Notes that keep up. A searchable, organized replacement for the 80-tab Notepad workflow: rich notes with inline images and tables, instant full-text search, and optional password protection for the whole database.

Target: .NET Framework 4.8, x64, WPF. Builds on Windows (MSBuild/Visual Studio).

Features

• Sidebar library: search-as-you-type across titles, text, and tags (substring match, so any fragment hits - 02 finds A/002/45); sort by time or title, or a drag-and-drop custom order (F10 cycles the modes). Three row densities (Ctrl+D) fit more notes on screen.
• Groups and subgroups: named, collapsible, colorable groups pinned above the loose notes, nested to any depth. A parent's color runs as a connector line down its notes and children, subgroups sit above the group's own notes (toggleable), and headers drag to reorder or re-nest. Travel inside shared .kndb files.
• Undo for the sidebar: Ctrl+Z reverts group moves, colors, tag toggles, note reorders, and note deletes, alongside the editor's normal text undo.
• Tags: color-coded per-database labels, assigned by right-click or Ctrl+1-9 and managed in the tags editor (Ctrl+T). FTS-indexed, so tag search and the pill filter are free.
• Editor: rich text (bold / italic / lists / tables / rules), adjustable font size, a full text and highlight color picker with a desktop-wide eyedropper, and inline images. Per-note title color and spell check. Convert to list (Ctrl+Shift+J) for pasting into scripts, and pasted content is normalized to the current theme. Word wrap toggle (wide content reachable by horizontal scroll, tilt wheel, or Shift+wheel when off) and an optional line-number column (F11).
• Hyperlinks: Ctrl+K links the selection (or edits the link under the caret), Ctrl+Click opens, typed URLs auto-link, and links survive pasting from browsers, Word, and other note apps. Only web and mail addresses ever open.
• Syntax highlighting: optional per-note, from the note right-click menu. Code is detected paragraph by paragraph, so one note can mix prose with PowerShell, HTML, XAML, XML, Vue, JSON, YAML, Markdown, SQL, C#, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS and Bash without picking a language. Plain text keeps the normal note color, and the token colors are never baked into the saved note.
• Themes: thirteen, each with its own accent set - Dark, Light, Black, Blood, Cyanotic, Greed, and the seven added in 1.2.0: 98SE, Ectoplasm, Decay, Mourning, Sepulchre, Delirium and Malaise. 98SE is a full Windows 98 reproduction, bevels and all.
• Killculator (F9): a themed calculator that slides up under the notes list. Type an equation on the number keys; Print Sum (Ctrl+Enter) drops the result, or Print Equation (Ctrl+Shift+Enter) the whole running equation, into the note at the cursor.
• Dictation (Ctrl+M): a modeless recording pad for the open note. Record from the microphone, and the take is transcribed as soon as you stop - print the text into the note at the caret, embed the recording itself as an inline chip, or both. Transcription runs on your machine with a downloadable speech model (three sizes, picked on first use, changeable by right-clicking the microphone on the rail); without one it falls back to Windows' own engine. Nothing is uploaded at any point.
• Recording editing and playback: the pad's waveform is the editing surface - right-click to slice, then copy, delete or paste segments, with undo, and save back over the original. Embedded recordings are a small transport rather than a button: the waveform fills as it plays, play becomes pause, and a volume knob sits at the end. Recordings are stored as FLAC (lossless, about half the size of WAV) and export to WAV or MP3, or copy as a file to paste into an email or chat.
• Free placement: drag an image or a recording and it lifts out of the text, snapping to a twelve-column grid and to the text's own lines, with the paragraph wrapping around it. Drop one on a table cell and it becomes that cell's content, widening the column to fit. There is no setting for this - dragging is the whole gesture.
• SketchPad (F7 / Ctrl+Shift+D): a modeless drawing companion for the open note - pen, line, arrow, rectangle, ellipse, polygon, paint bucket, text labels, and an eraser, with color, width, fill, and undo/redo, each on a single key. Print to note (Ctrl+Enter) stamps the drawing inline at the caret and it stays editable - double-click any note image to reopen it in the pad. A picture button on the format bar also inserts an image file at the caret.
• Custom fonts: a Fonts dialog (theme flyout) swaps the header, sidebar, and note-text fonts independently - any installed font, or drop your own .ttf/.otf onto the card. Note text ships in Bahnschrift; a readability guard keeps symbol fonts like Wingdings out.
• Autosave: after a pause in typing, on note switch, and on close (Ctrl+S forces it). Notes also remember their cursor and scroll position, so they reopen where you left off.
• Markdown/HTML preview: split-pane preview for notes that look like markdown or HTML (HTML is sanitized first).
• Keyboard: every function has a shortcut; F1 opens a shortcuts overlay with a full visual keyboard map. The whole app also scales for accessibility (Ctrl+Shift +/-).
• Storage: single SQLite database, configurable location (including next to the exe for a portable setup). Note bodies are XamlPackage blobs plus extracted plain text for search.
• Password protection: optional SQLCipher AES-256 encryption of the whole database, set / changed / removed at any time. No recovery for a lost password.
• Multiple databases: create, rename, switch, and relocate databases from the Manage databases dialog.
• Sharing: export a single note (.knote) or a whole database (.kndb), optionally password protected; both open with a double-click.
• Localization: ten bundled languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Turkish, Czech, Chinese Simplified and Traditional, Japanese, Bengali), falling back to English.

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11 (x64)
• No runtime install. Everything needed is inside the EXE (targets .NET Framework 4.8, which ships with every supported Windows release).

Download

WinGet:

winget install killernotes

• Prebuilt binary: https://github.com/SteveTheKiller/KillerNotes/releases/latest/download/KillerNotes.exe
• Source (GPL3 corresponding source for this release): https://github.com/SteveTheKiller/KillerNotes/releases/latest

Screenshots

Nested groups, tag pills and search as you type - beside a note whose syntax highlighting is detected per paragraph, thirteen languages in one note.	Dictation (Ctrl+M): record, scrub the waveform, transcribe offline, then embed the audio or print the text into the note.
Every function has a shortcut - F1 opens the visual keyboard map. Hold Ctrl or Shift to preview that layer. Shown in French.	Ten languages, translated down to the context menus - here Bengali, with a SketchPad drawing printed into the note.

Dependencies

Package	Why
Microsoft.Data.Sqlite.Core	ADO.NET SQLite wrapper (managed)
SQLitePCLRaw.provider.e_sqlcipher + lib.e_sqlcipher	SQLCipher native build: SQLite + FTS5 + AES-256 (static provider - the bundle's dynamic loader breaks under Costura)
Markdig	Markdown to HTML for the preview pane (managed, MIT)
PolySharp	net48 polyfills for modern C# syntax (compile-time only)
libFLAC	Lossless storage for embedded recordings (native, BSD-3-Clause)
libmp3lame	MP3 export only, never storage (native, LGPL-2.1 - source shipped with every release)
whisper.cpp (+ ggml)	Offline speech recognition for dictation (native, MIT)

The three audio natives are cross-compiled from their upstream release tarballs rather than taken from a mirror; the tarballs, hashes and exact build commands are in third_party/audio/README.md. Speech models are downloaded on demand from whisper.cpp's own repository, not bundled. All of it is optional at build time - with third_party/audio/ empty the app still builds and runs, storing recordings as WAV and transcribing with the Windows engine.

Run dotnet list package --vulnerable --include-transitive as part of every release checklist. Single-exe packaging: Costura.Fody embeds every managed dependency and a self-extracting bootstrap carries the native e_sqlcipher.dll, so the release ships as one signed exe.

Layout

• MainWindow.xaml + partials: Notes.cs (list/search/save), Editor.cs (paste/tables), Groups.cs (custom order + nested groups), Killculator.cs (sidebar calculator), SketchPadWindow.cs / SketchModel.cs (SketchPad drawing companion), Fonts.cs (font slots + dialog), Links.cs (hyperlinks), TiltWheel.cs (horizontal scroll), ActionUndo.cs (sidebar Ctrl+Z), Density.cs (row density), Security.cs (password flow), plus the KillerUI kit files (Chrome.cs, ThemeFlyout.cs, About.cs, Anim.cs, ConfirmDialog, PasswordDialog, InputDialog).
• Services/NoteStore.cs - all SQL. Services/ThemeManager.cs - kit theme engine.
• Themes/ + Themes/Accents/ - the family palettes, the unified theme set shared across all the Killer apps.