At 6 pm
One window at a time.
notabs covers your screen and shows you one window. Leave a note if it needs one. Close it. Next.
notabs
The end-of-day ritual for your Mac.
14 days free, then €24 once. No account. macOS 13 or later.
The windows stay open. The decisions stay unmade. And your head takes all of it home, to dinner, to bed, to tomorrow’s first coffee.
notabs gives it an ending.
At 6 pm
notabs covers your screen and shows you one window. Leave a note if it needs one. Close it. Next.
Right after
When you come back
Never force-closed
Close is a normal close. “Save changes?” still appears.
0
windows force-quit. Ever.
Firm, not strict
3×
skips in a row when the day is on fire. Or postpone 15 minutes.
After the evening round
No prompts, no gates, nothing. Until your next workday. Weekends off.
Plain text
One Markdown file on your Mac, or in your Obsidian vault. No account. No cloud.
Why it works
Unfinished tasks keep running in the back of your mind. Psychologists call it the Zeigarnik effect, and research shows the pull fades once you’ve made a plan, even without finishing. Cal Newport calls the habit a shutdown ritual. notabs makes it one you can’t forget.
So notabs can bring each window to the front, and close, minimize or quit it when you say so.
Only to read window titles, so each note says which window it was. Nothing on your screen is ever recorded.
Your notes and windows stay on your Mac. No account. Signed and notarized.
Pay once
€24.
Use everything free for 14 days. That’s ten workdays to see if it sticks. No subscription.
Already sure? Buy notabs
No. notabs works with windows, not tabs. The name is about open loops: every window still open at the end of the day is a decision you haven't made yet. A browser window with twenty tabs is one window.
Close sends the same close as clicking the window's close button, so the app's own "Save changes?" dialog still appears. If a window won't close, notabs offers Minimize instead or quitting the app. Nothing is force-quit.
Hold to postpone the round by 15 minutes, once per round, or skip it. Skips are limited to three in a row. Done early? Start the evening round yourself from the menu bar.
macOS closes all windows of the app in front with ⌥⌘W. notabs takes you through every window in every app, one at a time, so nothing closes without a decision and anything unfinished gets a note.
Into one plain Markdown file in a folder you choose, ~/Documents/notabs by default, or your Obsidian vault.
No. Free for 14 days, then €24 once. The license key works offline.