Chestnut

A tiny always-on-top companion for your Obsidian vaults. It keeps you company while you write, hops between vaults, delivers notes, and swallows quick captures.

Meeting notes.md

drag onto Chestnut

interactive re-creations, not screenshots
⌃⌥V, ⌃⌥Space, and right-click work here too

Download for macOS

macOS 14+ · free & open source · first-launch steps

Features

Three tricks it knows

Vault Hopper

One palette, every vault. ⌃⌥V from anywhere, type to filter, ⏎ to hop. Pin a home vault and it's always first; ⌘⏎ jumps straight to today's note.

Note Courier

Drop a note onto Chestnut to move or copy it into another vault. Attachments travel with it, name conflicts get Obsidian-style suffixes, nothing is ever overwritten, and every delivery is journaled for undo.

Quick Capture

⌃⌥Space, jot, ⌘⏎ and your capture is appended to today's note in the vault you choose. Markdown toolbar, drafts that survive dismissing the panel, and a satisfied gulp when the thought lands.

Privacy

Nothing leaves your Mac

No network, no telemetry

There is no networking code at all. Even “Check for Updates” just opens your browser.

Never touches Obsidian's files

Vault discovery is read-only observation. Chestnut never writes to .obsidian/ or any Obsidian setting.

Writes only when you act

A capture append, a courier delivery: explicit actions, journaled for undo, never overwriting.

Works with Obsidian closed

The obsidian CLI is an optional enhancement, never a requirement.

Get started

Install

  1. Download the DMG and drag Chestnut to Applications.

  2. Chestnut is free and unsigned (not notarized), so the first launch needs one extra step:

    macOS 15 Sequoia and later: open the app once (macOS will decline), then System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.

    macOS 14 Sonoma: right-click the app → Open → Open.

    Or, from Terminal:

    xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Chestnut.app
  3. Chestnut appears in the corner of your screen. Right-click it for everything: vaults, themes, capture, launch at login.

Or install with Homebrew: 

brew install --cask --no-quarantine gapmiss/tap/chestnut

Rather build it yourself? git clone the source and run make run. A Swift toolchain is all it takes, no Xcode project.