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
Thanks for all the feedback everyone. Just shipped v1.1.0 based on what was reported here today:
- Obsidian wiki link import fix
- macOS Cmd key shortcuts (was showing Ctrl)
- Frontmatter no longer modified on notes you don’t edit
- KaTeX math support
- Daily Notes
- Tag management (single + batch)
- View mode toggle + focus mode improvements
- Source mode search
- Notebook delete confirmation
- Collapsible sidebar tags
Note taking App, AI in the front page… I don’t think you understand the point of taking notes.
AI is optional, disabled by default, and doesn’t even show in the UI unless you enable it. The app works fully offline with zero AI involvement.
If it were me, I’d have chosen a different name to avoid confusion with helix the editor.
All I know is tauri is the name given to Earth by the goa’uld. When did this came up? Everytime I blink another language appears
Tauri isn’t actually a language in this instance, it’s a framework to create WebView based GUI applications with Rust
Alright now I am learning something!
Is the Markdown editor WYSIWYG, like Typora ?
You have both - the WYSIWYG editor and a way to switch to the Markdown editor.
I specifically asked whether the Markdown editor is WYSIWYG, like Typora, which isn’t the same thing as MS Word WYSIWYG.
Not like Typora, no. HelixNotes has a WYSIWYG editor and a source mode toggle, two separate views. Not inline markdown rendering.
Notix. Notes + helix avoid confusion with the other app, Notix
I just downloaded. Looks amazing. I will try it out. Do you have a Patreon Page or something?
Thanks! No Patreon yet, but I’ll set something up. For now, the best support is feedback and bug reports.
If you want to try HelixNotes, be aware it overwrites the front-matter of notes you open (view only, no edit needed).
Hi ArkHost,
Obsidian user here. I tried HelixNotes for a couple of minutes and here’s my feedback:
- I like that you support compatibility/converting Obsidian vaults. I wish you would at least support Obsidian’s wiki links directly. I won’t convert all my notes just to try if I like your editor.
- View mode doesn’t seem to really do anything. Ah wait, seems like I can only click links in view mode (no visual distinction between normal editor and view-mode apart from the tiny
view modebadge). But that opens the linked note in my default.mdviewer, not the HelixEditor itself. IMO view-mode should be visually distinct and also work together with source-mode (so I can edit in source mode and then click view-mode to see the rendered note). - I like the simple look, although the UI is not as polished compared to Obsidian.
- I need Math support (
$ ... $). - I hate that you update notes front-matter even if I just view and not edit them. Only change notes I am editing myself. I just had a look and now you changed the format of my notes. Re front-matter it would also be good if that behavior is documented somewhere.
- I closed my vault (clicked on the folder icon in the top right) and wanted to reopen it, but got an error:
Failed to acquire LockFile: LockBusy. - The graph view opened but stayed empty.
Feel free to use my feedback however you want, or don’t. Personally, there’s more than one deal-breaker for me to switch from Obsidian to HelixNotes, without even considering the nice-to-have features added by all the plug-ins. I recommend you to listen to people who are more likely to use your editor than me, or are already using it. I hope my comment doesn’t come over too negatively. I tried to give honest feedback why personally I won’t use HelixNotes anytime soon. I wish you all the best.
Appreciate the honest feedback, doesn’t come over negatively at all, this is exactly what helps improve the app.
- Obsidian wiki links not converting properly during import: that’s a bug, will be fixed in the next release.
- View mode, math support, frontmatter behavior, and the other UX points: all noted and will be considered. So far I’ve focused on features I use personally, but if something makes sense, improves the app, and keeps it focused without bloat, I just implement it.
- The LockFile bug and empty graph view: I haven’t seen this behavior yet but I’ll look into it.
HelixNotes isn’t trying to be a replacement for Obsidian. It was a replacement for Obsidian for me, but different people have different needs. Thanks for taking the time.
You even overwrite previously existing front-matters. From just looking at a note. This is a fucking no-go! Luckily I was able to revert all the unwanted changes HelixNotes applied to my vault.
This is a warning for everyone who wants to try HelixNotes with an existing vault.
Fixed in v1.1.0
The import dialog warns you to make a backup before running as it modifies files in place. That said, the frontmatter overwrite on just viewing a note is a valid bug. I’ll fix that, notes should only be modified when you actually edit them.
Does this have anything to do with the Helix text editor?
No, completely separate project. Just a coincidence in naming.
Isn’t this basically just an Obsidian replacement then? I haven’t tried it, but reading the info in Codeberg does point to that.
AI writing tools — improve, summarize, translate, and more (Anthropic / OpenAI)
why though
Fair question. Use case: you take rough notes during a meeting, no formatting, just raw thoughts. AI can clean them up, summarize, or restructure after the fact. It’s completely optional though. Disabled by default, doesn’t even show in the context menus unless you explicitly configure it in settings with your own API key. If you don’t want it, it’s like it doesn’t exist.
I see on the page it says you can bring an anthropic or openai key. Can I also point it at my own locally hosted model?
Not at this moment. Which local model would you like to see as an additional option?
I don’t know what is typical, but when I use AI locally I’ve been running llama-cpp with models grabbed from HF (ex. QwenCoder). Then in my VS code plugin (RooCode) I use the “OpenAI compatible” option to point it at my local server.
Not sure how hard that is to get working, but my hope is that “OpenAI Compatible” helps.
So, a feature for those who want it, but turned off out of the box for those who absolutely do not want it? Did I understand correctly?
Exactly. Off by default, invisible unless you enable it.
As ai features should be. You’re the dev?
Correct. Yes I am.
Cool. I appreciate this design decision. If only more went that route (looking at you, Microslop)
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:
- 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.
- 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:
- I have to install and configure syncing on every device, and make sure they’re connected
- 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.
Great feedback.
- Daily notes - not there yet but it’s a straightforward feature to add. I’ll put it on the roadmap.
- Templates - same, noted.
- 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.
I assume you could use syncthing to sync the notes.
Not to be confused with helix the TUI text editor
That was gonna be my question.
Correct, this has nothing to do with the helix TUI text editor in any way.
Whats the difference between helixeditor.com and helix-editor.com, do you know if they are different projects?
Funny that you pointed this out. I didn’t actually know about the two distinct sites. The “missing” hyphen in my url was a confusing accident; I just assumed they revamped the website poorly 🤣. I had to check the install instructions and GitHub link before posting
They are the same; both refer to https://github.com/helix-editor/helix
Never worked with any note taking apps except for Vim with customized snippets and rudamentary helper scripts.
While such an app seems very appealing, I haven’t seen any of them featuring the useful stuff, such as pluggable editor (in my case Vim or NeoVim), template support (day journal, meeting, README etc…), rendered fields (e.g.: today, author, or arbitrary values), support for pandoc rendering, doc metadata management (tags, keywords, related docs, links) or markers in text eg. @TODO etc… (idea being to aut. create lists of paragraps with such markers)
What’s the point of a note taking app that provides help with editing single docs and maybe with rendering to HTML, but doesn’t help organizing and remembering stuff?
Different use case. HelixNotes is for people who want a clean, simple note-taking app that works out of the box - not a customizable text processing pipeline. If Vim snippets work for you, stick with that. Not every tool needs to be for everyone.
Oh hey I’ve been looking for “obsidian but with version history “ for a bit now.
Give HelixNotes a try :)
