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

An AI assistant beside the app you are already using

Most questions worth asking an AI during a working day are small: why a formula returns an error, whether a paragraph reads clearly, what a dialog is actually warning you about. The answer takes seconds. Getting to it through a browser does not. You leave the application, find the browser window, find the AI tab among the others, paste or describe what you were looking at, read the answer, copy it back, and find your place again.

The question is the same in both. What differs is the navigation around it, and that decides whether small questions get asked at all. SideNote Pro beside Excel works through that example properly, including what a cell selection actually sends.

Between questions, the assistant does not need a window on screen. It retracts into a small leash on the right edge of the display and comes back with Ctrl+Shift+Space from any application, or a click on the leash, at the size and position you left it and with the same conversation open. The same pattern works beside anything:

Writing in Word

Select a paragraph, run Rewrite, and compare the result with the original, which never left the screen.

Editing in Photoshop

Capture the part of the canvas you are working on and ask how to get a cleaner edge on a selection, with your tools still where they were.

Troubleshooting an error

Capture the dialog before you dismiss it and ask what it is actually saying.

Reading a long document

Select the passage you are stuck on in the PDF reader, run Explain, and carry on from the same line.

Docked on the right edge

For something you want in view while you work, rather than a conversation, such as a checklist or a few facts, float an Active Note. It opens in a small window of its own that you can keep on top, separate from the assistant, and it stays where it is when the drawer retracts.

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.

The right screen edge

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.

Settings › General

Settings › General

Compact beside your work, wide when you need the room

Most of the time SideNote Pro is a narrow panel beside the application you are using. Some answers deserve more space: a long explanation, a table, a summary of a document you want to read properly. For those, the same window has a wide layout.

Widen the window, or maximize it with the Maximize button, Win+Up or a double-click on the title bar. Once it is 1,200 logical pixels wide or more, which is 1,200 screen pixels at 100 percent display scaling, the layout changes by itself:

History stays open

A sidebar down the left edge holds New chat, Active Notes, search and your saved conversations, so moving between threads is one click rather than a trip to the History flyout.

A comfortable reading column

The conversation stays centred and at most 900 pixels wide, so a long answer does not stretch into lines too long to read on a large monitor.

A taller message box

It grows further before it starts to scroll, which helps with a longer prompt or a pasted draft.

Search in the sidebar

Ctrl+H puts the cursor in its search box instead of opening a second copy of the list.

Takeaways on the right

From 1,560 logical pixels, a third column holds the Takeaways kept from the open conversation, whenever conversation history is on. The reading column keeps its width; the rail uses room it was not using. Below that width, the Takeaways button in the title bar opens them.

The wide layout

Narrow the window again and the Takeaways rail steps aside first, then the sidebar, until the compact layout returns with history back behind the title bar's History button. Nothing is lost in the change: the conversation, your draft, attachments and even an answer that is still arriving carry straight across. The choice is made from the window's width alone, so a large monitor can give you the wide layout without maximizing, and a small laptop screen at high scaling may stay compact even when maximized.

Wide and docked are not either-or. Retracting a maximized window to the drawer works as it always did, and expanding it brings it back maximized. SideNote Pro remembers the size you gave it before maximizing, so it never reopens as a screen-sized window. On a large or ultrawide monitor, half the screen can be enough for the wide layout, with the application you are working in beside it.

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.

Settings › Appearance

Settings › Appearance

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 SideNote Pro reports the one setting it could not apply.

Settings › General

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. Native code is what makes the desktop behaviour 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.