How to keep notes visible while editing in DaVinci Resolve on Mac

You're deep in a grade, the timeline fills the screen, and the one thing you needed to remember (a client tweak, a music cue, a re-render note) is sitting on a sticky on your desktop, behind everything. By the time you switch away to read it, you've lost your place. Here's how to keep that reminder where it belongs: on top of the exact page it's about.

DaVinci Resolve is a full-screen app by design. The interface is meant to own your display so you can focus on the picture, and that's a good thing, right up until you need a note. Then the very thing that makes Resolve great becomes the problem: there's nowhere on screen for your reminders to live, and anything you stash outside the app is, by definition, hidden behind it.

Why ordinary sticky notes don't work here

The obvious move is to drop a note on the desktop, maybe with Apple's built-in Stickies. It feels fine for about a minute. Then you go full-screen in Resolve and the note is gone, covered by the interface, on a space you can't see without leaving your work. A note you have to leave the app to read is a note you'll forget.

A second monitor doesn't really fix it either. The note ends up stranded over there with a dozen other windows, disconnected from the page it actually refers to. Your "fix the skin tones" note has nothing to do with the Fairlight mix you're staring at, but there they both sit, side by side, equally easy to ignore.

The note and the work that needs it are almost never on screen at the same time. That's the whole problem.

What you actually want is simple to say and surprisingly rare to find: a note that shows up only when you're looking at the thing it's about, and gets out of the way the rest of the time.

The fix: pin the note to the project and the page

This is exactly what TackNote does. Instead of floating loose on your desktop, a TackNote can be anchored to a specific Resolve project, and even to a specific page inside it: Media, Cut, Edit, Fusion, Color, Fairlight, or Deliver.

Once a note is scoped that way, it manages itself. TackNote watches which page of Resolve is active and shows the right note for where you are. Tack a note while you're grading and it appears only on the Color page. Switch over to Edit and the colour note quietly hides; switch back and it returns. Your render reminder lives on Deliver. Your audio note lives on Fairlight. Nothing piles up, because each note only exists on the page it belongs to.

The same is true at the project level. A note scoped to "Client A, Promo" disappears the moment you open "Wedding Final Cut," and comes back when you return. No mixing, no stray reminders left over from yesterday's edit.

And when you want to jump back to the work

Notes also work in the other direction. Open your TackBoard, find a note, and click Reveal. If the project is already open, TackNote brings Resolve forward and switches to the exact page the note was tied to. If Resolve isn't on that project yet, it opens Resolve so you can pick it. TackNote deliberately won't force-load a project, since that can be crash-prone in Resolve. Either way, the note becomes a shortcut back to the work, not just a reminder.

Step by step

1. Open your project in Resolve and go to the Color page (or whichever page the note is about).
2. Click the TackNote icon in your menu bar and start a new note.
3. Choose This Page for the note's scope. It now belongs to Color in this project.
4. Switch to Edit. The note hides. Switch back to Color and it returns, right where you left it.

That's the whole workflow. There's no window to keep arranging, no space to flip to, nothing to dismiss. You write the note once, scope it once, and from then on it shows up exactly when it's useful and stays out of sight when it isn't. You can pull a note up fast with a global keyboard shortcut, too, handy when your hands are already on the keyboard mid-edit.

A note on privacy

Client work deserves to stay private. TackNote keeps everything (your notes, voice memos, and transcripts) encrypted on your Mac. There's no cloud sync requirement and no account to create; the only time it reaches the network is to validate your license. What's on your machine stays on your machine.

The short version

Resolve takes the whole screen, so any note you leave outside it gets buried. The fix isn't a tidier desktop. It's a note that knows which project and page you're on, appears there on its own, and hides everywhere else. Write it once, and it's waiting for you every time you come back to that page. That's it. The reminder finally lives where the work is.