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.

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.worldOPEnglish
    8·
    14 hours ago

    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.

    • teawrecks@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      1·
      6 hours ago

      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.

    • 3abas@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      12 hours ago

      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:

      1. Daily notes: I really like being able to click one button to create a note with a date and organized into date folders, these are usually quick notes that reference bigger notes. Not being able to do it with a click means I just won’t do it at all, so my quick notes could very quickly become a giant list of unorganized files in the vault root.
      2. Templates: not a huge deal, I can manually apply templates from a template .md file, but it’s a nice feature.

      On sync, two problems with using “whatever” to sync entire vault:

      1. I have to install and configure syncing on every device, and make sure they’re connected
      2. Merge conflict and sync order! I used to use seafile I sync, and I can’t tell you how frustrating it was to lose entire notes because they were overwritten externally.
      • ArkHost@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        2·
        12 hours ago

        Great feedback.

        1. Daily notes - not there yet but it’s a straightforward feature to add. I’ll put it on the roadmap.
        2. Templates - same, noted.
        3. Sync conflicts - fair point. HelixNotes watches the filesystem for external changes, but conflict resolution when two devices edit the same note is a real problem with any file-based sync. Syncthing handles this better than most (it creates conflict copies instead of overwriting), but it’s not perfect.

        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.