MeatPad is free, notarized and local-first: plain files on your disk, no account, no sync engine, no telemetry. Versions below are ordered newest first.
0.31.0
- A new app icon. MeatPad now has a sculpted notebook icon in the Dock and in Finder.
- Compact search results. Search and References show each match in a tighter list: the matching text is tinted in its line, the snippet never cuts the match off, and each file header shows its folder and match count.
- Large folders open faster. The sidebar loads folders as you open them, Quick Open builds its list on demand, and searching reads files in a stream, so big projects use less memory and stay responsive.
- Huge files open and scroll smoothly. A multi-megabyte file no longer freezes MeatPad when you open it or flick through it.
- Instant switching between Files, Search and References. The sidebar swaps panels at once, even with thousands of search results.
- Shift+Return adds a new line in programs. In the MeatPad Terminal, Shift+Return now works as in VS Code, so tools such as Claude Code get a new line instead of sending your message.
- The Dock icon brings All Notes forward. Clicking MeatPad in the Dock raises All Notes even while project windows are open.
0.30.0
- Double-click a folder to open or close it. Double-click a folder's row in the sidebar to unfold or fold it, the same as its arrow or icon. A single click still just selects it.
- Smooth trackpad scrolling in the terminal. Scrolling the terminal with a trackpad now moves a few lines at a time and follows your fingers, instead of jumping past the output. Programs that take over the screen, such as less and vim, scroll too.
0.29.0
- Git menu in the terminal panel. The panel header has a Git menu. Status, fetch, pull and push run with one click. Commit commands are typed at the prompt with the cursor between the quotes, ready for your message. Edit the commands, choose Run or Type, and add dividers in Settings, Terminal tab.
- Terminal button in the toolbar. A button in the project window's toolbar shows and hides the terminal panel.
- Discord link. The footer of the All Notes sidebar now links to our Discord community: discord.gg/gECE37RpD.
- Empty notes clean themselves up. Empty notes you create in All Notes and never type into are removed when you move to another note. Leftover empty notes are cleared at launch.
- No extra window from the Dock icon. Clicking the Dock icon while windows are open no longer opens an extra window.
0.28.0
- Terminal panel. A terminal now lives inside every project window. Press Control and the backtick key, or choose Terminal from the View menu, to open it under the editor. It starts in the project folder with your usual shell, keeps its output while hidden, and resizes when you drag its top edge.
- Open in MeatPad Terminal. Right-click a file or folder in the sidebar to open the terminal in that folder.
- Project folder row. The sidebar now starts with the project folder itself. Right-click it to search the whole project, and Command-Shift-F always searches the whole project.
0.27.0
- A full right-click menu in the file tree. Right-click a file or folder in a project to make a new file or folder, rename it, copy, cut, paste or delete it, show it in Finder, open it in Preview or Terminal, search inside a folder, or copy its path. Copy Path shows the text it will copy on a smaller line underneath.
- Choose what the menu shows. The new File Tree tab in Settings lets you hide items, change the shortcut each one displays, and turn the icons on or off.
- Tab menu and quick close. Right-click a tab to close it, close the other tabs or the tabs to its right, copy its path, or show it in Finder. Control-click or middle-click a tab to close it at once.
- Zoom for project windows. Command-plus and command-minus make the sidebar, tabs and text bigger or smaller together, and command-zero puts them back. MeatPad remembers the size.
- Line height for code. A new setting in the General tab of Settings opens up the space between lines in code files, from 1x to 2x. Code keeps its current spacing until you change it.
- Folders open and close with their icon or arrow. Click a folder's icon or arrow to open or close it. Clicking its name selects it, and the selected row is highlighted across its full width.
- Switching between files is quicker. Opening a file in another tab does less work while you wait, so the window stays responsive.
- A launch crash is fixed. Opening a project no longer waits on your shell, which could occasionally close MeatPad as it started.
0.26.1
- Card line spacing holds while you type. With wider line spacing set for cards, a card you click into keeps the same spacing and the same height, instead of closing up while you edit it.
0.26.0
- Line spacing for notes. A new setting in the General tab of Settings opens up the space between lines in your notes, from 1x to 2x. Notes now start a little roomier, at 1.3x.
- Line spacing for board cards. The Boards tab in Settings has the same control for the text on your cards. Cards keep their current spacing until you change it.
- A new note shows its date right away. In the notes library, a note you just made now shows its date at once, instead of a single squashed line.
0.25.0
- Icons on every right-click entry of a card. Each item in a card’s menu now shows its icon, the same way the icons on the card itself do.
- Colored card icons, if you want them. A new Boards tab in Settings can tint card and menu icons by what they do: moving, due dates, labels, copying, splitting and more. Every kind has its own default color, you can pick your own for any of them, and reset one or all of them back.
- New cards scroll into view. A card added to a long column is brought on screen instead of landing out of sight.
- Long notes stay in view while you type. When notes on a card near the bottom of a column grow past the edge, the column follows the text.
- No more stray blank window. Opening MeatPad from its icon with nothing to restore shows your notes library, and a minimized window comes back instead of a new one opening.
- The Graphic Meat mark at the bottom of the sidebar is smaller, with more room around it.
0.24.0
- An action row on every card. Under the title there is one line of icons for moving, due date, labels, copying and splitting, and each icon opens its own menu. The notes below get the full width of the card. Compact cards stay as tight as they were.
- A right-click menu that is sorted. The same groups appear as submenus, with an icon on every entry. Copying lets you choose the whole card, only the title, or only the notes.
- Column icons in the card menu. Each destination in the move submenu shows the icon of its column. A column without an icon borrows the one a column with the same name has on another board, or a guess based on its name. The column menu can keep that suggestion as the real icon.
- Three ways to split a card. Each line can become a title, become notes, or become notes with a short title written for it, on your Mac where it can do that.
- Fixed: you can clear a card’s title completely again.
- Fixed: undoing a new card no longer leaves it in Board Trash.
0.23.0
- Move a card from its menu. Right-click a card and the board’s remaining columns are listed at the top — Move to In Progress, Move to Done — one click, no dragging. ⌘Z moves it back.
- Split a card into cards. Split into Cards turns every line of a card into its own card, directly under the original in the same column. List markers are dropped, labels and colour carry over, and one ⌘Z puts it back together.
- Search shows where it matched. Every hit is highlighted in the card’s title and notes, and folded notes open while the search matches something further down.
- An empty card no longer offers to copy text it doesn’t have.
- Fixed: double-clicking an image could stop opening Quick Look after switching to another board or to All Boards.
0.22.0
- Empty cards, filled from the clipboard. A column’s + makes a blank card when nothing is typed, and the blank card carries a paste button that fills it from the clipboard — first line as the title, the rest as notes.
- The notes field hints at the markdown it understands.
- Scrolling a big board no longer redraws every card on every tick.
- Fixed: an untitled card in Board Trash is named by its notes instead of showing blank.
0.21.0
- Markdown on card text. Bold, italic, code, strikethrough and links render on the face of a card, and the raw text is still what you edit. On by default; there is a switch for it in Settings.
- Give a column its own icon. An emoji or an image file, drawn before the column name — Set Emoji…, Choose Image…, Remove Icon from the column menu, the same way boards work.
- Pool columns from different boards into one. In All Boards, pick any board’s columns and they gather into a single Combined column. A card you picked shows up there and nowhere else, and picking one board’s Todo leaves every other board’s alone.
- A button to present a card. It sits between copy and the card menu, so the double-click that used to present a card no longer fights the text field underneath it.
- Copy the notes on their own. The notes row has its own copy button, and the card menu now offers Copy Title and Copy Notes next to Copy Text.
- Sort the sidebar. View ▸ Sort Notes By and Sort Boards By order either list by name or by the date it was created; dragging a row puts that list back to your own order.
- Board Trash moved above New Board, where Trash already sits above New Folder, and Notes and Boards are now sections with All Notes and All Boards pinned at the top of each.
- Graphic Meat in the corner. The studio mark at the foot of the sidebar, with Suggest a Feature, Report a Bug, MailVault and PhotoBooks beside it.
- Fixed: dropping an image on a card while its text was being edited pasted a file path into the text instead of attaching the image.
- Fixed: Delete and Archive in the multi-card bar were drawn grey, which read as disabled. Delete is red now and Archive is green.
0.20.0
- Board Trash. Deleting a card, a column or a whole board moves it to Board Trash instead of destroying it, and restoring puts it back where it came from — a column takes its own cards with it, both ways. Attachments stay on disk until the entry is purged.
- Columns belong to their board. Renaming or deleting a column on one board no longer touches any other board’s. Existing boards keep their columns; each one simply owns its copy now.
- Fixed: dragging a column could leave its ghost stuck on the board.
0.19.0
- Work on several cards at once. ⌘-click and ⇧-click to build a selection, then archive or delete the lot from the bar that appears, or drag the whole selection into another column.
- Archive instead of delete. Archive a card, or every card in a column, and it stays on the board but out of the way until the Show Archived toggle brings it back.
- Reorder a board’s columns. Drag a column header, or use Move Left and Move Right in the column menu. The order is that board’s own.
- Copy a card from its face. A copy button appears on the card while the pointer is over it and puts the title and notes on the clipboard.
- Drag an attachment out of a card and it lands in the Finder as a copy named after the card it came from.
- Fixed: after switching views, double-clicking the same attachment would not reopen Quick Look.
0.18.0
- Give a board its own icon. Pick an emoji or an image file from the board row’s context menu — Set Emoji…, Choose Image…, Remove Icon — and the sidebar stops being a list of names.
- One look per board. Setting an emoji clears an image and the other way round, so a board never carries two icons and never leaves a stray file behind.
- All Boards carries the icon too. In the overview, the badge that says which board a card came from now shows that board’s icon next to its name.
- Graphic Meat in the About panel. The studio lockup, a link to graphicmeat.com, and a copyright line that reads Graphic Meat.
- Fixed: double-clicking an attachment opened Quick Look on the board but not inside a presented card or a note window.
- Fixed: the presentation controls now park in a corner instead of sitting over the card.
0.17.0
- Attach any file to a card. Drop a PDF, a spreadsheet, an archive — not just images — or pick one with Add File… in the card editor. Each attachment gets a real thumbnail.
- Double-click an attachment for Quick Look. A single click still selects the card, so nothing changes about picking cards up.
- Present a card. Double-click a card and it fills the board, big and centred over a blurred background, with +/- to size the text.
- Presentation mode. A toolbar toggle scales the whole board up for showing it to someone across the desk.
- Fixed: after dropping a file on a card, the target card's marching ants and drop badge stayed lit.
0.16.0
- Drops follow the pointer. Dragging a card inserts it at the slot under the cursor, not wherever the column decides.
- The card that will receive an image is marked with marching ants and a thumbnail of what it is about to get.
- Drop an image on empty column space and it becomes a new card, titled from the file, with the image already attached — one undo away.
0.15.0
- Web addresses on a card are links. Click one and it opens in your browser; click anywhere else on the card's text and you are editing the card, exactly as before.
- Links in notes. Addresses are marked as you write them, and ⌘-click opens one — so an ordinary click can still put the caret inside a link to correct it.
- Prefer a plain click? Settings ▸ General switches it, and pasting a link into a note says which one is in effect with a way straight to that setting.
- New strings localized in all eight languages.
0.14.0
- Undo on the board. ⌘Z, Edit ▸ Undo, and a new Undo button revert card edits, moves and deletes.
- Drag a card from anywhere on it, including its text.
- Card faces are laid out like the card editor. Title, labels, date, images and notes appear as rows — click the text to edit, click away to finish.
- Images on cards and notes. Drop an image onto a card or into a note, paste a screenshot into a note, or use Add Image… in the card editor; click a thumbnail for Quick Look.
- Name prompts open as sheets. New Board, New Folder and Rename… put the caret in the field with no stray focus highlight.
- Open files from Finder's Open With menu, or by dropping them on the app icon.
- New strings localized in all eight languages.
0.13.0
- Search your cards. Type in the board's search field and it narrows to the cards whose title or notes contain what you typed. Works alongside the label filter, so you can search inside a filtered board.
- A card editor like Calendar's. Opening a card gives you a proper editor for its title, colour, date, notes and labels — and a long title now wraps onto another line instead of being cut off.
- Colour a card. Any card can carry its own colour across the whole cell, separate from its labels.
- Pick a label's colour. Choose the colour as you create a label, and the badges on the board wear it.
- Three card densities. Show cards compact, titles only, or in full — the board remembers your choice next time you open it.
0.12.0
- Card labels. Colour-coded labels on board cards, with a filter that narrows the board as you type.
- Line breaks in a card. Shift+Return and Option+Return now add a line break in the add-card field and in a card's notes. Return still files the card, so one typed entry can carry a title and its detail.
0.11.0
- Card actions. A menu on every card and on right-click: due dates, notes, unlink, delete.
- Paste a list, get cards. A pasted list offers to become one card per item, numbered or bulleted, in any language.
- Summarise into a title. Long notes can be turned into a short card title by the on-device model. Nothing leaves the Mac.
- Faster with big files. Syntax parsing moved off the main thread and highlighting is computed for the visible lines only.
0.10.2
- A column taller than the window scrolls instead of clipping its cards.
0.10.1
- The name field is back in every board dialog.
- A board can be opened straight from the command line.
0.10.0
- Boards. A kanban board inside the notes window: cards edit in place, notes fold away, due dates sit on the card, columns carry emoji. A card can link to the note it came from.
- Focus rings are drawn only when assistive technology is running.
- Due dates in notifications follow your locale's format.
0.9.5
- Fixed a caret that stopped following clicks after the app had been open for days.
- The multi-select placeholder shows the note count instead of raw markup.
0.9.4
- The menu bar comes back when a window opens in menu-bar-only mode, and Settings is reachable from the popover.
Start with a note. Stay for the editor. Notes, Markdown and real code projects, local on your Mac.
Download MeatPad →