OmniDesk Hub
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For Mac and Windows · Free · No account

Your whole desk, in one calm window.

OmniDesk Hub puts your mail, calendar, tasks, documents, notes, PDFs, whiteboard, slides and music side by side in one window — and lets every one of them hand its work to the others.

Download for macOS

Apple Silicon · macOS 13 Ventura or later

9
modules in one window — from mail to music
3
panes side by side, with drag and drop between them
0
sign-ups. No OmniDesk account — your data stays on your computer
A short tour of the app, shown with its built-in sample workspace.

The desk

One window instead of eleven apps.

A mail client, a calendar, a Kanban board, a daily checklist, a word processor, a notes app, a voice recorder, a PDF annotator, a whiteboard, a slide editor and a music player — as one app, in panes you arrange yourself.

01 Write

Docs

A word processor on real pages.

Write on sheets of paper that paginate as you type — titles, headings, quotes, tables, images and checklists in four bundled typefaces.

  • Templates, version history and a distraction-free focus mode
  • Export to PDF, Word, Markdown or HTML; import .docx, Markdown and HTML
  • Drop a mail, a note or a PDF quote in and it arrives with a link back

Notes

Quick notes that link back.

A scratchpad that grows into a knowledge base: #tags, [[links]] that follow every rename, backlinks under each note and a graph of how it all connects.

  • Record voice memos straight into a note
  • Quick capture with ⇧⌘N — or ⇧⌘Space from anywhere on your Mac (on Windows Ctrl+Shift+N, and Ctrl+Shift+Space once you turn it on in Settings)
  • Markdown shortcuts, code blocks, tables and nested folders

02 Make

Whiteboard

An infinite canvas for the messy part.

  • Stickies, shapes, freehand ink, images and frames
  • Arrows that stay attached when you move things
  • Cards for anything on your desk — a mail, a task, a song that plays on the board
  • Smart guides, templates and PNG export

Slides

Decks, built from what you already made.

A slide sorter, themes, text that fits itself to its box and speaker notes. Present full screen with a presenter view on a second display.

  • Drop in a whiteboard frame, an image, or a task board as a chart that links back to it
  • Turn a document or note into a deck from its headings
  • Export to PDF, PowerPoint or PNG

03 Plan

Tasks

Kanban for projects, a checklist for today.

Boards with columns, WIP limits and checklists; a Today list that carries yesterday’s leftovers over. Type Call Sam tomorrow 3pm !high #work and the date, priority and label are set for you — in English or German.

Calendar

Your week at a glance.

Day, week, month and agenda. Drag to create, move and resize; repeating events; .ics import and export, calendar subscriptions and mail invitations you answer from the event.

04 Read & reply

Mail

Every inbox in one list.

A unified inbox for your IMAP accounts — iCloud, Gmail, Fastmail, Yahoo, GMX and others — with conversations, follow-up reminders and local search. Remote images stay blocked until you allow them.

PDF

Read with a pen in hand.

Highlights, underlines and sticky notes, find, outline and thumbnails. Take notes opens a note right beside the page, and the annotated PDF exports with your marks in it. Sort the library into folders — your files stay where they are.

05 Listen

Music

A soundtrack for the work.

Your own music library — MP3, AAC, FLAC, WAV, Ogg and Opus — with playlists, smart lists, media keys and a 10-band equalizer over a live spectrum.

  • Jam sessions: friends anywhere join with a room code and hear what you play, live — and can save a song they like
  • Group soundtrack: one member DJs a shared queue and everyone in the group hears it softly while working

Cross-module

Everything talks to everything.

The modules aren’t tabs of separate apps. Whatever you’re looking at can become something else — and keeps a link back to where it came from.

  • Send to…

    Right-click a mail, a highlight, a note or a card and send it to a task, an event, a document, a note, a board, a deck — or a new mail.

  • Drag and drop

    Drop a mail on a time slot to plan it, a PDF passage into a note as a quote, a whiteboard frame onto a slide.

  • Split panes

    Up to three modules side by side. Start from a layout like Research (PDF | Notes) or Plan (Calendar | Tasks) and save your own.

  • One palette

    Jump to any module, run any action or search across mail, notes, documents, tasks and boards from one field.

A few things that take one step

  • A mail threada formatted document
  • Five PDF highlightsone note with five quotes
  • A task boarda chart on a slide
  • A document outlinea slide deck
  • A calendar invitationaccepted, reply sent
  • Anything at alla task, with a link back

Group Workspaces

Work together, with no server in the middle.

A group workspace is a shared space for a team, a class or a family. It syncs directly between the members’ computers — Macs and Windows PCs alike — end-to-end encrypted, with no account and nothing stored on anyone’s server. Your Personal workspace never leaves your computer.

  • Live co-editing

    Type in the same document or note at once and see everyone’s caret and selection in their color. Whiteboards and decks move live, too.

  • Presence

    Avatars show who is on a board or slide, “Ann is editing” sits on the sticky she types in, and you can follow a presenter step by step.

  • Shared tasks and calendar

    Cards move on your board as others drag them, tasks can be assigned, the group calendar says who added what. Your Today list stays yours.

  • A group soundtrack

    One member DJs a shared queue; the others hear it softly in their dock, each at their own volume.

  • Invite by code

    Share an OMNI-… code or an invite file. Remove a member and the old code stops working for everyone.

  • Encrypted end to end

    Public relays only help members find each other. They see a hashed topic, IP addresses and timing — never content, names or devices.

Good to know: changes travel while at least two members are online at the same time — anyone online passes them on, and an always-on computer works as a mailbox. Groups suit about 2–8 people; very strict company networks may need a TURN server.

New Pages

One page for everything that belongs together.

Pages are free-form pages you write in blocks — like Notion, but inside your desk. Put text, to-dos and subpages next to the things you already keep here: a task board, this week’s events, a note, a deck. They stay live: tick a task on the page and it’s done in Tasks.

A page in OmniDesk Hub called “Launch week” with a violet cover and a rocket icon, a short intro, two to-dos and below them the live “Product Launch” task board; on the left the page tree with favorites

Write in blocks

Type “/” and build the page you need.

Headings, to-dos, toggles, callouts, quotes, code, tables, images and columns — pick them from the “/” menu or type Markdown. Drag any block by its handle.

  • Pages inside pages — nest as deep as you like, favorite the ones you use daily
  • Make it yours — an emoji icon and a cover: a colour gradient or your own picture
  • Mention anything — type “@” to link a mail, task, note or document right in the text
  • Nothing lost — deleted pages wait a day in the Trash, and every delete has Undo

Live cards

Your board, your week and your notes — on one page.

Drop anything from another module onto a page, use “Send to → Pages”, or type “/board”, “/calendar”, “/mail”. It shows up as a live card that changes when the original does.

  • Tasks — a board as a list or a mini kanban; tick tasks and add new ones right there
  • Calendar — the next seven days, today or the week, from all calendars or the ones you pick
  • Notes, Docs, Whiteboards, Slides — previews, outlines, board snapshots and a slide strip you can present from
  • Mail, PDFs, music — a thread you can reply to, a PDF with its first page, a song you can play
  • In a group — write a page together live; your mail, PDFs and music always stay personal
Further down the “Launch week” page: the task board’s To do, In progress and Review columns as a live card, and below it a calendar card with today’s events

Claude connector

Ask Claude about your desk.

OmniDesk Hub now has a connector for Claude. In Claude Desktop or Claude Code, Claude can search everything you keep here, read it, link what belongs together, add notes, tasks and events — and write mail drafts, which you read and send yourself.

OmniDesk Hub’s Mail with a reply Claude drafted: “Re: Q3 numbers — board pack” to Leo Tanaka, Claude’s text above the signature and Leo’s quoted message, the Send button still waiting

What it’s good for

Answers from your own work, not from guesses.

Ask in plain words. Claude looks through your mail, calendar, tasks, documents, notes, PDFs, boards and decks at once, reads what it finds and answers with it.

  • One question, every module — “What did we decide about the Atlas beta?” finds the thread, the notes and the task
  • Replies, ready to check — Claude drafts a reply with the right subject, recipients and quote, and OmniDesk opens it for you
  • Things tied together — Claude can link a note to a task or a mail to a document; the links show up as backlinks
  • Work done for you — “Make a task for Friday”, “put the call on Monday at 2”, “save this as a note”, “tick off the launch tasks”
  • Order, too — Claude makes to-do boards, folders in Notes, Docs and the PDF library, sorts things into them and writes whole documents
  • Pages — “Make a page for the launch with the board and this week’s events” — Claude builds it, adds to it, renames and moves it

You stay in charge

Off until you turn it on. Never sends, never deletes.

The connector runs on your computer and talks to OmniDesk Hub directly — no server of ours, nothing reachable from the network. Claude only gets in with the access key you copy from Settings.

  • Claude can’t send mail — every message stays a draft until you press Send
  • Claude can add notes, tasks, events, boards, folders, documents and pages and tick tasks done — but it can’t delete your notes, tasks, events, documents, pages or mail, or rewrite what you wrote
  • Everything Claude adds or changes shows a notice with Undo
  • Turn it off, or make a new access key, and Claude is disconnected at once
Settings → Claude in OmniDesk Hub: the switch “Let Claude use OmniDesk Hub” turned on, the status “Connected (1)”, buttons to copy the setup for Claude Desktop and Claude Code, and “New access key…”

Set it up in two minutes

  1. Turn it on

    In OmniDesk Hub open Settings → Claude and switch on Let Claude use OmniDesk Hub.

  2. Copy the setup

    Click Copy setup for Claude Desktop — or for Claude Code if you work in the terminal.

  3. Paste it into Claude

    Claude Desktop: Settings → Developer → Edit Config, add it to mcpServers in the file that opens, save and restart Claude. Claude Code: paste the command into your terminal and run it.

  4. Ask

    Keep OmniDesk Hub open and ask Claude about your work. The status in Settings shows Connected.

Things to try

  • “Summarize what Leo wrote about the Q3 numbers and draft a short reply.”
  • “What’s on my calendar this week that has to do with the launch?”
  • “Find my notes on the onboarding review and link them to the review task.”
  • “Make a task to send the slides by Friday and put a 30-minute call on Monday at 2.”
  • “Make a board for the VR level with To do, Doing and Done, and put my lecture PDFs in a folder called Uni.”
  • “Which tasks mention the budget, and what do the related mails say?”

Good to know

  • You need Node.js 20 or later on your computer — Claude starts the connector with it. Settings tells you if it’s missing.
  • On a Mac, run OmniDesk Hub from your Applications folder, so the copied setup keeps working after a restart.
  • Claude follows the workspace you have open — Personal, or a group. In a group it can read what the other members wrote, so only turn it on there if that’s fine with them.
  • What Claude searches and reads becomes part of your Claude conversation and is sent to Anthropic, like anything else you share with Claude.

Local-first

Your data lives on your computer.

Mail, events, tasks, documents, notes, boards and decks are stored in a folder on your Mac or PC — no OmniDesk account, and nothing copied to a server of ours. Here is everything that goes over the network, and when.

When you add a mail account
OmniDesk talks to that provider’s IMAP and SMTP servers, on the sync interval you choose.
When you load images in a mail
The images of that message are fetched — only after you click Load images, allow the sender or choose to always load them. Never from your local network.
When you subscribe to a calendar
That feed’s address is fetched on the refresh interval you set.
When you’re in a group or a Jam
Public relays help the members’ computers find each other (by default the MQTT brokers of HiveMQ, EMQX and Eclipse Mosquitto) and STUN servers from Google and Cloudflare find a direct route. The content then travels encrypted, straight between those computers. A TURN relay is used only if you add one.
When you turn on the Claude connector
Nothing goes over the network from OmniDesk Hub — Claude’s connector on your computer talks to it directly. What Claude searches and reads becomes part of your Claude conversation, which Claude sends to Anthropic.
When you open or fetch a link
It goes where the link points, when you ask — web links open in your browser.
Everything else
Nothing. No analytics, no telemetry, no crash reports, no update pings, no account.

The same goes for this website: no cookies, no trackers, fonts served from here. Its only outside request asks GitHub for the latest version number.

Install

Up and running in a minute.

Download for macOS

Apple Silicon · macOS 13 Ventura or later

Also for Windows: 64-bit PC · Arm

On a Mac

  1. Download

    Get OmniDesk-Hub-mac-arm64.dmg and open it.

  2. Drag to Applications

    Drag OmniDesk Hub onto the Applications folder in the window that opens.

  3. Open it once

    macOS says it can’t verify the app. Click Done (Cancel on macOS 13–14) — that’s expected for now.

  4. Open Anyway

    System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down, click Open Anyway next to OmniDesk Hub and confirm. Only the first time.

    If macOS says the app is damaged, use the Terminal fix below.

Why the warning? OmniDesk Hub isn’t notarized by Apple yet, so macOS can’t check who made it and asks you to confirm once. On macOS 13 and 14 you can also Control-click the app in Applications, choose Open and confirm.

Still won’t open, or macOS says the app “is damaged”?

That’s the download quarantine flag. Remove it for this one app in Terminal, then open OmniDesk Hub again:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/OmniDesk Hub.app"

On Windows

  1. Download

    Get OmniDesk-Hub-win-x64.exe (…-win-arm64.exe on Windows on Arm) and open it.

  2. More info → Run anyway

    If Windows says it protected your PC, click More info, then Run anyway. Only the first time.

  3. Install

    It installs for your account only — no administrator rights — and adds OmniDesk Hub to the Start menu. Tick Create a desktop shortcut at the end if you want one.

  4. Open it

    From the Start menu. Uninstalling (Settings → Apps) keeps your data unless you choose to delete it.

Why the warning? The installer isn’t signed with a code-signing certificate yet, so Microsoft Defender SmartScreen doesn’t know the publisher and asks you to confirm once.

FAQ

Fair questions.

Is it free?

Yes. OmniDesk Hub is free to download and use — no subscription, no account, no ads.

Is there a Windows version?

Yes — for Windows 10 and 11, on 64-bit PCs and on Windows on Arm. The download buttons pick the installer for your PC; it installs for your account without administrator rights, and a Mac and a Windows PC work together in one group. On the Mac: Apple Silicon with macOS 13 Ventura or later (if an Intel build is published, the buttons offer it automatically). There is no Linux version yet.

Why does macOS — or Windows — warn me the first time?

The app isn’t notarized by Apple or signed for Windows yet, so neither can verify the developer and asks you to confirm once — on a Mac Open Anyway, on Windows More info → Run anyway (see Install). After that it opens like any other app.

Where is my data, and how do I back it up?

Everything lives in ~/Library/Application Support/OmniDesk Hub — Settings → About shows the folder and reveals it in Finder. Time Machine includes it. To move to a new Mac, use Migration Assistant — it also brings the Keychain, where OmniDesk Hub keeps your mail passwords and group keys. If you copy the folder by hand, sign in to your mail accounts again and rejoin your groups with a new invite from a member. Your music stays in your own folders. On Windows the folder is %APPDATA%\OmniDesk Hub (Settings → About shows it in File Explorer); back it up like any folder. To move to a new PC, copy it, then sign in to your mail accounts again and rejoin your groups — Windows protects the passwords and keys for your account on that PC only.

How do I update?

OmniDesk Hub never checks for updates on its own. Download the latest version from this page or GitHub Releases. On a Mac, drag it over the old app in Applications; on Windows, run the new installer — it replaces the old version. Either way your data stays where it is.

Which mail accounts work?

Any IMAP and SMTP account that signs in with a password or an app password — iCloud, Gmail, Fastmail, Yahoo, GMX, WEB.DE or your own server. Sign-in through a browser (OAuth) isn’t supported yet, so work accounts that only allow that can’t connect.

Can Claude send mail or delete my things?

No. Through the connector Claude can search, read, open entries in the window, link entries, write mail drafts, add notes, tasks, events, boards, folders and documents, sort things into folders and tick tasks done. Sending isn’t possible at all — a draft waits in Drafts until you press Send. Claude can’t delete your notes, tasks, events, documents or mail or edit a document you wrote, and everything it adds or changes can be undone. See Claude connector.

Claude says OmniDesk Hub isn’t running — what now?

Open OmniDesk Hub and check that Settings → Claude is switched on — Claude reaches it only while it runs. If Claude says the access key was rejected, copy the setup again and replace the old one in Claude. Up to four Claude windows or sessions can be connected at the same time.

Do the others in my group need an account?

No. Everyone installs OmniDesk Hub and joins with the invite code or file. There is no sign-up and no server that stores your group’s content.

Is OmniDesk Hub open source?

No. It’s free to use, but the source code isn’t public — all rights reserved. Releases are published on GitHub.