Scratchpad

A minimal, borderless floating scratchpad for quick notes. Built with Rust and egui.

Features

• Clean, minimal UI with no window decorations
• Autosaves to ~/.scratchpad.txt every 3 seconds
• Draggable from the top title bar region
• Always-on-top toggle (pin button in top-left corner)
• Resizable from edges and corners
• Monospace font for easy reading

Controls

• Drag: Click and drag the title bar to move the window
• Pin (Always on Top): Click the circle button in the top-left corner to toggle always-on-top mode (filled = pinned)
• Info: Click the i button to view about dialog and GitHub link
• Close: Click the X button to save and exit
• Resize: Drag from any edge or corner

Building

Prerequisites

• Rust toolchain (install via rustup)
• On Debian/Ubuntu, you may need:

  sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config libgtk-3-dev libxcb-render0-dev libxcb-shape0-dev libxcb-xfixes0-dev libxkbcommon-dev libssl-dev
  

Debug build

cargo build
cargo run

Release build

cargo build --release

The optimized binary will be at target/release/scratchpad.

Installation

macOS

Build and install the app bundle:

# Install cargo-bundle (one-time)
cargo install cargo-bundle

# Build the app bundle
cargo bundle --release

# Copy to Applications
cp -r target/release/bundle/osx/Scratchpad.app /Applications/

Regenerating the app icon

If you modify icon.png, you'll need to regenerate the .icns file for macOS:

# Create iconset with required sizes
mkdir -p icon.iconset
sips -z 16 16 icon.png --out icon.iconset/icon_16x16.png
sips -z 32 32 icon.png --out icon.iconset/icon_16x16@2x.png
sips -z 32 32 icon.png --out icon.iconset/icon_32x32.png
sips -z 64 64 icon.png --out icon.iconset/icon_32x32@2x.png
sips -z 128 128 icon.png --out icon.iconset/icon_128x128.png
sips -z 256 256 icon.png --out icon.iconset/icon_128x128@2x.png
sips -z 256 256 icon.png --out icon.iconset/icon_256x256.png
sips -z 512 512 icon.png --out icon.iconset/icon_256x256@2x.png
sips -z 512 512 icon.png --out icon.iconset/icon_512x512.png
sips -z 1024 1024 icon.png --out icon.iconset/icon_512x512@2x.png

# Convert to .icns
iconutil -c icns icon.iconset -o icons/scratchpad.icns
rm -rf icon.iconset

The app will appear in Launchpad and can be launched from Finder.

Note: On first launch, macOS may show a security warning for unsigned apps. Right-click the app and select "Open" to bypass this.

Linux

# Build release binary
cargo build --release

# Copy binary and icon
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
cp target/release/scratchpad ~/.local/bin/
cp icon.png ~/.local/bin/scratchpad-icon.png

# Install desktop entry
cp scratchpad.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/
chmod +x ~/.local/share/applications/scratchpad.desktop

The app will appear in your application menu/launcher.

Project Structure

scratchpad/
├── Cargo.toml           # Dependencies and project metadata
├── icon.png             # Application icon (source)
├── icons/
│   └── scratchpad.icns  # macOS app icon (generated from icon.png)
├── LICENSE              # GPL v3 license
├── README.md            # This file
├── scratchpad.desktop   # Desktop entry for Linux launchers
└── src/
    └── main.rs          # Application source code

Data Storage

Your notes are stored in ~/.scratchpad.txt and persist across sessions. The file is automatically created on first use.

License

GPL v3 - See LICENSE file.