I built a notes app for people who hate opening apps

Move your mouse to the edge of your screen. Your notes appear.

Move away. They disappear.

You haven’t clicked once.

Before building PaperTodo, I used to send myself messages in chat apps as a makeshift notepad—but the message history became a mess, and reopening the app to find something was a hassle. I tried dedicated notes apps, yet kept returning to chat because it still felt easiest, so I built PaperTodo to make saving and checking notes even simpler.

My goal is to remove as many steps as possible. One click wherever possible. Zero clicks when a hover will do.

PaperTodo keeps notes and to-do lists on your Windows desktop. They tuck away at the screen edge until you need them, with Markdown support when a quick thought needs more structure.

Microsoft killed off the classic Windows desktop gadgets. I think they deserve a sequel.

With PaperTodo, you can describe a small tool you want—like a Pomodoro timer—and use Codex to build it as a plugin that lives on your desktop.

That’s my bigger vision for PaperTodo: a home for the next generation of desktop tools, where creating your own starts with a sentence.

I’m an indie developer from China, developing this with Codex and taking part in the GPT-6 Astra Challenge.

[Meet PaperTodo →](https://www.producthunt.com/products/papertodo)

Do you also send yourself messages as a notepad? What keeps you going back to chat instead of a notes app?