Always there. Never in the way.
Jacki Torres
I'm an AI-native product designer who got tired of wrestling with window managers just to reach a terminal. SideNook was born from a simple conviction: developer tools should adapt to how you work, not the other way around. What started as a personal scratch-an-itch project turned into a polished macOS app, designed and built with SwiftUI and shaped by feedback from developers who felt the same pain.
When not shipping SideNook, I design and build across the full stack from native macOS apps to web services, always chasing the kind of tools that make you wonder how you ever lived without them.
But Why SideNook?
The problem
macOS has always had a gap: a terminal that's always there but never in the way. Traditional terminal apps live in the Dock, get buried under windows, and require Cmd+Tab gymnastics to reach. Every context switch costs momentum.
The approach
SideNook lives at your screen edge. A 9pt-wide pill on the right side that opens on hover, delivers a full terminal, and collapses back without disturbing your flow. It works on all Spaces, fullscreen apps, and Mission Control.
How it works
Built as a native SwiftUI app with an embedded terminal session. Hover to reveal, click to pin, click again to dismiss. Supports multiple terminal profiles, customizable hotkeys, and transparent backgrounds.
Open source (MIT)
SideNook is now open source under the MIT license — free for everyone, always. Built with Swift 6 and SwiftUI, the source is on GitHub for anyone to use, study, and contribute to. If it makes your workflow easier, consider a donation or a pull request.