Backside lives quietly in your menu bar. Hit one hotkey and your screen flips over onto an infinite canvas — for notes, mind maps, sticky ideas, and quick capture. Flip back and it's exactly where you left it.
Move your mouse anywhere on the canvas and start typing — no click needed. A note appears right where your cursor is.
Text, checklists, sticky notes, code, tables, images, voice and video notes — right-click anywhere to add one.
Rectangles, diamonds, speech and thought bubbles, arrows — sketch out ideas and connections, not just text.
Pan endlessly in any direction. There's no edge to run out of — just more space for whatever you're working through.
A live mini map sits in the corner showing every block you've placed. Click or drag on it to jump anywhere instantly.
⌘F finds any note across the entire canvas, however far you've panned, and jumps you straight to it.
Nudge blocks with arrow keys, duplicate with ⌘⇧D, undo with ⌘Z, select all with ⌘A. Press ? anytime for the full cheatsheet.
No Dock icon, no windows cluttering your desktop. Backside starts automatically at login and waits until you need it.
Backside checks for new versions in the background and lets you know when one's ready. You're always on the latest build.
“Every Mac has a hundred spare pixels of thinking space hiding behind the desktop. Backside just gives you a way in.”
Drag Backside to Applications. A short walkthrough asks for the one permission it needs — Accessibility — so the global hotkey works from anywhere.
Press Shift + ↑ from any app. Your screen peels away to reveal your canvas — a plain, private surface, not a screenshot of your desktop.
The first time your canvas opens, a short interactive walkthrough shows you point-and-type, the right-click menu, and the mini map — then gets out of your way for good.
Type, sketch, drop in images. Press Shift + ↓ and you're back to exactly what you were doing — your canvas waiting untouched for next time.
No. The flip is a plain generated sheet, not a screenshot — Backside never captures or reads your desktop. The only permission it asks for is Accessibility, so the global hotkey (Shift + ↑/↓) works from any app.
Locally on your Mac first, so it's instant even offline. Backside syncs changes in the background so your notes are backed up without you thinking about it.
Yes — Backside is free to download and use. It updates itself in the background, so you're never stuck reinstalling to get the latest fixes and features.
It's built to sit idle until you need it — no Dock icon, no menu bar clutter, negligible CPU use in the background. The canvas only renders what's actually on screen, so it stays fast even with hundreds of blocks.
Free to download. Takes thirty seconds to set up.
Download for Mac →