The menu bar
Last updated 20 October 2026
The M in your menu bar opens a small panel for a new note, a voice take, a screen recording or a screenshot, with your recent notes, tasks, contacts and sources a click away.
Open the panel
Click the M in the menu bar. The panel opens with the caret in its search field, so you can type straight away. It works with the library window closed: closing that window keeps MindLake running, ready to record and capture. To start that way too, turn on Settings ▸ General ▸ Start in the menu bar, without the library window. Open at login, in the same place, starts MindLake when you log in to your Mac.
From the top, the panel has:
- Open MindLake. The top row brings the library window forward. A red dot shows at its right while a recording or a screen recording is running.
- Search. “Search notes, tasks, contacts” holds the caret as the panel opens and filters the list under the tabs as you type: notes by title, tasks by their text or their note’s title, contacts by name, sources by file name. The cross clears it.
- Four buttons, then the tabs and their list, then the footer, all described below.
The four buttons
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| New note | Makes a new text note and opens it in the library window. |
| Voice | Records audio. While any recording runs, the button reads Stop and stops it. A voice take is saved in the Voice folder of your vault, named “Voice” with the date and time, and shows in Sources. No note is made. |
| Video | Records the screen the pointer is on, cursor included, with no sound. The panel closes first so it isn’t in the shot. Open the panel again and click Stop to finish. The movie is saved in the Screen Recordings folder of your vault and shows in Sources; no note is made. Needs Screen Recording permission. |
| Screenshot | Opens a row beneath with one button per capture in use, in your order from Settings ▸ Screenshots, each showing its shortcut. Click one to capture; the panel closes first. ⌥-click attaches that one shot to the note you were last in. |
To record a meeting into a note, with a transcript, use ⌃⌘1 or ⌘N instead; see Recording meetings. Screenshots are covered in full in Screenshots.
The tabs
Under the buttons, four tabs each list up to four items, or the matches for your search:
| Tab | Lists |
|---|---|
| Notes | Your most recent notes, with each one’s type and age. Click one to open it. |
| Tasks | Open tasks, each with the note it lives in. Click one to open that note at the task. |
| Contacts | The contacts you added most recently, with an email or phone number. Click one for its contact card. |
| Sources | The newest files in your vault’s media. Click one to open it in Sources. |
The contact card
Clicking a contact opens a card beside the panel with their picture, name and organisation, and their birthday when the address book has one. Each detail has buttons beside it:
| Detail | Buttons |
|---|---|
| Phone | Call, WhatsApp (when the number can be used with WhatsApp; it opens a chat with them) and Copy. |
| Email, which starts a new message, and Copy. | |
| Link | Open and Copy. |
- Open in MindLake opens the Contacts page on that person.
- Add opens a field: type or paste a number, an email address or a link. MindLake guesses which it is from what you type (an @ makes it an email, http or www a link, mostly digits a phone number), and the icon beside the field lets you change its guess. Press
↩or the tick to add it to the contact.
The footer
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
Settings (gear, ⌘,) | Opens Settings. With the Screenshot row open, it opens on the Screenshots page. |
| Paperclip | Where screenshots go. Off, they go to the Screenshots folder and show in Sources; on (lit), they are attached to the note you were last in. The same as Settings ▸ Screenshots ▸ Attach captures to the note you were last in. |
| Gift | Only on the Contacts tab: Birthdays coming up, the next six from your contacts (today, tomorrow, in N days, or the date). It turns orange when one is within a week and red on the day. |
| Sync status | MindLake Sync’s state for the open vault. Shown only when Sync is on. |
Quit (⌘Q) | Quits MindLake. |
The menu bar icon
Choose the icon in Settings ▸ Theme ▸ Icons ▸ Menu bar icon: Tile (the default), Outline, Wave or Boxed. All four take the colour of your menu bar. The same icon sits beside Open MindLake in the panel.
Whatever you choose, a recording always shows a waveform in its place, and a screen recording shows a record dot, so you can see something is running.
To hide the M, turn off Settings ▸ General ▸ Notch & menu bar ▸ Show MindLake in the menu bar. MindLake keeps its Dock icon whatever you choose, so the library is always a click away. With the M, the notch and the pill all off, MindLake is still in the Dock, in Spotlight, and on ⌥⌘K for the command bar and ⌥N for a new note, from any app. See The notch.
From any app, without the panel
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
⌥⌘K | Opens the command bar. See Search and the command bar. |
⌥N | A new note. |
| Fn (🌐), twice or held | Dictates into the app in front. See Dictation. |
⇧⌘1 to ⇧⌘3, ⌃⇧4 and ⌃⇧5 | Screenshots. See Screenshots. |