1 x^2 dx = suggests \frac{1}{3}$$, and The derivative of $x^2$ is suggests $2x$.

Cmd+Shift+M turns a description into LaTeX: select "integral of e to the minus x squared from 0 to infinity" and it becomes $\int_{0}^{\infty} e^{-x^2}\,dx$.

Keyboard

Use Ctrl in place of Cmd on Windows and Linux.

| | | |---|---| | Cmd+N | New note | | Cmd+W | Close note (it stays closed until you reopen it; an empty one is discarded) | | Cmd+Shift+Backspace | Delete note, permanently | | Cmd+B / Cmd+I / Cmd+E | Bold / italic / code | | Cmd+K | Link | | Cmd+F | Find in note | | Cmd+Shift+M | Maths from a description | | Cmd+Shift+C | Copy note as an image | | Cmd+Shift+O | Open the notes folder | | Cmd+T | Keep on top | | Cmd+± | Text size |

On Windows and Linux the note windows have no menu bar, so the ☰ button in a note's toolbar opens the same menu. Every command is there.

The All Notes menu lists every note you have. A tick means it is on screen; click to open a note, or click a ticked one to close it. Closing a note is remembered, so the desk you left is the desk you come back to -- the app reopens what was on screen rather than every note you have ever written.

Where notes live

One Markdown file per note, in a folder you can open:

~/Documents/LaTeX Stickies/
  shopping-list.md
  lecture-3.md
  .stickies.json      # colours, positions, pinned state

They are ordinary files: grep them, keep the folder in git, sync it through Dropbox, or edit a note in another editor — the open note follows the change. Cmd+Shift+O opens the folder.

Files are named from the note's first line, and renamed if you retitle it. A file you rename yourself keeps its name. Dropping a .tex or .txt file into the folder makes it a note too, and it keeps that extension.

Metadata lives in the sidecar index rather than in frontmatter, so the note files stay clean — a .tex file with YAML at the top would not compile.

Saves are atomic: written to a temp file, flushed, then renamed over the target, so a crash or force quit leaves the previous file intact rather than a truncated one. Only one instance runs at a time, because two copies would hold divergent notes and the last to quit would overwrite the other.

An existing notes.json from an older version is migrated the first time and then left in place.

Development

npm install
npm start        # run from source
npm test         # unit suites
npm run vendor   # rebuild the bundled libraries
npm run icon     # rebuild the app icon from assets/icon-master.png
npm run demo     # re-record assets/demo.gif from the real app (needs ffmpeg)
npm run verify   # install the packed tarball and check what a user gets
npm run dist     # build a macOS .app and .dmg

Beyond the unit tests, several checks drive the real app and run in CI on macOS, Windows and Linux:

node scripts/smoke.js             # boots, and stays up
node scripts/smoke.js --lifecycle # closing every note behaves per platform
node scripts/render-check.js      # the first-run note renders correctly
node scripts/ghost-check.js       # autocomplete suggests, and Tab accepts
node scripts/snapshot-check.js    # a long note is captured whole
node scripts/conflict-check.js    # the changed-on-disk banner behaves
node scripts/denied-check.js      # a notes folder it may not read is reported
node scripts/verify-install.js    # the install path, end to end (macOS)

The renderer loads over file:// under a strict content-security policy, so CodeMirror and KaTeX are bundled into src/renderer/vendor/ rather than pulled from a CDN. Note text is never parsed as HTML, and the renderer reaches the filesystem and the network only through a narrow preload bridge — Ollama is called from the main process, so the page keeps default-src 'none'.

License

MIT