Ghostwriter

Privacy-focused notes that stay hidden from screenshots and screen shares.

Ghostwriter is an always-on-top notes overlay for macOS. It supports transparency, a collapsible sidebar, and a floating formatting toolbar. Notes auto-save and can be hidden from screen captures with OS-level content protection. Built with Electron; ships as a signed, notarized universal DMG with in-app auto-updates via electron-updater.

Install

Download Ghostwriter.dmg — universal (Apple Silicon + Intel), signed and notarized, auto-updates built in.

Or with Homebrew:

brew install --cask evanpizzolato/tap/ghostwriter

More at the website.

Editor Experience

• The editor uses a contenteditable layout with auto-save as you type.
• New text defaults to Heading 1, and pressing Enter in Heading 1 switches to Body.
• Bold is blocked on heading styles to keep headings consistent.
• The floating toolbar appears when text is selected or on double-click.
• A header edit icon creates a new note and sits to the left of the Privacy mode label.
• The new note button is disabled when the editor has no visible characters.

Sidebar and Notes

• Notes are sorted by most recently updated.
• Each note shows a title derived from its first non-empty line.
• A guide note is injected on first launch to help onboard new users.

Privacy and Click-Through

• Privacy mode uses OS-level content protection to hide notes from screenshots.
• Click-through mode disables editing and allows interaction with apps behind the window.
• Click-through state is tracked centrally — menu, tray, and Cmd+Shift+T shortcut stay in sync.

Shortcuts

• Cmd+Shift+N — show/hide window
• Cmd+Shift+O — cycle opacity presets
• Cmd+Shift+T — toggle click-through
• Cmd+Shift+Plus / Cmd+Shift+- — font size
• Opt+Cmd+S — toggle sidebar
• Cmd+B / I / U — bold, italic, underline
• Shift+Cmd+7 / Shift+Cmd+9 — bullet list, numbered list
• Shift+Cmd+E / Shift+Cmd+I — export / import notes

Data and Persistence

• Notes, active note, privacy state, and sidebar state are saved to disk automatically.
• Notes without any non-whitespace content are not persisted.
• State lives in the Electron userData directory as notes.json.

Development

npm install
npm start

Releases

npm run dist-mac    # signed universal DMG + mac zip in ./dist
./notarize.sh       # notarize and staple

The full publish workflow — tagging, release notes, asset upload, electron-updater manifest — is documented in docs/handoff.md. Latest signed build: releases/latest.

Acknowledgments

Parts of the UI polish and color system in this project were built with the help of two Claude Code plugins by Jakub Krehel (@jakubkrehel):

• make-interfaces-feel-better — design-engineering principles for press feedback, hit-area expansion, tabular numerics, and transition discipline. Applied during the interaction polish pass; see docs/design-system.md §5.
• oklch-skill — guidance for migrating the color palette to OKLCH (perceptually uniform color), unifying the blue ramp on a single hue, and introducing a neutral gray scale. Applied to style.css :root tokens; see docs/design-system.md §2.