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



Your website says “No sync. No lock-in. No bullshit”
Would you mind elaborating on the thought there? Why no sync?
I use obsidian with self hosted live sync, my notes are mine and they live on my hardware, but they are always in sync between my devices. If I’m on my desktop and take notes, I can pull them up on my laptop or even my phone. With this, I can’t reference my notes (or update them) until I’m back on my desktop.
The line “No sync. No lock-in. No bullshit” tells me you’re opposed to it on principal, meaning you don’t intend to ever add the ability to sync, and that’s a nonstarter for me and a lot of people I image. I’d love to migrate from obsidian to something open source, and I’d love to potentially spend time working on contributing a self hosted live sync like feature, but I need to know if my work and pull request will be immediately rejected on a principal I’m not sure I understand?
Good question. “No sync” means no built-in cloud sync - not that sync is impossible. Your notes are plain .md files in a folder, so you can sync them with Syncthing, Nextcloud, rsync, Git, or anything else you already use. The app watches the filesystem for external changes and picks them up automatically.
The philosophy is: I don’t decide where your files go. You do.
As for contributions - absolutely welcome. PRs won’t be rejected on principle. If you want to work on a self-hosted sync feature, open an issue on Codeberg and let’s discuss the approach first. I’d love to see it.
Are there plans for mobile apps? In particular, obsidian and nextcloud don’t seem to work well together on android. Changes made to files via obsidian don’t get picked up by nextcloud unless I manually go sync the file. This might just be nextcloud’s app dropping the ball.
Sounds good, I’m trying out the app and seeing if I can really use it to replace obsidian, and I might dedicate some time to contribute if I end up using it. I agree with your assessment that obsidian’s customization with its plugin eco system leads to it becoming a side project that you have to baby instead of just a note taking app.
I don’t use a lot of plugins on obsidian, but I use rely on a few that make organizing notes easier, mainly:
On sync, two problems with using “whatever” to sync entire vault:
Great feedback.
If you end up trying it and want to contribute, open issues on Codeberg for what you’d like to see. Contributions are very welcome.
I assume you could use syncthing to sync the notes.