Pocket Notes

A small notebook in your VS Code sidebar. Open it, jot something down, and get back to work. Your notes are shared across projects and can follow your VS Code account to your other laptops.

• Plain text notes with editable titles. Markdown is welcome too.
• Autosave as you type, including while offline.
• Multiple notes, with a simple note picker.
• Uses your existing VS Code Settings Sync account. No separate login.
• Follows your VS Code theme.
• Export/import JSON backups and restore recent local drafts.
• No telemetry, advertising, AI calls, or third-party note service.

Open your notebook

Click Pocket Notes in the right sidebar, or run Pocket Notes: Open Notebook from the Command Palette. Type directly into the note. Use + to add a note; edit the title above its text to rename it.

Pocket Notes opens in the Secondary Side Bar, beside views such as Chat. You can drag the Notes view to your preferred sidebar. VS Code remembers the layout.

Sync across laptops

1. Install Pocket Notes from the Visual Studio Marketplace.
2. On every laptop, turn on Settings Sync and sign in with the same Microsoft or GitHub account. Use the same VS Code profile, or sync that profile.
3. In Settings Sync: Configure, enable Extensions. Enable UI State too if you want your sidebar layout to follow you.
4. VS Code can install the Marketplace extension on your other laptops and sync the notebook data in the background.

Saved locally means your draft has been saved on this computer. It does not confirm a cloud upload. Use Settings Sync: Show Synced Data and the Log (Settings Sync) output channel to check account synchronization.

Notes are registered with ExtensionContext.globalState.setKeysForSync, so they travel with extension data. The extension itself does not open network connections. VS Code manages the account, transport, and sync service.

Offline and concurrent edits

Pocket Notes is a personal scratchpad, rather than a collaborative editor. Edits to different notes are merged using a local mirror. For two offline edits to the same note, the revision with the newest timestamp wins when observed; this depends on reasonably accurate device clocks. Before replacing a local draft, Pocket Notes keeps a local backup. If an incoming edit changes the note while you are typing, your draft is saved as a separate recovered note.

Local backups are per computer: up to 60 snapshots within a 2 MB budget, sampled about every 30 seconds while writing, plus snapshots for incoming changes and deletions. Use Pocket Notes: Restore a Local Backup to restore one as a new note. For long-term archiving, export a notebook backup.

Sync is intended for short text notes and remains subject to VS Code service limits. A large notebook or disabled/failed Settings Sync may remain local.

Backups

Open the Notes view's … menu, or use these Command Palette commands:

• Pocket Notes: Export Notebook Backup saves all notebook data as JSON.
• Pocket Notes: Import Notebook Backup adds live notes as new copies, preserving your current notes.
• Pocket Notes: Restore a Local Backup restores an earlier local draft.
• Pocket Notes: Set Up Sync on Other Laptops shows setup instructions.

Privacy

Notes are stored in your VS Code profile's extension storage. When you enable Settings Sync for extensions, VS Code sends the registered notebook data to its sync service under your account. Local history is not registered for sync. This is a notebook for ordinary drafts; it does not use VS Code SecretStorage.

Development

Requires Node.js and VS Code 1.106 or newer. There are no runtime dependencies.

npm install
npm test
npm run package

For debugging, open this folder in VS Code and press F5 to launch an Extension Development Host. Source files are plain JavaScript; no build step is needed. Marketplace release steps are included in the source folder's PUBLISHING.md file.

VS Code desktop on macOS, Windows, and Linux is supported. In SSH, WSL, and container windows, the extension runs on your local UI host. A browser-only VS Code runtime is not currently supported.