mdbar

mdbar is a macOS menu bar markdown notebook built around plain files on disk.

Press Cmd+Shift+M, drop into today’s note, and start typing. Everything stays in a normal folder you can browse with Finder, Git, Obsidian, or any editor you want.

Performance

CPU usage:

Open CPU screenshot

Memory usage:

Open memory screenshot

What mdbar does

• Lives in the macOS menu bar instead of a normal dock-first workflow
• Stores daily notes in daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md
• Stores side notes as normal markdown files inside notes/
• Supports nested folders in the notes library
• Opens to today’s note and focuses the editor from a global shortcut
• Uses a live rendered markdown editor instead of a raw textarea
• Supports dark mode, font selection, font size, line height, images, links, and autosave

Keyboard shortcuts

• Cmd+Shift+M: open mdbar from anywhere
• ←: previous day
• →: next day
• Cmd+O: open the current note in your default editor
• Cmd+Shift+O: reveal the current note in Finder
• Esc: go back through the current view stack, then hide the panel

The global launcher is configurable in settings, but Cmd+Shift+M is the default.

Storage model

Pick one notebook folder and mdbar manages a structure like this:

your-notebook/
  daily/
    2026-04-18.md
    2026-04-19.md
  notes/
    ideas.md
    projects/
      roadmap.md

There is no database. Your notes stay as plain .md files.

Download

• Website: mdbar.run
• GitHub repo: github.com/rishabhsai/mdbar
• Releases: github.com/rishabhsai/mdbar/releases

Use the GitHub Releases page for the current macOS build.

Development

Install dependencies:

npm install

Run the app in development:

npm run tauri dev

Build the web app:

npm run build

Build the macOS bundle:

npm run tauri build

Publish a signed and notarized macOS release:

./scripts/release-macos.sh

The release script refuses to publish unless a Developer ID Application certificate and Apple notarization credentials are available.

Project structure

• src/: React app for the mdbar panel UI
• src-tauri/: Tauri and Rust backend
• site/: static landing page for Vercel or any static host

Shipping the landing page

The landing page is the standalone static site in site/. Its download buttons link to GitHub Releases so the website never needs to ship a stale DMG.

Stack

• Tauri 2
• Rust
• React
• TypeScript
• Tiptap

License

MIT