An AI sidebar that lives on the edge of your Windows desktop

One shortcut, from anywhere

The global summon shortcut defaults to Ctrl+Shift+Space and works from any application. It is registered system-wide, so you do not need to find a window, a tray icon or a browser tab first.

The shortcut is configurable in Settings, Keyboard. It accepts modifiers combined with Space, a letter or a number, so Alt+Space or Ctrl+Shift+J are equally valid. If Windows refuses to register a combination, because another application already holds it, SideNote Pro tells you and restores the previous working shortcut rather than leaving you with nothing bound.

The right-edge drawer

With drawer mode on, the expanded assistant anchors to the right edge of whichever display it is on. Retracting it cross-fades the window down into a small borderless leash, 44 by 68 logical pixels, scaled to the DPI of that display so it stays legible at 125, 150 and 200 percent scaling.

Clicking the leash restores the size and vertical position you left it at. Esc and the window's close button retract instead of hiding entirely, and the global shortcut or a tray action reopens it. While retracted, the taskbar button and Alt+Tab entry disappear and return when you expand again, so Windows never treats the leash like an ordinary window to minimise and restore.

Two sub-options refine the behaviour. The leash can stay always on top without forcing the expanded window to be topmost, and the drawer can retract automatically when it loses focus. The drawer and the always-on-top leash are on by default for new installations. Focus-loss retraction is off by default, so moving to another application does not make the assistant vanish unexpectedly.

Multiple monitors and changing layouts

Desktop layouts are not static. Displays get unplugged, resolutions change, the taskbar moves or auto-hides, and a laptop docks into a different arrangement every morning. Getting this wrong is how a floating window ends up stranded off-screen.

• The leash re-docks itself whenever Windows reports a resolution change, a work-area change, a DPI change or a display disconnect. It recomputes the target display, re-anchors flush to that display's work-area right edge and re-centres on the expanded window's vertical position.
• Saved window bounds are normalised against current monitor work areas at startup. Bounds that no longer fit are re-docked to a usable visible placement rather than restored blindly.
• The floating window snaps within 24 pixels of any work-area edge, using the DWM visible frame rather than the larger invisible Win32 resize bounds, so the gap you see is genuinely zero.
• The window is per-monitor DPI aware, and leash dimensions never overwrite the saved expanded bounds.

Transparency and text brightness

An assistant that sits over your work sometimes needs to be seen through. Settings, Appearance offers window transparency from 0 to 50 percent, so a document or diagram behind the assistant stays partly readable while you ask about it.

Text brightness is a separate control, adjustable from 70 to 100 percent and defaulting to 88. It softens pure white text without making the whole window see-through, which is the more comfortable adjustment for long sessions on a dark interface. Both sliders preview live on the assistant window as you drag them; cancelling Settings restores the previous values and saving keeps them.

Startup and the tray

SideNote Pro can start with Windows, controlled from Settings, General, Startup. Registration uses the per-user Run key, so no elevation is required and nothing outside your own user hive is written. Every launch reconciles the registered command with your saved preference, so an update that moves the executable cannot leave a stale entry behind. On a managed device where the Run key is locked, the rest of your settings still save and the application reports the one setting it could not apply.

A sign-in launch is silent. The assistant window never appears and never steals focus; the only thing on screen is the drawer leash on the right edge. If you have turned the drawer off, it starts to the tray icon alone. Double-clicking the tray icon opens the assistant, expanding the drawer first when it is retracted. Right-clicking gives you Open, Pause or Resume global shortcuts, Settings and Quit.

Pausing releases every registered global hotkey without ending the process, which is what you want before a screen recording or a demo. The bindings are remembered and re-registered on resume, and the tray tooltip reports the paused state so you are not left wondering why the shortcut stopped working.

Why native matters here

SideNote Pro is a WinUI 3 application on the Windows App SDK, running on .NET and shipped self-contained for Windows 11 x64. That is not a badge of honour, it is what makes the rest of this page possible: real global hotkey registration, a genuine tray icon, correct DPI handling per monitor, Mica material, window transparency, and a taskbar presence that appears and disappears at the right moments.