For example, one of my old phones had this feature where you can swipe from a sidebar and quickly access and type notes (not needing to open the notes app), as well as set alarms for them, which helped me a lot with my ADHD.

I think phones could be useful and an aid to everyday life. It is sad that users of this platform are often targetted to extract value at the cost of their well-being.

Is there a distro with this feature, or is there a software for this?

i'm not exactly sure what you're looking for.

one of my old phones had this feature where you can swipe from a sidebar and quickly access and type notes

i think something similar can be done quite easily on sxmo

Not sure if the /e/OS Android-compatible AOSP-based operating system on my phone qualifies as FOSS. Surely not Linux despite the kernel - neither does Android.

/e/OS comes with local offline non-cloud voice to text / dictation / speech transcription. How do I get this to other OSs?

It also comes with a slightly customised NextCloud (installable to many OSs), which is full of utilities: the usual cloud tools bundled with Apple, Google, and Microsoft OSs, except the constant surveillance.

https://www.quora.com/How-does-Murenas-custom-e-OS-compare-to-Googles-Android/answer/Harri-K-Hiltunen
(TLDR: /e/OS is open source, beginner friendly, and mostly being developed by a small French company)

Last I checked, /e/ is Lineage that's had stuff tacked on.

That's fine - it brings features they think are useful. But it's Lineage underneath, not their own fork.

Yes, "based on LineageOS, which is based on AOSP". I do say that in the long piece linked. I cut corners to keep the comment short.

Find out how the interface you are using recognizes the swipes for drawers, app list etc. It should be doable on some level to either add your own gesture or copy how it's done into separate program that would be running a defined app on that gesture