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Smolpad is a tiny Markdown notes app that lives in your Mac's menu bar, where every note is a plain text file in your own iCloud or Dropbox rather than in somebody's database.

Smolpad is a Markdown notes app for people who want somewhere to put a thought without opening a whole application. It lives in the Mac menu bar, opens on a keystroke, and tears off into a floating window when a note turns into real writing. Every note is an ordinary .md file in a folder you can open in Finder, sync through your own iCloud or Dropbox, and read with anything else. It is free for ten notes, and $14.99 a year or $29.99 once for unlimited notes, twenty-seven editor themes and seventeen app icons. iPhone and iPad are included in the same purchase.

Most notes apps ask you to move in. They want your writing in their database, their format, and their sync service, and getting it out again later is a project. Smolpad takes the opposite bet: your notes are plain Markdown files in a folder that belongs to you, and the app is just a nice way to edit them. Delete Smolpad tomorrow and every note is still sitting there, readable by any text editor on any device.

It is built around the menu bar. A keystroke drops the panel down, you write, and it goes away again; if the note grows into something longer, the panel tears off into a window of its own. The editor hides Markdown syntax while you type, draws checkboxes and images inline, and lists a note's headings beside it so long documents stay navigable. There are twenty-seven editor themes, from Solarized and Gruvbox to Rose Pine and Catppuccin, and seventeen app icons.

Every note is a plain Markdown file in your own iCloud Drive or Dropbox. No database, no account, no export needed.

Smolpad lives in the Mac menu bar and opens on a keyboard shortcut, then tears off into a floating window when you need more room.

Markdown syntax hides itself as you type, so a heading looks like a heading rather than a row of hash marks.

A note's headings list down the side, and clicking one jumps straight to that section.

Twenty-seven editor themes, eleven of them light, taken from each palette's published colors.

One purchase covers Mac, iPhone and iPad, and the free tier keeps every editing feature.