HelixNotes | Local Markdown Notes
helixnotes.com
A local markdown note-taking app. Plain .md files on your disk. Sync them your way, or don't.

Last month I posted HelixNotes here and some of you asked about mobile. Version 1.2.1 ships with an Android APK. Same codebase, Rust + Tauri 2.0, no separate app. Since last post: Android support, Ollama for local AI, graph view performance improvements, wiki-link navigation, and a bunch of mobile UX polish. Direct APK download from the site. IzzyOnDroid submission in progress. AGPL-3.0, source on Codeberg.

        • teawrecks@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          2·
          6 hours ago

          I think it makes sense to handle this at a lower level. After using other notes apps, the thing I want is for it to not have some arbitrary opaque file hierarchy that locks me into it. I want a plain dir of .md files, some resources they link to, and that’s it. If I want disk encryption, there are solutions for that. I can use something like LUKs to encrypt my whole drive, or even just the notes directory.

          For android, afaik everything uses disk encryption by default.

          The unix philosophy is do one thing really well. We don’t need a note taking app that also handles encryption.

          • favoredponcho@lemmy.zipEnglish
            2·
            5 hours ago

            In practice this app competes with StandardNotes and Notesnook. People using those might be interested in switching, but they’ll want encryption as a feature of the app.

            • teawrecks@sopuli.xyzEnglish
              3·
              5 hours ago

              I’ve not heard of those, but to me this is a competitor to the much more ubiquitous Obsidian. Which works great, and has a whole community of support, but is not open source.

              Personally, I don’t need my notes app not be responsible for syncing across devices either. I already have that for other file types (photos, media, etc).

              I’m not against these features being added, but this app is young, afaik it’s one person writing it, so I’d rather see their time be spent making the note taking experience as good as it can be.

              I also generally wouldn’t trust one person to properly audit the security of the networking and encryption features. If I wanted those features, I’d still give the community time to peruse the codebase.