Quick Notetaker add-on for NVDA

The Quick Notetaker add-on is a wonderful tool which allows writing notes quickly and easily anytime and from any app the user is using. Whether the user is watching a video for example, or participating in a meeting on Zoom, teams or Google meet, they can easily and smoothly open the notetaker and take a note. In order to create a quick note, NVDA + Alt + n key combination can be used, a floating window appears at the top left corner of the screen, so the note can be typed there.

Every note that is being Created can optionally get the active window title, and as such, the note content can get the context in which this note was created by having the note title as the active window title the user was using. This behavior can be changed from the add-on settings, where the user can decide whether the active window title is captured when creating a new note.

The Notetaker dialog

The Notes Manager interface

Opening and closing this interface

The notes list

The notes are organized in a tabular list which includes:

  1. The note title: If the note hasn’t got the active window title, the first line of the note will be the note title displayed in this list.

  2. Last edited time stamp.

  3. A preview text of the note content.

The options available in Notes Manager interface

The add-on settings

The add-on settings are a part of NVDA’s settings interface. To reach those settings, the user needs to open the NVDA menu using NVDA key + n, choose preferences > settings, and then arrow down until reaching Quick Notetaker category.

Using the settings interface the user can:

Keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts in the different interfaces

Interface Command Keyboard shortcut
Notetaker Focus the note edit area Alt + n
Notetaker Align text to the right Control + r
Notetaker Align text to the left Control + l
Notetaker Preview note in an HTML window Alt + r
Notetaker Copy Alt + p
Notetaker Copy HTML code Alt + h
Notetaker Save note as a Microsoft Word document Alt + w
Notetaker Update the note corresponding Microsoft Word document Alt + w
Notetaker Save and close Alt + s
Notetaker Discard Alt + d
Notetaker Open notes Manager Alt + m
Notes Manager View note Alt + v
Notes Manager Edit note Alt + e
Notes Manager Copy note Alt + p
Notes Manager Open in Microsoft Word (if such a document exists) Alt + o
Notes Manager Create a word document for a saved note Alt + w
Notes Manager Copy HTML code Alt + h
Notes Manager Delete note Alt + d
Notes Manager New note Alt + n
Notes Manager Open settings Alt + s
Notes Manager Close the interface Alt + c
The settings interface Ask me each time where to save the note's corresponding Microsoft Word document Alt + w
The settings interface Open the note's corresponding Microsoft Word document after saving or updating Alt + o
The settings interface Capture the active window title when creating a new note Alt + c
The settings interface Remember the note taker window size and position Alt + r
The settings interface Auto align text when editing notes (relevant for RTL languages) Alt + t

Acknowledgements