CheatSheet

CheatSheet is a small, open-source macOS, iOS, and iPadOS app for keeping short coding notes, checklists, and command reminders close by. A WidgetKit extension keeps one pinned note visible while you work.

Platforms

macOS	iPhone	iPad

Widgets

CheatSheet includes WidgetKit extensions for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. Widgets follow the pinned note's color and font and support the system small, medium, and large families.

iPhone Home Screen	macOS Widget Gallery

Features

• Create and edit short plain-text notes.
• Search note titles and contents.
• Render headings, bullets, and open or completed checklist lines in previews and widgets.
• Choose from ten note colors and four system font styles.
• Pin one note for the macOS, iOS, and iPadOS widgets.
• Use small, medium, and large widget layouts with automatic content limits.
• Move notes to Trash, restore them, delete them immediately, or let them expire after 30 days.
• Capture a note and open recent notes from the macOS menu bar.
• Use adaptive navigation for compact iPhone layouts and split-view iPad and Mac layouts.
• Store notes locally with SwiftData and app-group persistence; no account or network connection is required.
• See recoverable storage failures in the app and retry loading without overwriting stored notes.
• Use native Liquid Glass controls throughout on macOS and iOS/iPadOS 26.
• Use semantic text styles, accessibility labels, and non-color selection indicators.
• Available in English and Spanish, with locale-aware date and time formatting throughout.

Localization

CheatSheet ships fully localized in English and neutral international Spanish (es), including onboarding, the first-run starter notes, accessibility labels, error messages, and the WidgetKit extension. Strings live in String Catalogs:

CheatSheetApp/Resources/Localizable.xcstrings       App and shared-model strings
CheatSheetWidgets/Resources/Localizable.xcstrings    Widget extension strings

Scripts/verify-localization.sh checks both catalogs for missing translations, mismatched %@/%lld placeholders between languages, and untranslated stable keys. It runs as part of every Xcode Cloud build alongside Scripts/verify-project-config.sh. Adding a new user-visible string requires adding both an English and a Spanish entry to the relevant catalog.

Project Layout

CheatSheetApp/       Shared SwiftUI app sources for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS
CheatSheetWidgets/   WidgetKit extension sources for macOS and iOS/iPadOS
Shared/              Shared model, parsing, storage, and persistence code
CheatSheetTests/     Swift Testing coverage
CheatSheetUITests/   End-to-end UI tests
Docs/                Product images used by this README
Scripts/             Reproducible build and verification tooling
project.yml          XcodeGen project definition

project.yml is the source of truth for the Xcode project. The generated CheatSheet.xcodeproj is ignored by git.

Requirements

• macOS 26 or later, or iOS/iPadOS 26 or later
• Xcode 26 for submission builds. An Xcode 27 beta is fine for development only. See the OS support policy.
• XcodeGen

Install XcodeGen with Homebrew:

brew install xcodegen

Build

Generate the project:

xcodegen generate

Confirm the active toolchain ships the SDK this branch targets. Required before archiving for the App Store:

Scripts/verify-build-sdk.sh

Build from the command line:

Scripts/verify-macos.sh

This runs arm64 and x86_64 tests, then builds a universal Release app. It generates the Xcode project under /private/tmp because a checkout stored in a File Provider-managed Documents folder can make xcodebuild block in NSFileCoordinator while opening the generated project bundle.

For a single local build from a checkout outside File Provider-managed storage:

xcodegen generate
xcodebuild -project CheatSheet.xcodeproj -scheme CheatSheet -destination 'platform=macOS' -derivedDataPath .derivedData CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO build

Build and test the iOS/iPadOS app and widget:

xcodegen generate --spec project.yml
xcodebuild test -project CheatSheet.xcodeproj -scheme CheatSheetiOS -destination "id=$(Scripts/resolve-ios-simulator.sh)" -derivedDataPath /tmp/CheatSheet-iOS-Test-DD CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO

Scripts/resolve-ios-simulator.sh prints the newest available iPhone simulator UDID that meets the minimum test runtime (iOS 26.5; override with CHEATSHEET_MIN_IOS_RUNTIME). Prefer it over a device name: a bare name=iPhone 17 destination resolves to OS:latest, which fails once the installed runtime is newer than that device. It fails loudly rather than falling back to a runtime below the floor, so the suite cannot pass against a configuration the app does not support.

To check the iPad layout, resolve the newest qualifying iPad simulator:

xcodebuild build -project CheatSheet.xcodeproj -scheme CheatSheetiOS -destination "id=$(Scripts/resolve-ios-simulator.sh ipad)" -derivedDataPath /tmp/CheatSheet-iPad-DD CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO

Running The Widget

The app and widget share data through platform app groups. The current app groups are:

macOS:      HD39MR492X.com.wesleykeetch.wesleycheatsheet
iOS/iPadOS: group.com.wesleykeetch.wesleycheatsheet

If you fork the project and want to run the widget with your own Apple Developer account, update the app group in these places:

• project.yml
• CheatSheetApp/CheatSheet.entitlements
• CheatSheetApp/CheatSheet-iOS.entitlements
• CheatSheetWidgets/CheatSheetWidgets.entitlements
• CheatSheetWidgets/CheatSheetWidgets-iOS.entitlements
• Shared/Sources/CheatSheetNote.swift

Then regenerate the project:

xcodegen generate

After running the app once, add the CheatSheet widget from the macOS widget gallery or the iOS/iPadOS widget picker. Pin a note in the app with Use in Widget, then the widget will read that note from the shared app group.

Privacy

CheatSheet stores notes locally on device. It has no accounts or sync. It uses TelemetryDeck to send a small number of anonymous, aggregate usage signals (for example, that a note was pinned); these never include note content and are not linked to your identity. See the public Privacy Policy for the complete disclosure.

Product Principles

CheatSheet is deliberately narrow. Changes should make capturing or glancing at a short note faster without turning the app into a general document editor.

• Local-first and useful without an account or network connection.
• Plain-text-oriented, instant, and native to each Apple platform.
• One pinned note for the widget rather than a complex widget dashboard.
• No third-party dependency unless the platform cannot reasonably provide the feature.
• No sync, collaboration, rich-document, or account system without a separate product decision.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please keep the project small, native, and easy to understand.

Start with CONTRIBUTING.md for setup, style, and pull request guidance.

License

CheatSheet is available under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.