I’ve been searching for a simple way to capture quick thoughts without the overhead of opening a full note-taking app. Tot from The Iconfactory caught my attention because it does exactly one thing, and does it exceptionally well.
Tot lives in your menu bar and provides seven color-coded text dots for temporary notes, snippets, and ideas. The interface is minimal by design. Click the menu bar icon, pick a dot, and start typing. That’s it. No folders, no tags, no complicated organization system to maintain. Just seven spaces for text.
The real advantage comes from iCloud sync across macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS. I’ve been using Tot on my Mac Mini M4 and iPhone, and the sync is instant. I can start a note on my Mac, continue editing on my phone during lunch, and reference it later on my Apple Watch. The app supports both rich text with Markdown formatting and plain text, depending on your needs.
Tot includes Shortcuts app integration, which I appreciate for building automation workflows. The enhanced keyboard on iOS provides quick access to text operations like character counts and word counts, making it useful for drafting social media posts or keeping track of text length limits. The customizable smart bullets and dividers help organize quick lists and to-dos without requiring a dedicated task manager.
The single-window design might seem limiting at first, but in practice, seven dots cover most temporary text needs. I use one for daily scratchpad notes, another for copying and collecting URLs, one for draft messages, and the rest rotate based on current projects. When a note grows beyond temporary status, I move it to a proper note-taking app.
Performance is excellent. Tot uses minimal system resources, and the Liquid Glass design adapts to both light and dark modes seamlessly. The app backs up your text automatically, which saved me once when I accidentally closed a dot with unsaved content.
Tot is free on the Mac App Store, App Store for iOS, and watchOS. The Iconfactory offers it as a straightforward tool without subscriptions or in-app purchases. Users who need extensive note-taking features with nested folders and advanced organization should look elsewhere, but for quick text collection that syncs reliably across Apple devices, Tot handles the job without unnecessary complexity.
