quickNote

Native Windows sticky-note app in C. Each window holds multiple notes as tabs, editing Markdown .md files with live preview. Windows and tab order are restored on launch.

Install

Download quicknote-setup-<version>.exe from GitHub Releases and run it. Installs per-user (no admin prompt), adds QuickNote to the Start menu, and offers a "start with Windows" checkbox. Uninstall from Settings → Apps; your notes in %APPDATA%\quickNote are never deleted.

SmartScreen note: the installer is unsigned, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC". Click More info → Run anyway.

To build the installer yourself: install Inno Setup 6 (winget install JRSoftware.InnoSetup), then:

make installer   # emits dist/quicknote-setup-<version>.exe

Build

Requires MinGW-w64 (gcc + windres) and GNU Make.

make app      # builds quicknote.exe
make test     # builds and runs the headless unit tests
make clean

The app icon ("qN") is built from assets/quicknote.ico via assets/app.rc.

Data

Stored under %APPDATA%\quickNote\:

• notes\<id>.md — one Markdown file per note; the leading # <title> H1 is the note name, the rest is the body
• preferences.json — schema v2: a windows array (geometry, ordered tab note-ids, active index) and a notes array (name, id)

Usage

Run quicknote.exe. A tray icon appears in the notification area.

Windows and tabs

Each window holds one or more notes as tabs in a Windows-Terminal-style strip across the title bar:

• + / Ctrl+N — add a new tab (new note) to the current window
• Alt+N — open a new window (with one new note)
• Drag a tab — reorder tabs within the window
• ✕ (tab close button) / middle-click — close a tab; the note stays on disk. Closing the last tab closes the window.
• Ctrl+R — rename the active tab/note (press Enter to confirm, Escape to cancel)
• Ctrl+Shift+D — delete the active note permanently (confirms first)
• Title-bar X — close the window. Its notes stay on disk and remain reopenable from the tray, but the closed window is not restored. On launch the app reopens whichever windows were open when you last Quit (or a fresh window if none)

Tray

The tray menu lists open note names. New Note opens a new window. Clicking a listed note focuses its window and activates that tab; if the window was closed, it reopens. Quit saves state and exits.

Markdown editing

Markdown is rendered live as you type (headings, bold, italic, strikethrough, code, bullet/numbered lists). Delimiters are hidden (**bold** displays as just bold) but kept in the .md file, so note files stay plain Markdown on disk.

A formatting sidebar (left edge) toggles styles on the selection:

Button	Action	Shortcut
B	Bold **…**	Ctrl+B
I	Italic *…*	Ctrl+I
S	Strikethrough ~~…~~	Ctrl+Shift+X
•	Bullet list -	Ctrl+Shift+8
1.	Numbered list N.	Ctrl+Shift+7

Each button toggles: applying again on already-formatted text removes it.

Tech

Win32 + RichEdit, md4c (markdown), cJSON (state). Third-party sources vendored under third_party/.