SideNote Pro Free License: Get 6 Months of AI Assistant for Windows 11 (Worth $49)

Why I bothered with yet another AI app

Most of my working day is spent between a PDF, a browser and a WordPress editor. Every time I want an AI to explain a paragraph, I copy it, switch to a ChatGPT tab, paste, wait, copy the answer, and switch back. Do that thirty times a day and it adds up.

SideNote Pro tries to kill that loop. It lives as a thin “leash” on the right edge of your monitor. Press Ctrl+Shift+Space, it slides out over whatever you’re doing; press Esc and it tucks itself away again, keeping your conversation intact. I installed it on my Windows 11 PC, activated the giveaway key, and used it for a few days alongside Nitro Pro and Chrome before writing this.

What SideNote Pro actually does

Think of it as a chat window that’s always one keystroke away, with a few tricks a browser tab can’t do:

• Act on highlighted text in any app. Select a passage in Word, a PDF reader or your browser, hit the action shortcut, and ask for a summary, rewrite, explanation or translation. The answer shows up in the panel.
• Inline commands. In most Windows text boxes you can type /fix, /short, /formal or /en before your text, press Tab, and the result replaces what you typed. This is off by default — switch it on in Settings.
• Screenshots and files. Capture part of the screen, or attach images, PDF, DOCX, TXT and Markdown files. Documents are converted to text on your PC first.
• Ask a whole folder. Point it at a folder of notes or specs. It indexes locally, then sends only the relevant snippets to the AI and lists the source files it used.
• Takeaways (new in 1.15). Pin decisions, key points and next steps from a chat as cards, with your own notes attached.
• Cost tracking. Every reply shows input/output tokens and an estimated cost, and you can set a daily spending cap.

My hands-on notes

A few things stood out once I’d used it for real work rather than a quick demo:

• It’s cheap to run if you pick the right model. I highlighted a paragraph from a marketing textbook in Nitro Pro and asked for a takeaway list using DeepSeek V4 Flash. The reply footer showed 363 tokens in, 516 out, and an estimated cost of under $0.001. For everyday summaries, a small fast model is plenty.
• The provider list is wide open. When I clicked “Test & Load models” with my OpenAI key, the dropdown showed 127 model entries in my test. That number depends on your account and on what OpenAI offers at the time. The quick setup picks GPT-5.6 Luna with reasoning switched off, which is a sensible fast default.
• It stays out of the way. Out of the box the leash stays above other windows and the panel opens pinned on top. If that’s too clingy, flip “Retract when focus moves elsewhere” on in General settings.
• One privacy setting I’d change straight away. Chat history is saved locally and kept forever by default, and “Protect saved history with my Windows account” is off. If you share your PC, turn that on, and set an auto-delete period under History.

SideNote Pro vs ChatGPT: what’s the real difference?

The answers won’t be smarter. If you connect SideNote Pro to an OpenAI model, you’re using the same kind of model that powers ChatGPT. What changes is where you use it:

• ChatGPT is its own app or website. You take your text to it, and you pay a monthly subscription.
• SideNote Pro comes to the app you’re already using. It acts on selected text, screenshots and local files, and you pay your provider per use (or nothing, with a local model).
• ChatGPT works as soon as you sign in. With SideNote Pro, you have to set up a provider first.

So the gain is a smoother workflow, not more AI power. If you rarely leave the ChatGPT tab, you won’t miss much. If you copy and paste between apps all day, the difference shows up quickly.

What you need before installing

• A Windows 11 64-bit PC.
• An internet connection (activation needs one, and so does any online AI provider).
• An OpenAI API key or one from a compatible provider — or Ollama / LM Studio already running a local model.
• API credit with that provider if it’s a paid one. Installing the app doesn’t give you free AI.
• The giveaway licence key (Step 1 below).

Giveaway terms at a glance

How to get the SideNote Pro free license

Step 1: Get your licence key

Open the SideNote Pro giveaway page on SharewareOnSale. You’ll be asked to share the deal on social media — skip that by clicking the small “I don’t use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Bluesky!” link under the share buttons.

Fill in the short form (email twice, country, which devices you use), pass the Cloudflare check and press Give It To Me Now. The key appears on the next page and is also emailed to you. It looks like SNP1-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX.

💡 Tip: Signing up means agreeing to their deal newsletter. If you’d rather keep your main inbox clean, a disposable address from Temp Mail works — just copy the key from the success page before you close the tab.

Step 2: Install from the Microsoft Store

Ignore the “SharewareOnSale_Giveaway” .exe on the success page. Grab SideNote Pro from the Microsoft Store instead. It’s the same app straight from the developer, and the Store keeps it updated for you. The download is roughly 90 MB.

Step 3: Activate the licence

On first launch you’ll see a welcome screen offering a 30-day trial. Don’t click that. Choose “Already purchased? Activate license”, paste your key and press Activate license. A green “SideNote Pro is activated on this device” bar confirms it worked. Do this before the offer ends — the giveaway terms say the key must be redeemed while the deal is still live.

Step 4: Connect an AI provider

Next comes the setup screen. If you use OpenAI, click Create API key, generate a new secret key in your OpenAI dashboard (I named mine “SideNote” and set a 30-day expiry), copy it while it’s still visible, then paste it into SideNote Pro and hit Connect & continue. Your account needs some API credit for this to work.

Prefer DeepSeek, Gemini, a local model in Ollama or LM Studio, or another compatible service? Pick “I’ll set it up manually” and add a provider profile under Settings → AI providers. With a local model set up properly in Ollama or LM Studio, your prompts are handled on your own PC rather than sent to an outside AI company. There’s no per-request API charge either, though your own hardware does the work.

Who should grab it (and who shouldn’t)

👍 Worth it if you already pay for an API key, run local models, or read and write a lot on Windows and want AI help without leaving the app you’re in. Students wading through long PDFs and writers who keep tidying emails will get the most out of it.

👎 Skip it if you’re on Windows 10, need it for business work (this licence is personal-use only), or have no interest in setting up an API key or a local model. Without one of those, the app has nothing to talk to. If you want a completely free offline route, our Jan AI review covers running models on your own PC — and SideNote Pro can sit on top of a local setup like that.

Looking for more tools that save clicks on Windows? See our list of the best Windows productivity apps, and if your desktop itself is the mess, the iTop Easy Desktop Pro free licence is another giveaway worth a look.

Frequently asked questions

More free licences land every week — browse the Techno360 Free Stuff hub for the latest giveaways before they expire.