Slates

Every feature, one color at a time.

Eight chapters, one per slate. The pictures are the real app. The demos are small working copies you can click and type into, and nothing you do here is saved.

Chapter 1

Color is the map.

Eight slates, eight colors. You remember the yellow one, not a folder name. The color follows the slate everywhere: its header, its card, its numbered square, and the chrome around your text.

Twenty built-in palettes

Restyle all eight at once in Settings → Appearance. Pick one below and this page wears it. It resets when you leave.

  • Slates Dark
  • Slates Light
  • Casual
  • Sunset
  • Outrun
  • Raspberry
  • Pop
  • Vivid
  • Cathode
  • Bubblegum
  • Night at the Beach
  • Spectral
  • Patagonia
  • Midnight
  • Newstand
  • Springfield
  • Forest
  • Earth
  • Ocean
  • Gray Tones
  • The Slate Appearance panel open beside slate 8, Sunset: font, text size, and line spacing controls above background, header, and accent color wells, with toggles for selection highlight, caret, and rich links.

    One slate at a time

    View → Slate Appearance… changes a single slate: its font, size, and line spacing, and its background, header, and accent colors. You see each change as you make it.

  • Slates Settings, Appearance pane: Theme set to Match System, the list layout, and a grid of palette previews including Casual, Sunset, Outrun, Raspberry, Pop, and Vivid.

    Or all eight together

    Every palette has a Dark and a Light side, and follows View → Theme. New Palette… and Import File… let you make your own.

  • Reorder by dragging

    Drag a slate by its header to move it. Its color goes with it, so the yellow one is still the yellow one.

  • Hide the ones you are not using

    through show or hide a slate. A hidden slate keeps its text until you bring it back.

Chapter 2

Capture, copy, clear.

Paste a door code, a tracking number, a paragraph. Copy it when you need it. When it has done its job, Copy & Clear puts it on the clipboard and empties the slate.

Plain

Slate 2 · Not saved

Slate 3 in focus view, Plain mode, on deep red: studio door and alarm codes, a guest Wi-Fi network, and a one-time invite code.
The real thing: slate 3 in focus view.

  • Copy

    The Copy button in every header copies the whole slate. Or select part of it and press , like anywhere else.

  • Copy & Clear

    In the ⋯ menu of each header. For one-time codes and anything you will paste exactly once.

  • A slate of Swift code with the macOS share menu open beside it, offering Messages, Notes, Freeform, Journal, Reminders, and Copy.

    Share

    Send a slate anywhere your Mac can share to, with File → Share.

  • A limit that tells you

    Each slate holds up to 100,000 characters, roughly 15,000 words. Past that, Slates keeps the first 100,000 and says so.

Chapter 3

Plain, Rich, Code.

Each slate picks its own mode. Plain for codes and lists that must stay exactly as typed. Rich for notes with headings, emphasis, and links. Code for syntax you want colored.

Plain mode: slate 3’s studio codes in Menlo, exactly as typed. Rich mode: slate 1, Next Week, in Georgia, with bold headings, a dictionary-style note, clickable links, and quotes. Code mode: slate 4’s CSS, syntax-colored, with a swatch beside each hex value.
Plain mode in Light: slate 3’s studio codes on a pale rose wash. Rich mode in Light: slate 1, Next Week, on a pale yellow wash. Code mode in Light: slate 4’s CSS on a pale lilac wash.

Format → Switch to Plain Text Format → Switch to Rich Text Format → Switch to Code

  • Rich text you write as Markdown

    Type # for a heading and ** for bold. Links stay clickable, and fenced code keeps its colors inside a note.

  • Slate 6 in focus view: a cyan dictionary entry for the word slate, set in Palatino, with noun and verb senses and an etymology.

    Set like a dictionary

    Each slate can have its own typeface: Palatino for a dictionary entry, Georgia for notes, Menlo for codes.

  • The orange reading list with the word Heaney highlighted and a Dictionary popover showing the entry for the poet Seamus Heaney.

    Look Up

    Look up any word the way you do elsewhere on your Mac, including .

Chapter 4

Code, with the colors still on.

Code mode colors 41 languages, from Batch to YAML. Hex values get a swatch of their color right in the text. Multiple cursors work the way your editor taught you.

Language
Swift on a white slate: a Point struct with a distance method, a moving-average function, and a main entry point. Rust on a light gray slate: a Point struct with derive attributes, a distance method, and a moving average over a slice. C++ on a pale gray slate: a Counter class, a sorted-unique helper using the standard library, and a main function. JavaScript React on a tan slate: a Stat component and a Dashboard with a filter input and a mapped list. PHP on a teal slate: a Point class with a constructor and distance method, and a moving-average function. Ruby on a sky-blue slate: a Point class, a Stats module with a moving average, and a main guard. SCSS on a black slate: variables with color swatches, a card mixin, nested selectors, and a media query. HTML on a teal slate: a small page with a head, inline styles, a list, and a script tag.
  • Batch
  • C
  • C++
  • C#
  • CSS
  • Dart
  • Dockerfile
  • F#
  • Go
  • Groovy
  • Handlebars
  • HTML
  • INI
  • Java
  • JavaScript
  • JavaScript React
  • JSON
  • JSON with Comments
  • Jade (Pug)
  • LESS
  • Lua
  • Makefile
  • Markdown
  • Objective-C
  • Perl
  • PHP
  • PowerShell
  • Python
  • R
  • Razor
  • Ruby
  • Rust
  • Sass
  • SCSS
  • Shell Script (Bash)
  • SQL
  • Swift
  • TypeScript
  • TypeScript React
  • XML
  • YAML
  • 24 seconds, no sound. A Swift slate in Light: text is selected, then several lines are edited at once with multiple cursors.

    Multiple cursors

    and add a cursor above or below. adds the next match.

  • The language menu open over a CSS slate: Auto, then an alphabetical list from Batch to SCSS, with CSS checked.

    Pick a language, or let it guess

    Auto recognizes most code on its own. The language menu in the slate’s footer pins one.

  • Hex color previews

    Type #ff375f and see it. Turn it off under Format → Hex color previews.

  • Comments and indents

    toggles a line comment. and shift lines right and left.

Chapter 5

Smart bullets and cycles.

A bullet in Slates can have more than two states. Click it and it moves on: idle, in progress, ready, done. The header keeps count.

Site launch
  • ⚪ Write the about sentence
  • 🟡 Proof the reading list
  • 🟢 Favicon is the lagoon chip
  • ✅ Remove the “coming soon” banner
  • ⚪ 404: one line, then a link home
  • 🟡 Print a proof

Traffic Light · click a bullet

This week
  • ◯ Finish the about sentence
  • ◐ Sunset palette, name the hinge
  • ● Library books, actually returned
  • ◯ Print the reading list
  • ◐ Second pass on type

Kanban · click a bullet

Eight cycles come built in

Task
[ ] [x]
Traffic Light
⚪ 🟡 🟢 ✅
Kanban
◯ ◐ ●
Idea
💡 📝 ✨
Priority
⬜ 🔵 🟡 🔴
Review
❓ 👀 👍
Progress
🥚 🐣 🌱 🚧 🏗️ 🚀 🏁
Mood
🫠 😴 😐 🤔 ☕ 😎 🤩 🦄
  • 16 seconds, no sound. Slates in Light as a horizontal strip: bullets are clicked through their states, and each header’s progress count follows.
  • Slates Settings, Bullets pane: the default cycle set to Task, and the eight built-in cycles listed with their bullets, with Add Cycle and Reset to Defaults buttons.

    Make your own

    Settings → Bullets holds up to 16 cycles of 2 to 8 states each. Typing [ ] at the start of a line starts the slate’s cycle.

  • From the keyboard

    moves the bullet on the current line forward, and moves it back. moves finished lines down.

Chapter 6

Your desk, your layout.

Look at all eight, or just one. Stack them in a column or lay them out in a row. Fold the window down to its toolbar when you need the screen back.

View → Toggle Layout
Slates on a MacBook Pro desktop in Dark, as a vertical list: all eight slates stacked in one tall, centered window. The same slates as a horizontal strip: one wide window with a column per slate.
  • 3 seconds, no sound. A window collapsed to its toolbar opens to slate 1, then folds back down.

    Collapse to the toolbar

    Window → Collapse Window folds Slates down to its row of numbered squares. Press again to bring it back.

  • 44 seconds, no sound. Slates in Light moves between focus on one slate, the vertical list, and the horizontal strip.

    Focus and list

    through focus one slate. shows all of them again.

  • Slates Settings, Editor pane: word wrap, hex color previews, highlight active line, tab size, and indentation, above a list of syntax themes with a live preview.

    Type the way you like

    Word wrap, tab size, indentation, and a dozen syntax themes live in Settings → Editor. Fonts, text size, and line spacing can be set per slate or for all of them.

Shortcuts for the desk

…
Focus a slate
All slates
Vertical list or horizontal strip
Fit a slate to its text, in the list
Collapse to the toolbar
Word wrap
…
Show or hide a slate
Slate appearance
Chapter 7

Menu bar or Dock. Synced or not. Backed up.

Slates can live in the Dock, the menu bar, or both. Your text is stored locally by default; optional iCloud sync keeps your Macs in step. Backups happen on their own.

The top-right corner of a Mac desktop with Finder in front: Slates’ menu bar icon, a lit number 3, and the compact Slates window open beneath it showing slate 3’s codes.
Menu bar mode: a compact window under its icon.
Slates Settings, Data pane: iCloud Sync off with a Turn On button, automatic backups on with the time of the last one, and buttons to show or delete local backups.
Settings → Data: sync off until you turn it on.

  • Dock, menu bar, or both

    Settings → General → Activate With: a standard Dock app, a menu bar icon that opens a compact window, or both.

  • iCloud, only if you ask

    Sync is off until you choose Turn On… in Settings → Data. Your text travels through Apple’s iCloud, not through us.

  • Automatic snapshots

    At most once an hour while you are changing things, and again when you quit. Slates keeps the latest 40, for up to 90 days.

  • Backups you can hold

    File → Save Backup… writes a file. File → Restore Backup… brings one back, after asking.

Chapter 8

Private by design.

  • No analytics.
  • No account.
  • No Slates server.
  • Stored locally by default; optional iCloud sync.

Slates has no usage tracking, no crash-reporting service, and no ads. There is nothing to sign in to. This page follows the same rule: no trackers, no cookies, and the demos above forget everything when you leave.

Read the privacy policy

Coming soon to the Mac App Store

macOS 14 Sonoma or later · Back to the top