Ghost Notes lets you write notes that remain visible to you but invisible in screen shares and recordings.
Interview talking points:
Ghost Notes uses window capture protection built right into your operating system. Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, QuickTime, and OBS all skip the note automatically, since your OS excludes it for them.
Keep prompts, snippets, and reminders available on your screen, organized by context, and absent from every recording.
Your notes stay visible locally while being excluded from Zoom, Meet, Teams, OBS, QuickTime, and any other capture.
Keep a note above every app, or unpin it so it behaves like a normal window when you switch contexts.
Tap the ghost button and clicks pass straight through to whatever's underneath.
Change color, opacity, text size, and code-friendly monospace mode from the hover bar.
Group notes by client, interview, project, or stream. Switch workspaces without mixing every thought into one list.
Export every note to a JSON backup, then import it later by merging with your notes or replacing them.
Closing a note simply hides it. The manager keeps everything searchable, lets you organize notes into workspaces, and gives you one place for appearance, shortcuts, import, and export.
Ghost Notes
Ghost Notes stores everything locally. No server. No account. No analytics. The app never reads or transmits your note contents.
Open source · MIT licensedView every active shortcut in the app, edit a binding in place, or reset it to the default. Standard shortcuts stay scoped to Ghost Notes; the recovery shortcut works anywhere.
Everything you need to know about Ghost Notes.
Yes. Ghost Notes is completely free and open source under the MIT license. No account, no subscription, no telemetry.
macOS (Intel & Apple Silicon, one universal build) and Windows 10/11. Screen capture exclusion uses each OS's native content protection API. Windows needs build 19041 (May 2020 Update) or newer, and the app will let you know on launch if yours is older.
Yes. The Notes Manager supports workspaces, an all-notes view, and moving individual notes between workspaces.
Yes. Open Keyboard Shortcuts from the tray or Notes Manager, click the edit button beside a shortcut, press the new keys, and reset to defaults whenever you want.
Yes. Export creates a plain JSON backup of your notes. Import can merge that backup with your current notes or replace them.
Yes. Content protection works at the OS compositor level, so any application capturing the screen skips Ghost Notes windows regardless of how it captures.
No. Notes are saved on your computer only. No server, no sync service, no analytics. The app works fully offline.
No. Download, install, and use. No sign-in of any kind.
Yes. Ghost Notes runs and saves your notes fully offline, no internet connection needed.
Download the installer (.dmg for macOS, .exe for Windows) and run it. No terminal, no build step, no dependencies.
Download and install the latest release from GitHub Releases. Your notes are stored separately and are not affected by updates.
Free, open source, and local-first. No account required.
Ghost Notes isn't code-signed yet, so your OS may show a warning.
Here's
how to get past it:
xattr -cr /Applications/Ghost\ Notes.app
Then open Ghost Notes again, it will launch normally from now on.