HelixNotes — Local-First Markdown Notes
helixnotes.com
A local-first markdown note-taking app. Your notes stay on your machine. No cloud, no lock-in.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43147928

I built a note-taking app because the one I wanted didn’t exist. Clean UI, local .md files, no cloud, no account.

Built with Rust + Tauri 2.0 + SvelteKit. Full-text search powered by Tantivy. Graph view, AI writing tools (bring your own key), Obsidian import, version history.

Available for Linux (AppImage, APT, AUR), Windows, and macOS. Source: https://codeberg.org/ArkHost/HelixNotes

    • ArkHost@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      23 days ago

      vs Obsidian: Same local-first philosophy with plain .md files, but HelixNotes gives you a clean WYSIWYG editor out of the box. No plugin setup, no CSS tweaking, no learning curve. Open an app, write, close it. vs Joplin: Joplin uses its own database format internally. HelixNotes stores everything as plain markdown files in folders on your filesystem. Also Tauri instead of Electron, so much lower resource usage. Both are great projects. I built HelixNotes because I wanted UpNote’s UI with Obsidian’s philosophy, and that combination didn’t exist.

      I wrote a longer comparison here: https://helixnotes.com/why-i-built-helixnotes.html

      • jabberwock@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        0·
        23 days ago

        Did you muck with Logseq at all? That’s my preferred note taking app and it checks a lot of your boxes, the biggest miss probably being the Electron app part. That said, I’ve never noticed any slow downs.

        But this is great to have options and a larger ecosystem. I’ll have to check it out.

        • ArkHost@lemmy.worldOP
          0·
          23 days ago

          I looked at Logseq, it’s a great project. Main difference is HelixNotes focuses on a clean WYSIWYG experience out of the box rather than an outliner approach. Different workflows.

        • definitemaybe@lemmy.ca
          0·
          23 days ago

          Logseq Database version is close to beta release. I’m looking forward to that since Logseq can get slow for power users (queries) with large graphs.

  • gravediggersbiscuit@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    23 days ago

    I might be missing something here but I don’t understand what this has to do with the topic of Linux? Sure you can install on Linux, but that’s not really a topic about Linux

    • ArkHost@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      23 days ago

      Built with Tauri on Linux, available as AppImage, AUR, and APT package. Thought it was relevant for Linux users looking for a native note-taking app.

      • gravediggersbiscuit@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        23 days ago

        Tauri is a cross platform framework and not something specific to the Linux operating systems as per the first rule of this community

        “Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.”

        Again I might be wrong, and apologies if I am, but the relevance of this post is extremely weak.

  • wltr@discuss.tchncs.de
    0·
    23 days ago

    I’d appreciate something like this, but for smartphones. Or, in other words, I’m looking for an Obsidian replacement. So far, I’m satisfied with Obsidian, but I don’t like it being not open source, so things can change any day. Also, to my taste, it’s too bloated. Personally, I need only the couple of functions. Sometimes I think I’d write it myself, maybe. One day. But I’m still hopeful someone else would at least start it :)

    • ArkHost@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      23 days ago

      You just described why I built HelixNotes. Clean, simple, open source (AGPL-3.0), no bloat. Desktop is ready, give it a try. Mobile is on the roadmap once the desktop experience is solid.