Benchpad Quick Capture

Your Benchpad scratchpads in a side panel, one shortcut away.

Benchpad is a digital scratchpad: three offline-first pads for quick notes, checklists, and voice capture. No folders, no AI, no setup — open, type, close. "The app that gets out of your way starts by giving you less to manage." Benchpad is a scratchpad, not a second brain. Three pads. You name them — Work / Personal / Scratch, Today / This Week / Someday, whatever fits your head. No folders, no tags, no filing decisions. Open, type, close. WRITE WITHOUT DECIDING Every note app asks "where does this go?" before you've written a word. Benchpad doesn't. Three pads means the decision is already made. WORKS ON A PLANE Offline-first, not offline-tolerant. Every keystroke saves to your device before any network request. Sync happens in the background when you're online — and merges conflict-free if you edited on two devices at once. A REAL EDITOR Headings, checklists, tables, code blocks with syntax highlighting, images, file attachments. Slash commands and ~28 templates (meeting notes, standup, daily note, habit tracker). Voice notes with live on-device transcription — your device's dictation, not AI. DONE ISN'T DELETED When a section is finished, archive it — tagged, dated, searchable, restorable. Pads stay clean. Nothing disappears. NO AI. NO ADS. NO DATA MINING. Nothing reads, summarizes, or trains on your notes. Notes are encrypted at rest. Plain markdown — copy everything out anytime, no lock-in. FREE FOREVER, REALLY One pad, the full editor, offline support, sync, and an archive of 100 notes — free, no credit card, no time limit. Pro ($20/year flat) unlocks all three pads, all six themes, attachments, voice-note audio, and Markdown/PDF export. CONSTRAINT IS THE PRODUCT Benchpad is for people who want to write things down — not maintain a system. A note app that knows when to stop. When you can't create infinite folders, you write instead of organizing. Constraint isn't a compromise. It's the product. WORKS LIKE A COMPUTER Scratchpads are your RAM. Archive is the ROM. Scratchpads: Active thinking. Fast, temporary, always in use. Archive: Permanent, searchable, never in the way. This is how your brain actually works. Benchpad works the same way. WHY NOT JUST KEEP? Google Keep is built for sticky notes; Benchpad is built for writing. A real block editor, sections you can archive, templates, and offline-first sync that merges edits from all your devices without losing a word. And it's the rare scratchpad that isn't Apple-only — the same app runs on your phone, your laptop (tucked away in the toolbar tray), the web and even as a browser extension.