Tot

Tot gives you seven text pads and refuses to give you an eighth. Each is a coloured dot in a small panel you pull down from the menu bar or summon with a hotkey, and the limit is the entire design: nothing to name, nothing to file, no note count that grows until you declare bankruptcy on it. Text that goes in is text you will use today or throw away.

Each dot holds plain text or lightly formatted markdown, and you can jump straight to dot four from the keyboard. A URL scheme and Shortcuts actions let other apps drop text in without you switching windows. Sync runs over your own iCloud to the iPhone and iPad versions, which are bought separately — the $19.99 unlock here covers the Mac app only.

You can run it free with a single dot, which is an honest way to find out whether the constraint suits how you work. It should not be your notes app: there is no search across a library because there is no library, and no tags, folders or links. What it is very good at is holding the tracking number, the half-written reply and the SQL snippet for the next two hours, where you can see them. If you already keep one Apple Note pinned as a scratchpad and that works fine, you do not need this.