Open Source Evernote Alternatives

Short thoughts rarely survive the ceremony of a full note-taking app, where a title, a folder and a template stand between you and the idea. Memos deletes that step and drops whatever you write into a chronological Markdown timeline, on infrastructure you run yourself.

It is deliberately smaller than an all-in-one workspace. A single Docker container with a mounted data directory is the entire deployment, and other install routes are covered in the deployment guide.

The daily loop stays narrow on purpose.

• Quick capture: write Markdown and attach media without naming or filing anything first.
• Light organization: the timeline, search, tags and pins are how you find things again.
• Selective sharing: memos stay private unless you publish the ones you choose to.
• Web clipper: a Chrome and Firefox extension saves pages and selections as source-linked Markdown.
• Data ownership: the project ships zero telemetry and MIT-licensed source you can audit.

A live demo runs for anyone who wants to try before installing, and help arrives through the documentation, Discord and GitHub Discussions. It suits people who want a fast personal log rather than a knowledge base with a hierarchy to keep tidy.

Joplin handles a large number of notes organized into notebooks, all held as Markdown. Notes can be searched, copied, tagged and modified either from the applications themselves or from your own text editor, which keeps the material usable even when Joplin is not the thing opening it.

The app is offline first, so the whole collection lives on your phone or computer and stays reachable with or without a connection. Synchronization is optional and runs through Nextcloud, Dropbox, OneDrive or the project's own paid service, protected end to end by encryption.

Several features exist for moving material in and out.

• Evernote import: formatted content converts to Markdown, and resources and metadata such as geolocation and timestamps come across intact.
• Plain Markdown import: existing Markdown files can be brought in directly.
• Web Clipper: a Firefox and Chrome extension saves pages and screenshots straight into a notebook.
• Full text search: available on every platform the applications run on.
• Plugins and themes: the interface can be customized, and writing your own extension is documented.

Applications exist for Windows, Linux, macOS, Android and iOS. Development is funded by donations, which cover the code signing certificates, app store fees and hosting that keep releases shipping, and the project maintains a warrant canary signing key alongside its documentation for anyone who wants to watch for compelled changes.

SiYuan is a personal knowledge management system organized around content blocks. Instead of files referencing each other loosely, every block can be referenced, linked both ways, zoomed into and queried, so notes stay connected without a separate index to maintain.

The editor is Markdown WYSIWYG with list outlining and support for documents running to a million words. It renders mathematical formulas, charts, flowcharts, Gantt charts, timing diagrams and staves, and it handles web clipping and PDF annotation links.

The surrounding features go well past note taking.

• SQL queries: embed query results directly inside a document.
• Database views: organize content in a table view.
• Flashcards: spaced repetition is built into the app rather than bolted on.
• Export: standard Markdown with assets, PDF, Word and HTML, plus copy targets for WeChat MP, Zhihu and Yuque.
• Snippets: template, JavaScript and CSS snippets adjust behavior and appearance.
• AI: writing and question answering through the OpenAI API, with Tesseract OCR alongside.

Desktop and mobile apps cover Android, iOS and HarmonyOS, and a Docker image serves a workspace over port 6806 with a lock screen access code and configurable user and group ids for host mounted directories. An HTTP API and a community marketplace extend it further. Most features are free including commercial use, while some are reserved for paid members.

Notesnook is a note-taking app built to prove that privacy does not have to cost convenience. Everything is encrypted on the device before it leaves, using XChaCha20-Poly1305 and Argon2, which keeps the service itself unable to read a single note. Going fully open source was, in the authors' words, the crucial step toward earning that trust.

This repository is a monorepo holding every client, so the web app, the desktop build and the Android and iOS apps all sit here with the packages they share. A single core carries the logic common to all platforms, with separate packages for cryptography, the editor, the web clipper, a streaming file system over IndexedDB, logging and theming.

The stack is deliberately small and consistent.

• TypeScript and JavaScript: newer code is TypeScript, and the older JavaScript is being ported over gradually.
• React: the front end on every platform.
• React Native: the Android and iOS clients.
• Electron: the desktop client.
• npm: the package manager across every project, with no Yarn or pnpm anywhere.

An importer covers migration from other apps, and Vericrypt exists so the encryption claims can be verified rather than taken on faith. Contribution guidelines, style rules and commit conventions are documented, and each project inside the monorepo carries its own architecture notes for anyone going deeper.

Blinko is built around the moment an idea arrives. Notes are cards, capture is immediate, and the working assumption is that a thought you have to file before you can write it down is a thought you lose.

Notes are stored as plain text with full Markdown support, which keeps them readable outside the app and quick to share. Retrieval is handled by retrieval-augmented generation, so you can ask for a note in ordinary language rather than recalling the exact words you typed.

Much of the appeal is in how it is packaged.

• Your own storage: notes and data stay in the environment you host, which is where the privacy claim comes from.
• Tauri builds: a light architecture with native apps for macOS, Windows, Android and Linux.
• One-line install: a single script sets up the Docker deployment.
• Managed options: PikaPods and ZimaOS both offer a one-click deployment.
• Live demo: a public instance runs with shared credentials for anyone wanting to try it first.

The project is open source and leans on community contributions, sponsorship and a share of the fees from PikaPods deployments. One rough edge is documented up front: on macOS the unnotarized build is reported as damaged on first launch, and clearing the quarantine attribute by hand is the fix.

Anytype Desktop is a personal knowledge base that keeps everything on your own machine first. Pages, tasks, wikis and journals are assembled from composable blocks, and you define the types behind them instead of accepting someone else's idea of how your notes should be shaped.

Sync is peer-to-peer and end-to-end encrypted through any-sync, so devices exchange data without a server able to read it. The client is an Electron and TypeScript application talking to a separate core engine over gRPC bindings generated from protobuf definitions, and that engine is extensible through the same API.

Building from source is a multi-step job, and the repository is explicit about each stage.

• Prerequisites: a protobuf compiler on Linux and, on ARM machines, a C++ compiler with Python setuptools so keytar can be rebuilt.
• Middleware: a prebuilt binary and proto assets fetched by a script before anything compiles.
• Protobuf bindings: generated either from a checkout of the core engine or straight from the fetched assets.
• Development server: hot reload through Vite with Electron on top, plus a browser-only web mode.
• Packaging: Electron builds for Linux, Windows and macOS, with flags to skip notarizing and Sentry uploads.

Ready-made installers sit on the releases page for anyone who just wants to use the thing, and translations are managed through Crowdin. The code is published under the Any Source Available License 1.0, which is worth reading before planning anything commercial on top of it.

Standard Notes keeps notes, files and long-running work in one encrypted place. Sync is end-to-end encrypted, so whoever stores the data cannot read it, which removes the usual trade-off between having your notes everywhere and trusting the service that holds them.

Clients exist for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android alongside the web app, and cross-platform sync is free on an unlimited number of devices. The project puts explicit weight on longevity and sustainability, meaning notes written today should still open years from now.

This repository holds the app itself, and it is meant to be run by anyone who wants to.

• Self-hosting: the web app compiles to static HTML, JavaScript and CSS files served behind any web server.
• Custom sync server: an environment variable points login and registration at a backend of your own.
• Development mode: a yarn install and build pair serves the app locally while you change it.
• Extensions: developers can create and publish plugins, with a documentation hub covering the work.
• Listed: a companion publishing platform turns notes into an online publication with email newsletters.

Getting started needs no installation at all. Register in the web app, download the clients you want, and encrypted sync is on from the first note. For anyone uneasy about a vendor holding even encrypted material, the same account model works against a server you host in a few documented steps.

Beaver Notes is a notes app that starts from a different bargain than most: your notes stay on your device, unindexed and unreadable by anyone else, and you never create an account to write the first one. What makes it worth switching to is mostly an absence of things, no telemetry in the editor, no monthly fee to keep your own writing accessible.

Version 5 is a rewrite rather than an update. The app moved from Electron to Tauri for smaller binaries and better native behavior, and mobile stopped being a separate product when Beaver Pocket was folded back into the main app. It targets macOS, Windows, Linux, Android and iOS.

The core is deliberately ordinary, which is the point.

• Markdown native: notes are plain markdown files, organized with folders, tags and note linking.
• Locked notes: sensitive notes can be locked individually.
• Sync your way: use your own cloud storage, a self-hosted server, or the forthcoming BeaverSync, with no lock-in in any direction.
• Coming in v5: real-time collaboration, version history, backlinks and a plugin system, all of which the old architecture made difficult.
• Community driven: contributors handle translations, documentation and packaging for platforms the maintainers would otherwise miss.

Stable installers are published for every platform, with Linux available as a tarball, an AppImage or a Flathub Flatpak. The v5 beta is built from the tauri branch with yarn and will have rough edges, so bug reports are welcome. The public roadmap takes pushback on priorities.

Zen is a notes app for people who want their writing to stay in plain markdown files on hardware they control. It replaces the rigid folder tree most tools impose with flexible tags, and it keeps the whole thing small enough to forget about once it is running.

The app is a single Go binary or a Docker Compose stack, backed by a local SQLite database, with a minimal dependency footprint and low resource usage. Full-text search is ranked with BM25.

The feature list stays close to what a notes app actually needs day to day.

• Tags over folders: notes are organized by flexible tags rather than a fixed hierarchy.
• Markdown depth: tables, code blocks, task lists, highlights and the rest of the standard syntax.
• Internal links: linked notes open in a side panel preview instead of pulling you away.
• Housekeeping: templates, pinned notes, archive and soft delete, and bulk archive and delete.
• Portability: import and export with your data intact, with companion projects covering automated backups and imports from other services.
• Experimental additions: a canvas for spatial organization stored as JSON Canvas, semantic search for notes and images, and an MCP server for searching, listing and reading notes.

Installation is a make build from source. Be aware of the maintainer's own framing before you depend on it: this is a personal project built for personal use, the codebase is there to fork and modify, and pull requests or issues may not get a reply.

Darkwrite is a note-taking application that stays out of the way and stays on your machine. Notes are stored locally, none of your data is collected, and there is no server to depend on, so an outage somewhere else never leaves you without your writing.

The editor is the center of it. Formatting, headings, todo lists, numbered lists, links, images and tables are all supported, and a cover image can be added to any note. The application is distributed as a desktop build from the releases page.

Customization goes further than most note apps allow.

• Themes: a set of themes ships with the app and you can write your own instead of choosing between light and dark.
• Fonts: the default note font can be changed, overridden for a single note, or set for the interface with everything else following.
• Export: every note exports as HTML and works elsewhere, so there is no lock-in.
• Backups: a one-click archive captures your notes and restores them later.
• No assistant: the app is built to work without an AI bot attached to it.

Darkwrite is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 or later, with build and development documentation in the repository and a Simplified Chinese translation contributed by the community. It suits someone who wants a private notebook on one machine rather than a shared workspace.

OpenNotas is a note-taking app for people worn down by note apps carrying more features than they will ever open. It is a progressive web app, so the same notes are reachable from Windows, macOS, Linux and mobile without a separate build for each platform.

Notes are written in Markdown through open source editing tools the author chose so the editor can grow later. Syncing between devices is arranged through an adapter you configure, and note data is encrypted with AES on the device before it reaches the sync server, which therefore stores ciphertext rather than your writing.

The project keeps its promises deliberately short.

• Easy to use: a tap opens the app and writing starts immediately, with no setup ritual first.
• Multi-platform: one PWA install covers desktop and mobile across the major operating systems.
• Sync: devices stay in step through a sync adapter configured to your own setup.
• End to end encryption: AES encryption is applied before anything leaves the device.
• Markdown: notes stay plain text with Markdown formatting instead of a proprietary format.

Installation is either a PWA install from the project site or a build from source, both covered in the documentation. The license is AGPL 3.0, and the author, who wrote the app in a little over a month to solve his own problem, asks people to hold off on pull requests for new features and to fork and build instead.

Capd keeps what you come across on a Mac and makes it findable later. There is no account, no subscription and no telemetry, and the library stays on the machine inside a local SQLite database and an assets folder.

Captures start from a keyboard shortcut, a drag onto the menu bar or the notch, the macOS share sheet, or the bundled command line tool. Browser captures keep the page and, where available, its readable article text, and re-capturing an item updates the existing entry instead of adding a duplicate.

• Search beyond bookmarks: titles, article text, selections, notes and text recognized inside images are all indexed.
• Filtered queries: narrow results by site, tag and date from the same field you type keywords into.
• Ask Cap: Apple Intelligence assembles an on-device answer whose claims link back to the captures behind them.
• Automatic tagging: captures are grouped into a small vocabulary on device, without their contents leaving the Mac.
• CLI and Raycast: the capd command adds, searches and exports, and a Raycast extension reads the same library.

A read-only MCP server offers search and cited answers to compatible AI assistants, and the CLI prints stable JSON for scripts. Network behavior is limited and written down in the privacy guide, and several of those features can be switched off.

Released under the MIT license, the app needs macOS 26 or later and runs on Apple silicon and Intel machines. Installation comes from a notarized disk image or through Homebrew.

Notes usually live in an account somebody else controls. Justnote inverts that arrangement: notes are encrypted end to end, the decryption key never leaves you, and the account itself belongs to the person using it rather than to the service holding the data.

The web app is React with Redux and Tailwind CSS, using CKEditor for writing and the Stacks JavaScript library for identity and storage, while the mobile apps are React Native. Web and mobile sit in one repository under a packages directory, and each starts with an npm install followed by npm run start.

Capture and organization cover the usual ground.

• Encryption: only your decryption key opens the notes.
• Locking: a whole list or a single note can be locked.
• Nested lists: folders can be organized inside other folders.
• Pinning and tags: notes pin to the top and carry tags across lists.
• Dark mode: a dark theme is included.
• Three clients: web, Android and iOS work from the same account.

Google Keep, Evernote and Joplin are the stated inspirations, and the code is GPL-2.0. It suits someone who wants fast capture on a phone and a desktop without the text sitting readable on a company's servers, and the maintainers ask for bugs and feature ideas through GitHub issues or the support links on the site.