Menu-bar quick capture for macOS. Hit ⌥Space, dump the thought, and Inkfish files it into the right project note later. Notes are plain markdown in a folder you own.
Home, from an earlier version (the sidebar and toolbar have changed since). All notes shown are made up.
Apple silicon Macs only, macOS 12 or newer.
Homebrew
brew tap pylotlight/inkfish https://github.com/PylotLight/Inkfish.git
brew install --cask inkfishDMG or zip: grab Inkfish-<version>-mac-arm64.dmg (or .zip) from the latest release and drag Inkfish.app to Applications.
No install, with bunx (or npx):
bunx @pylotlight/inkfishDownloads the release zip once, checks its SHA-256, caches it in ~/.cache/inkfish and opens it. Later runs open the cached copy instantly. bunx @pylotlight/inkfish --uninstall removes it again. Details in packages/cli.
Builds aren't signed or notarized yet, so macOS quarantines the download and shows that message. The app is fine. Click Cancel (don't move it to the Bin), then:
xattr -cr /Applications/Inkfish.appand open it again. The bunx launcher doesn't hit this.
Inkfish checks GitHub Releases and tells you when there's a new version (Settings → About & updates).
Capture
- ⌥Space anywhere opens a small capture window near the cursor. Type, paste or drop images, dictate, and ⌘↩ saves to the inbox. ⇧⌥Space appends to today's daily note instead. Both shortcuts can be changed or turned off in Settings → Shortcuts.
- Lives in the menu bar: left-click the icon to capture, right-click for the menu. Menu bar mode can hide the Dock icon, change what a click opens (capture, today, or the main window), or turn the icon off (Settings → Appearance → Menu bar).
- Voice notes transcribe on-device: Parakeet Redux (native Core ML or in-app WebGPU) or Apple SpeechAnalyzer (macOS 26), with a built-in benchmark to pick one (Settings → Voice Engine).
Inbox to project notes
- Captures sit in the inbox, then get cleaned up and filed into a top-level folder (
work/,personal/, …) with a title and tags. Raw captures are kept, and a wrong pick can be undone or reassigned. - Sorting runs on rules out of the box. Turn on Apple Intelligence (on-device, macOS 26) or connect your own provider: Anthropic or any OpenAI-compatible server (OpenAI, Ollama, LM Studio, LiteLLM).
- Per-note AI actions: tidy formatting, fix typos, summarise, turn into a checklist, or a custom instruction. Raw / Split / Processed views leave the file untouched until you apply the result (one ⌘Z undoes it). Works on a selection too.
Meetings
- Record a call as a two-speaker transcript: your mic is "Me", the Mac's audio is "Them", with live captions. Pick system audio from specific apps (just Teams, not your music).
- Saved as a filed meeting note. Teams
.vtttranscripts can be imported too.
Notes
- Live-preview markdown editor (CodeMirror) with tabs, pinning, in-note find, code highlighting and autosave.
- Images: paste or drop to save into
assets/, drag to resize (Obsidian-stylewidths), drag to move, right-click to copy. - New (Untitled) notes take their file name from their
# titleand keep following it until you rename the file by hand. Notes you bring in (an Obsidian vault) keep their names unless you turn on Settings → Notes → Also rename notes named after their heading. Click the header title to rename in place. Any rename or move (title, hand rename, Move to…, drag and drop) updates links and[[wikilinks]]to the note. - Sidebar file tree with drag and drop, Move to…, tag chips and a breadcrumb. Enter opens the selected note, F2 or the hover ✎ renames it, ⌘⌫ deletes; delete shows a glance of the note first and can be undone. Deleted notes stay in Settings → Trash for 7 days.
- Today: a daily note with quick-append from the Home dashboard, the tray, or ⇧⌥Space.
- ⌘K command palette (commands, notes,
#tags) and ⌘O note switcher.
Mini windows
- ⇧⌘M pops a note out into a small always-on-top window that floats over full-screen apps and every Space. Tuck it to the screen edge behind a handle, snap it to a corner, set its opacity. Up to 6 at once, kept in sync with the main window. ⌃⌥M shows or hides them all.
Android companion + sync
- The Android app (
android/) captures, browses and edits the same notes. Pair it with a QR code (Settings → Sync) and it syncs with the Mac over your local network, end-to-end encrypted, no server. Big deletions ask before they apply.
Looks: glass (vibrancy) window, themes and accent colours, font choices including the bundled Libron.
- Notes: a plain folder of
.mdfiles,~/Inkfishby default (you pick it on first launch, and an existing Obsidian vault works). Inkfish only writes finished notes andassets/there; with Settings → Notes → Name files from title on (the default) it also renames Untitled notes (and ones it named) to follow their# title, and any rename or move updates links to the note in other notes. Existing notes named after their heading are only renamed if you turn on "Also rename notes named after their heading" (off by default). Change it in Settings (Notes home). - App data:
~/Library/Application Support/Inkfishholds settings, the search index (a cache, rebuilt from your files by Rescan), raw inbox captures, the daily-log scratch and trash. - Your AI API key and phone pairing keys are encrypted with the macOS keychain. With no AI provider connected, notes only go to a phone you paired. With one, note text also goes to the provider you configured.
- Homebrew:
brew uninstall --cask inkfish(add--zapto also remove app data). - bunx:
bunx @pylotlight/inkfish --uninstall, or--purgeto also remove app data. See packages/cli. - Either way your notes folder is left alone.
Inkfish uses the same local SOCKS5 settings and routing rules as Blobfish. Start an SSH dynamic forward and leave it running:
ssh -N -D 127.0.0.1:1080 user@your-ssh-hostOpen Settings → Network → SOCKS5 proxy, enable the proxy, check its local
host and port, then select Save proxy settings. Inkfish does not start SSH.
Only 127.0.0.1, localhost, and ::1 are accepted as proxy hosts.
Test TCP port checks for a listener, not a working SOCKS/SSH connection.
In-app web model downloads, benchmark clips, and other Chromium HTTP(S) requests
follow these routes. Destination DNS for proxied traffic travels through SOCKS,
with no silent Direct fallback. Kill switch checks the selected proxy port
before proxied requests (checks are cached for up to two seconds); Direct routes
continue to work. Named proxies and exact or *.example.com rules can select
the main proxy, another local proxy, or Direct. Exact rules beat wildcards,
and more-specific wildcards beat broader ones. A rule can use the main proxy
even when its global switch is off. Loopback always stays direct; single-label
names and local-network addresses bypass by default. Rules override LAN bypass.
Native speech model downloads follow the same routing. Inkfish gives FluidAudio a temporary loopback HTTP proxy that bridges each destination to the selected SOCKS5 proxy or an explicitly direct route. This includes repository listings, vocabulary files, resumable model files, mirrors, and redirected CDN connections. SOCKS destinations are resolved by the proxy, and a failed tunnel never falls back to Direct. HTTPS remains encrypted end-to-end; the bridge does not intercept TLS. Saving proxy settings pauses active native downloads and closes their tunnels; resume them after saving to use the new route. Already-downloaded models and offline transcription are unaffected.
Settings are saved atomically to proxy.json in the app profile and restored
before windows open. Invalid saved settings stop startup instead of going direct.
Phone LAN sync is an incoming local service, not routed through this proxy.
External browser links, OS-managed Apple services, custom transcription helpers,
and package/build-time downloads are outside this setting. A tunnel is not an
anonymity guarantee.
Bun + Electron + React + TypeScript. Building from source, the dev profile, tests, architecture and releasing: DEVELOPING.md.