Active Notes: Floating Notes for Windows and AI

What Active Notes are

An Active Note is a note of your own, stored as plain text: a packing list, a reply template, a command you keep looking up, or the background on a project you would otherwise explain again in every request. A note keeps every character as you typed it, line breaks and code included, and is saved on your PC as you type.

A note has two views of the same words. A note that already has words opens in Read, formatted the way a conversation shows an answer: a list copied from a response, a heading, bold, italic, inline code and code blocks read as they were meant to. Ordinary text stays ordinary, with its line breaks, indentation and paragraphs, and a lone asterisk, as in 2 * 3 or ls *.txt, is shown as you typed it. Edit, beside the title (Ctrl+E), switches to the plain text you wrote, and Read (Ctrl+E again) switches back. A new, blank note opens ready to type in.

Formatting changes only how a note is shown. The characters you wrote, how they are saved and your existing notes are exactly as they were, and Copy and Use with AI use the text you wrote rather than the formatted view.

Writing, editing, searching, copying and floating notes needs no AI provider and no API key, and sends nothing anywhere. A note reaches an AI provider only when you attach it to a message and press Send.

The Active Notes view in the SideNote Pro window, headed Kept on this PC. Sent to an AI provider only when you attach a note and send. A search box and a list of six notes, most recent first, sit on the left. On the right, the open note, Weekly team sync: agenda, holds a numbered agenda and two notes, with Use with AI, Float, Copy and Delete below it and the word Saved. — Your notes, most recently changed first, beside the open note, with **Use with AI**, **Float**, **Copy** and **Delete** under it and its save state on the right.

Create and find a note

Open Active NotesChoose the note button in the title bar, or press Ctrl+Shift+N anywhere in the SideNote Pro window. Your notes open in place of the conversation, which stays exactly as you left it.
Start a noteChoose New note, or press Ctrl+N while your notes are open. Give it a title, or let its first line name it.
WriteA new note opens ready to type in. Plain text: a list, a paragraph, a command or code. SideNote Pro saves the note shortly after you stop typing, and it shows Saved. Press Ctrl+E to read it formatted.
Find it againCtrl+F moves to the search box, which finds notes by their titles and their words. Esc clears the search, and pressing it again closes your notes.

The right end of the SideNote Pro title bar, with the tooltip Active Notes (Ctrl+Shift+N) over the note button, the first of the title bar's buttons, and the New note button below it. — The note button is the first of the title bar's buttons, and its tooltip names the shortcut.

In a narrow window the title bar has no room for the button. Open History instead: Active Notes is at the top of the list, and in a wide window it sits in the history sidebar under New chat.

The History flyout open under the title bar of a compact SideNote Pro window, headed Conversations, with an Active Notes entry above the Search conversations box. — In a compact window, **Active Notes** is also at the top of the History flyout.

The history sidebar of a wide SideNote Pro window: New chat, then Active Notes, then the Search conversations box and today's conversations. — In a wide window, it sits in the history sidebar under **New chat**.

The Active Notes search box holding the word reply, with 1 of 6 notes found: Reply template: refund request, beside the open note's title. — Search finds notes by their titles and words, and says how many of your notes match.

From the keyboard, Enter opens the note selected in the list with the cursor in its words, F2 renames it, and Delete deletes it after asking. A new note you leave blank is not kept when you move on.

Keep a note beside your work

Float opens a note in a small window of its own, which you can move, resize and leave beside whatever you are working on. The pin in its title bar is Keep on top, which keeps it above other windows, and the choice is saved with the note. Floating a note again brings its window to the front rather than opening a second one.

A floating Active Note window titled Lisbon trip: packing list, holding a five-item list, with a Keep on top pin and a close button at the top and Use with AI, Copy, Open in Active Notes and Saved at the bottom. — A floating note carries its title and words, **Use with AI**, **Copy** and **Open in Active Notes**, with the **Keep on top** pin beside its close button.

Edit it in either place: The floating window and Active Notes edit the same note, so a change in one appears in the other as you type.
Read and Edit work there too: A floating note keeps its small size, with its Read or Edit button in the header, and it follows the note's words whichever window you type them in.
Closing keeps the note: The close button, Ctrl+W or Alt+F4 saves the words and closes the window, never the note.
It comes back: A note still floating when you quit reopens in the same place the next time SideNote Pro starts, without taking the keyboard. A window you closed stays closed.
It stays put: Hiding the SideNote Pro window or retracting it into the drawer leaves floating notes where they are.
It is a normal window: Floating notes appear on the taskbar and in Alt+Tab under their title.

Two windows on a Windows desktop. On the left, the SideNote Pro window showing Active Notes with Lisbon trip: packing list open. On the right, the same note in its own small floating window, showing the same five lines. — The same note in Active Notes and in its own floating window. Both show the same words.

Capture information worth keeping

Save as Active Note makes a note from something you already have, on your PC, without asking any AI provider. The source is never changed, and the new note opens so you can tidy it up. Saving the same thing twice keeps one note.

From a response: Under a saved answer, Save as Active Note keeps the whole response as written, or only the part you selected in it.
From a Takeaway: The same button on a Takeaway card keeps its title and quotation. If the card has a private note of yours, you are asked first, and it comes along only if you tick Include my note on this takeaway.
From another app: Select text anywhere, press Ctrl+Shift+Q, and choose Save as Active Note in the Selection actions menu. Nothing is sent, and the app you selected from is left as it was.

Back to the source

A captured note remembers where it came from. Open source takes you back to the conversation and outlines the message. If that conversation has since been deleted, or the message has changed, the note says its source is unavailable and keeps its words.

Use a note with AI, step by step

Choose the notesIn a note, choose Use with AI; the arrow beside it offers a new conversation instead. Or, from the message box, choose Attach Active Notes, tick the notes you want and choose Attach.
Check the chipsEach attached note shows as a chip above the message box. Open a chip to read exactly what will be shared, or remove it.
Ask your questionSay what you want done with the note, for example Turn this agenda into a short email to the team.
Press SendNothing is sent until you do. The notes go with that message to the provider in the profile you send with.

The SideNote Pro message box with a note chip, Weekly team sync: agenda, above the request Turn this agenda into a short email to the team. Below it, the composer tools, the provider and system prompt pickers and the send button, and a notice: Attached Weekly team sync: agenda to your message. Nothing is sent until you press Send. — **Use with AI** attaches the note and takes you back to the message box, where the notice says nothing is sent until you press **Send**.

The Attach Active Notes list open above the message box: a search box and six notes with checkboxes, Weekly team sync: agenda ticked, with Open Active Notes and an Attach button at the bottom. The message box below already carries that note's chip. — **Attach Active Notes** lists your notes to tick and search. A note already attached is ticked.

Each note is attached once, and one message can carry up to ten. Notes count toward the context window like any attachment, so a message too large for them is refused before anything is sent, and the message that says so names the largest notes. A request carrying notes uses input tokens like any other text, under your provider's pricing.

What happens when a note changes

Before you press Send

An attached note follows its note: an edit goes with the message, and a deleted note is taken off it, with a word to say so.

Once the message is sent

The copy that was sent is kept with that message, and its chip under the sent message shows it. Later edits to the note, or deleting it, never change what was sent.

In later requests

Retry, Regenerate and Edit and resend send that same copy again. A sent note is part of its conversation from then on, so later requests in the conversation carry it as they carry any earlier message, until compaction summarizes it. It is never added to other conversations, and there is no standing memory of your notes.

Active Notes, Takeaways and prompts

Takeaways keep what a conversation settled, beside that conversation. Active Notes keep whatever you want to reuse, from anywhere. A system prompt tells the model how to answer; a note gives it material to work with.

Active Notes compared with Takeaways and system prompts
	Active Notes	Takeaways	System prompts
What it holds	Anything you write or capture	A point a conversation settled, quoted word for word	Instructions on how to answer
Editing	Edit it at any time	Fixed quotation, with an optional note of yours	Edited in Settings
Where it lives	Its own library on your PC	Inside its conversation	Settings, chosen per conversation
Sent to AI	Only in a message you attach it to and send	Never with your messages	With every request of a conversation that uses it
Deleted with a conversation	No	Yes	No
Needs conversation history	No	Yes	No

If something does not work

No note button in the title bar: The window is too narrow for it. Open History and choose Active Notes, or widen the window.
Couldn't save: Another program may be holding the notes file. Your words are kept: choose Retry once it is free, or keep typing, which tries again.
Send refused with a note attached: The provider may still need an API key, or the message may be too large for the context window. The note stays attached either way; troubleshooting covers both.
Source unavailable: The conversation or message the note came from was deleted or changed. The note keeps its words, and only Open source is off.

Start with the note you keep retyping

Active Notes are part of the complete application in the trial. Write down the background you explain most often, float it beside your work, and attach it the next time you ask for help.

Try SideNote Pro free for 30 days See pricing

Windows 11 x64. 30-day trial, started from the first-use screen. Notes need no AI provider. A hosted provider may charge for the requests you send with them, under its own pricing.

Keep notes beside your work and reuse them with AI