Fylgja · The Sidekick
One hotkey away,
and gone again with Esc.
Fylgja is a native menu bar app for macOS, written in Rust and drawn with GPUI — a modern take on Borland Sidekick from 1984. Press Option-Space and a floating panel comes up over whatever you are doing, with a notepad, a calculator, code tools, your clipboard history, your calendar and your contacts. Press Esc and you are back, and the app you were in never lost focus. It sits in the menu bar at about 34 MB and 0% CPU until you call it.
Free, every feature, no licence. macOS 14 or later on Apple silicon, signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it opens without warnings.
fylgja Norse belief: the spirit that follows you, invisible until you need it.
Option-Space · the calculator over your app · results as you type
Download for macOS
One disk image. Open it, drag Fylgja to Applications, and press Option-Space. The build is signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so Gatekeeper lets it through without a warning — and the checksum is beside it so you can check what you got. After that, Fylgja tells you when there is a new version.
macOS · Apple Silicon
fylgja-1.1.0-arm64.dmg
3.4 MB
sha256 8049c79db9a0f8993cf06f2ea2592fff24fc0081b6a2907ebe104089a9010332
Apple silicon, macOS 14 or later. That is what Fylgja is built and tested on, so no Intel build is offered. The first time the clipboard history pastes for you, macOS asks you to allow Fylgja under Accessibility; until you do, a clip is only copied.
Here when you call it.
Gone when you don't.
Sidekick's idea still holds: the small tools you reach for twenty times a day should be one key away, over whatever you are doing, and should get out of the way the moment you are done. Fylgja has six of them, each a ⌘-number from the others. The panel floats above the app you were in without taking its place, so Esc puts you back mid-sentence — and the clipboard history's Enter pastes straight into it.
One hotkey, over any app
Option-Space by default, or any shortcut you choose. The panel appears in about 5–10 ms and floats over the app in front, which keeps focus the whole time; Esc sends the panel away. It can close by itself when you click elsewhere, and Fylgja can open at login so the hotkey is always there.
Notepad (⌘1)
Markdown notes, saved as you type, with full-text search across all of them. A scratch note is always first, for the thing you need to write down right now. Every note is a plain .md file in a folder you choose — ~/Documents/Fylgja unless you pick another.
Calculator (⌘2)
A sheet of sums with results as you type. Variables, percentages (1200 + 25% = 1500), units (5 km to mi), currencies with Norges Bank's rates (100 EUR to NOK), hex and binary, and bit operations. ⌘↩ copies a result.
Code tools (⌘3)
Format or minify JSON, with the position of the error when it does not parse. Base64, URL encoding and HTML entities both ways. Decode a JWT (decoding only, no verification). Unix timestamps, UUID v4 and v7, SHA-256, SHA-1, MD5 and SHA-512 hashes, a regex tester and a Unicode lookup.
Clipboard history (⌘4)
What you copied, newest first and searchable. Pick one and press Enter, and Fylgja pastes it into the app you came from. The history can be paused, cleared, turned off or made shorter, and apps you list are never recorded.
Calendar (⌘5)
Your day or your week, from the calendars already on your Mac. Type “ledig torsdag 14?” or “free friday at 10?” and Fylgja says whether you are, or what is in the way. Type “møte med Ola fre 10” and Enter adds it. Norwegian and English both work.
Contacts (⌘6)
Sidekick's phone dialer, again. Search your contacts by name, company, address or a few digits of a number; Enter copies it, ⌘↩ calls or writes, and ⌘⇧↩ starts FaceTime.
Asks before it looks
The calendar and the contacts stay in macOS's own stores; Fylgja keeps no copy. It asks for each the first time you open that accessory, says why before macOS does, and takes you to the right place in System Settings if you change your mind.
Passwords stay out
Password managers mark what they copy as private, using the concealed types described at nspasteboard.org, and Fylgja never keeps anything marked that way. Anything copied in a password manager is left out too, marked or not.
Notes you can sync your way
Because notes are ordinary files, the folder can live in iCloud Drive, a Git repository or a Syncthing share, and any editor can open them. There is no database to export from and no format to leave behind.
Updates that wait for you
Once a day Fylgja asks elyracode.com for one small file naming the newest version. Nothing is installed until you press Install, and then only a download that matches its published SHA-256 and is signed with the same Developer ID as the Fylgja you are running. The check can be turned off in Settings.
No telemetry, no accounts
No analytics, no crash reporting, no sign-in. Exchange rates are fetched from Norges Bank only when a sum converts currencies; the daily update check is the only other request Fylgja makes. Both can be turned off.
Fast was the requirement.
Not a feeling.
Under 50 ms, 100 times out of 100
A panel you call twenty times a day has to be there before you finish the thought, so the first milestone had one requirement: the panel shows in under 50 ms, 100 times out of 100. It shows in about 5–10. At rest Fylgja uses about 34 MB and no CPU at all.
Your notes are plain files
Fylgja does not keep your notes in a database of its own. Each one is a .md file in the folder you chose, written as you type, so they outlive the app, sync with whatever you already use, and open in any editor. Settings and the clipboard history live in one SQLite file on your Mac.
The spirit that follows you
In Norse belief every person has a fylgja: a spirit that follows them through life, unseen until the moment it is needed. That seemed a fair description of an app that sits in the menu bar doing nothing until you press a key — hence the bird on the icon, under a northern sky.
Free.
No licence, no account, no telemetry.
Fylgja costs nothing and asks for nothing: there is no licence key, no checkout and no sign-in. Every feature on this page is in the download.
Developed by Wirelabs AS in Norway.
- Sends
- Nothing about you. It asks Norges Bank for exchange rates only when a sum converts currencies (one switch turns that off), and elyracode.com once a day for
latest.json. - Stores
- On your Mac, and nowhere else: notes as .md files in your folder; settings and the clipboard history in one SQLite file. Never what a password manager copied.
- Installs
- Only when you press Install, and only a download that matches its published checksum and is signed with Fylgja's Developer ID. Anything else is refused.
Option-Space.
Then Esc.
Download Fylgja, press the hotkey in the middle of whatever you are doing, write the note or work out the sum — and be back where you were before you have lost your place.