Tic

Floating, Stickies-style task lists for macOS.

Tic keeps your lists on the desktop as floating sticky notes instead of buried behind a menu bar click — glance at them, check things off, drag them around. Each note is its own checklist.

Features

• Floating sticky notes — borderless, draggable, resizable panels; optional float-on-top and show-on-all-Spaces per note. Positions and state are remembered across launches.
• Multiple lists — create from the menu bar, ⌘N, the in-note +, or the Dock menu. New lists are auto-named List 1, List 2, …
• Rich tasks — subtasks up to 3 levels (completing a parent completes its children), multiline notes (Shift-Return), and inline Markdown (**bold**, *italic*, `code`, ~~strike~~, links). Tap to edit; drag to reorder, or drag right to nest.
• Solid or Liquid-Glass notes — per-note color themes, or a translucent material that shows the desktop through it.
• Roll-up — double-click a note's title bar to collapse it to just the header.
• Raycast-style search palette — a floating, centered command palette to search/open/delete any list, with keyboard navigation.
• Launch at Login, a custom menu-bar icon, and a native Dock identity.

Requirements

macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later.

Install

1. Download Tic-vX.Y.Z.zip from the latest release, unzip it, and move Tic.app to /Applications.

2. Tic isn't code-signed/notarized (it's ad-hoc signed), so Gatekeeper will block it on first launch. Clear the quarantine flag:

   xattr -rc /Applications/Tic.app

   Then open it normally. (Alternatively: right-click Tic.app → Open → Open.)

3. To have Tic open automatically, enable Launch at Login from its menu-bar menu.

Build from source

Tic is a Swift Package — no .xcodeproj needed.

swift run                 # build + launch (dev)
swift build -c release    # release build
swift test                # run the test suite (Swift Testing)
./scripts/package.sh      # assemble dist/Tic.app (add --open to launch it)
open Package.swift        # edit in Xcode

Usage

• The menu-bar icon lists your recent lists (with a More Lists submenu for the rest) and opens Search Lists…, New List (⌘N), and Launch at Login.
• Hover a note to reveal its controls: color, solid/glass, float-on-top, roll-up, + new list, and close. Click the title to rename; the bottom field adds tasks (Return keeps focus).
• Hover a task to reveal a ✕ (delete) and, below it, a ＋ line — click it to add a subtask nested under that row. An empty task you don't fill in disappears when you click away.

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Return	Finish editing a task / add the typed task
Shift-Return (or ⌥ Return)	New line within the same task
Shift-Tab	Make the task a subtask (nest one level deeper)
⌃ Shift-Tab	Un-nest a subtask (move it back out)
⌘N	New list
Double-click the title bar	Roll the note up / down

You can also drag a task to reorder it, or drag it right to nest it — the drop indicator shows where (and at what level) it will land. The relevant chord (⇧⏎ line, ⇧⇥ nest) shows as a tiny keycap hint right in the field while you're editing, so you don't have to memorise this table.

Architecture

SwiftUI views hosted inside AppKit NSPanels (the only way to get true desktop-sticky behavior), backed by SQLite via GRDB. An AppModel coordinator bridges the menu bar to the window layer. See CLAUDE.md for the full breakdown.

Stack: Swift 6 · SwiftUI + AppKit · GRDB (SQLite) · SMAppService (login item).

Development & releases

• CI (.github/workflows/ci.yml) builds, tests, and lints on every push/PR.

• Changelog is generated from Conventional Commits with git-cliff (cliff.toml) and kept in CHANGELOG.md.

• Releases are tag-based: push a v* tag and the release workflow builds Tic.app, generates release notes, and publishes a GitHub Release with the zipped app.

  git tag v0.1.0 && git push origin v0.1.0

Icon source art lives in Assets/ (AppIcon / Flat / MenuBar).

License

Released under the MIT License. © 2026 Kasun Vithanage.