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QuickSave

Release Platform License English | 中文

A tiny macOS menu bar app: select text anywhere, press ⌘⌥S, and it's instantly saved as a .txt file in ~/docs (the folder is created automatically). You can also save your clipboard text as a document with one click.

On success, a HUD banner pops up at the top-right corner with a sound — no notification permission needed. The menu bar icon briefly turns into ✅.

QuickSave demo

Install

Option 1: download a prebuilt copy (no Xcode needed)

  1. Grab QuickSave.zip from Releases, unzip, and move QuickSave.app into /Applications.
  2. First launch: the app is not notarized, so Gatekeeper will block a plain double-click. Right-click → Open in /Applications, or run: 
    xattr -cr /Applications/QuickSave.app
  3. Grant permission in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility (required to read the text selection).

Option 2: build from source

git clone https://github.com/snowbitx/QuickSave.git
cd QuickSave
make launch

Requires Xcode Command Line Tools (swiftc).

Usage

Menu item What it does
立即捕捉选中文本 (⌘⌥S) Capture the current text selection
将剪贴板文本存为文档 Save clipboard text as a file (leaves the clipboard untouched)
最近保存：… Last saved file name
打开存储目录 Open ~/docs in Finder
开机自动启动 Toggle launch at login
授权辅助功能权限… Open the Accessibility pane
通知设置… Open the Notifications pane (optional system banners)
退出 QuickSave ⌘Q

How it works

Two capture strategies, tried in order:

  1. Accessibility API (kAXSelectedTextAttribute) — reads the selection directly from the focused element without touching the clipboard. Works in most native apps (TextEdit, Safari, Notes, …).
  2. Clipboard fallback — simulates ⌘C, polls the pasteboard, then restores your previous clipboard content. Covers apps like Chrome and WeChat that don't expose selections (keep the focus inside the text field).

Files are named yyyy-MM-dd_HHmmss_<first line>.txt; duplicates get a _2/_3 suffix. The whole app is a single Swift file compiled with swiftc — no Xcode project required.

Configuration

The folder name defaults to docs; change it via UserDefaults and relaunch:

defaults write com.wangxiaoyu.quicksave saveDirName Documents

The hotkey is fixed at ⌘⌥S; edit hotKeyCode / hotKeyModifiers in Sources/main.swift and run make to change it.

For debugging, you can trigger a capture without a keyboard:

notifyutil -p com.wangxiaoyu.quicksave.capture

Project layout

QuickSave/
├── Sources/main.swift   # everything: menu bar, capture, save, hotkey
├── Resources/Info.plist # LSUIElement (no Dock icon)
└── Makefile             # plain swiftc build

License

MIT