Self Hosted Note Taking Apps

AFFiNE is a collaborative knowledge base and productivity suite designed as a private-first, local-first platform. It provides an integrated workspace that combines structured documents with an infinite digital canvas, allowing users to organize complex information through a block-based model. By prioritizing local data persistence, the platform ensures immediate responsiveness and data sovereignty while maintaining a distributed state for real-time synchronization across multiple devices. The platform distinguishes itself through a canvas-integrated database engine that enables transitions b

Siyuan is a self-hosted knowledge management platform designed for private note-taking and information organization. It functions as a local-first application that stores all user content as plain text files on the local file system, ensuring data ownership and offline availability. The platform utilizes a block-based document model, which structures information as a tree of independent content blocks to facilitate granular manipulation and bidirectional linking. Users can extend the core functionality through a sandboxed plugin architecture, allowing for the development of custom themes and

Notesnook is a cross-platform note-taking application designed for private knowledge management. It functions as a secure personal information manager that prioritizes user data confidentiality by employing client-side end-to-end encryption for all stored notes, attachments, and metadata. By utilizing a local-first synchronization model, the application ensures that information remains accessible offline while maintaining a consistent state across desktop and mobile devices. The platform distinguishes itself through a focus on privacy-centric organization and secure information handling. User

Joplin is an open-source, cross-platform note-taking application designed for secure, private knowledge management. It functions as a local-first productivity platform, maintaining a complete relational database on the user's device to ensure offline availability and high-performance data retrieval. The application prioritizes data sovereignty by implementing an end-to-end encryption layer, which secures all information locally with a master key before any synchronization occurs. The platform distinguishes itself through a delta-based synchronization engine that transmits only specific file c

Memos is a self-hosted, container-native knowledge management platform designed for capturing and organizing personal notes. It functions as a private workspace where users can create content using markdown, tags, and media embeds to streamline daily productivity. The system is built to be deployed as a portable service, allowing individuals to maintain full control over their data and hosting environment. Beyond its core note-taking capabilities, the platform operates as a headless content service that exposes a structured RESTful API. This interface allows for programmatic interaction, enab

This project is an enterprise knowledge platform designed for teams to create, manage, and publish structured documentation. Built on a high-performance runtime, it provides a centralized environment where contributors can author content using markdown, HTML, or a visual editor. The system is engineered to handle collaborative workflows, ensuring that technical and non-technical users alike can maintain documentation with consistent rendering and version control. What distinguishes this platform is its focus on secure, scalable, and synchronized content management. It features granular path-b

Saber is an end-to-end encrypted note-taking application designed for handwritten content. It provides a digital ink canvas for creating documents and a system for organizing those notes within a hierarchy of nested folders. The application ensures privacy by encrypting both notes and device configurations on the client side before they are synchronized across devices. This process prevents the server from accessing stored content or user settings. The toolset includes digital ink annotation capabilities, such as text highlighting and layer-based stroke rendering. The user interface supports

Trilium is a local-first personal knowledge management system designed to store and organize information on a user's own device. It functions as a hierarchical knowledge base where every note acts as both a standalone document and a container for nested children, allowing for complex information relationships and deep categorization. The platform distinguishes itself through a component-based interface that dynamically renders diverse content types, including rich text, diagrams, and executable scripts. All data is persisted within a single relational database file, which supports a versioned

This project is a self-hosted note-taking platform and collaborative markdown wiki. It functions as a real-time markdown collaborative editor, allowing multiple users to create, organize, and share documents simultaneously. The platform is designed for self-hosted knowledge management and collaborative markdown documentation, providing a private environment for teams to maintain shared technical notes.

Outline is a full-stack server-side web application designed as a centralized platform for collaborative knowledge management. It provides teams with the infrastructure to create, organize, and share structured documentation through real-time editing tools, while supporting high availability and horizontal scalability in production environments. The platform distinguishes itself through a comprehensive suite of operational and development tools. It includes a command-line interface for managing database schema versioning and structural consistency across deployments, alongside an integrated t

CodiMD is a real-time collaborative markdown editor and self-hosted knowledge base. It provides a shared workspace where multiple users can write and format notes using markdown syntax simultaneously. The platform extends basic editing by transforming markdown content into interactive mind maps for data visualization and structured visual slides for presentations. It functions as an OAuth compatible note server, integrating with external identity providers to manage user authentication and access control. The system supports self-hosting and cloud platform deployment, allowing users to maint

HedgeDoc is a self-hosted documentation platform and real-time collaborative Markdown editor. It serves as a digital workspace for creating shared technical notes and managing knowledge through a privately hosted system. The platform enables multiple users to write and format Markdown documents simultaneously in a shared live environment. It integrates external identity providers such as LDAP, SAML, and social platforms via OAuth2 to manage user access and authentication. The system includes capabilities for content publishing, including exporting notes to GitHub Gists and generating automat

Silver Bullet is a local-first, bidirectional Markdown wiki that functions as a Lua-scriptable note-taking platform with an embedded declarative query language. It treats a single folder on your device as the root workspace, monitoring that directory for file changes via a native file-system watcher to keep its in-memory index and user interface synchronised in near real-time. Notes are parsed into a live-preview Markdown AST that re-renders only changed nodes as you type, and the application builds a directed graph of internal hyperlinks from each note’s content to support bidirectional navig