Five Minute Note

A macOS menubar scratchpad that self-destructs. Open it, dump text, walk away — it disappears on its own.

How It Works

• Cmd+Option+Control+Space summons the window from anywhere
• Type whatever you need — every keystroke resets the 5-minute timer
• Stop typing and the countdown begins
• When the timer hits zero, the window closes and your text is gone. No file saved, no trace.
• The app stays in the menubar, ready for the next note

Controls

Action	What it does
Cmd+Option+Control+Space	Toggle the window
Escape	Hide the window (text survives)
+5m button	Extend the timer by 5 minutes
Trash button	Destroy the note immediately
Click menubar icon	Toggle the window

Timer

• Displays in the bottom-right corner as M:SS
• Gray when plenty of time remains
• Amber under 60 seconds
• Red under 15 seconds
• The menubar icon becomes a draining pie chart in the final 60 seconds

Building

Requires Xcode 15+ and macOS 13 (Ventura) or later.

# Generate the Xcode project
brew install xcodegen
xcodegen generate

# Build
xcodebuild -project FiveMinuteNote.xcodeproj -scheme FiveMinuteNote -configuration Debug build

# Or open in Xcode
open FiveMinuteNote.xcodeproj

Installing

Copy the built app to /Applications:

cp -R ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/FiveMinuteNote-*/Build/Products/Debug/FiveMinuteNote.app "/Applications/Five Minute Note.app"

On first launch, macOS will prompt for Accessibility permissions (needed for the global hotkey). Grant access in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility.

Testing

# Run all tests
xcodebuild test -project FiveMinuteNote.xcodeproj -scheme FiveMinuteNote -configuration Debug

73 unit tests across three suites:

Suite	Tests	Covers
NoteStateTests	38	Timer lifecycle, countdown, expiry notification, adaptive interval, keystroke reset, +5m extension, 24h cap, note destruction, date-based accuracy, singleton
TimerViewTests	23	M:SS formatting, ceil rounding, negative clamping, color thresholds (gray → amber → red)
NoteTextEditorCoordinatorTests	12	100K character limit, paste rejection, deletion at limit, UTF-16 counting, coordinator flag

Configuration

Edit the top of FiveMinuteNote/FiveMinuteNoteApp.swift:

let defaultTimerMinutes: Int = 5
let hotkeyModifiers: CGEventFlags = [.maskCommand, .maskOption, .maskControl]
let hotkeyKeyCode: Int64 = Int64(kVK_Space)

Known Quirks

• From Chromium-based apps (Chrome, VS Code), the hotkey may require a double-tap if the chosen shortcut conflicts with the app's built-in bindings. The default Cmd+Option+Control+Space avoids most conflicts.