A local-first, open source note-taking app with the workflow people know from Evernote: notebooks, tags, rich-text notes with checklists and tables, attachments, powerful search, a trash, reminders and note history. Your notes live in a SQLite file on your machine. No account, no cloud, no telemetry.
OpenNote is an independent project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Evernote. It contains no Evernote code, assets or branding. See docs/FEATURES.md for how the feature set was defined.
Installers for macOS (.dmg), Windows (.exe) and Linux (.deb) are built by GitHub Actions and attached to each release; see
desktop/README.md (they are unsigned, so the first launch shows a system warning that file explains how to bypass).
They add a tray icon, a global quick note shortcut and native reminders, and use the same ~/.opennote data.
https://rldona.github.io/OpenNote/ runs the whole app inside your browser: no account, no server. Notes are stored in that browser on that device (it can be installed as an app from the browser menu). Use a current Chrome or Edge; Firefox and Safari are untested. Syncing between devices is not available in this version yet.
Requires Node.js 24+ (uses the built-in node:sqlite with FTS5).
npm install
npm start # builds the UI and serves it at http://localhost:3737Development with hot reload (UI on :5173, API on :3737):
npm run devData is stored in ~/.opennote (override with OPENNOTE_DATA=/some/dir; change the port with PORT).
Back up that folder and you have backed up everything.
- Notebooks and stacks, tags, pinned notes, trash with restore
- Rich editor (TipTap): headings, bold/italic/underline/strike/highlight, lists, checklists, quotes, code blocks, tables, links, images (paste or drag & drop), file attachments
- Voice notes (record in the editor), hand drawing, and previews of images, PDFs, audio, video and text files
- Hierarchical tags (
work/projects/alpha, with a collapsible tree and roll-up counts) - Tasks view: every checklist item across your notes, with due dates (overdue / today / next 7 days), tick them off without opening the note
- Templates (meeting notes, weekly review…, or save any note as one) with
{{date}}/{{time}} - Note links (
⛓in the toolbar) with backlinks, duplicate and merge notes (Ctrl/Cmd-click to multi-select) - Search with an Evernote-style grammar, instant and accent-insensitive:
milk bread,"exact phrase",-word,any: a b,intitle:x,tag:work(includes sub-tags),-tag:x,notebook:Ideas,todo:true,resource:any,reminderTime:*,created:month,updated:day-1,-created:20240101,sourceUrl:example.com. Save any search to the sidebar - Encrypted notes: lock any note with a passphrase (AES-256-GCM in the browser; the server, the database, backups and the sync folder only ever see ciphertext). Titles, tags and attachments are not encrypted; a lost passphrase cannot be recovered
- Home dashboard, installable PWA, and a clear banner when the local server is not running
- Search inside files: text files always; PDFs and images (OCR) when the optional tools are installed.
brew install poppler tesseract(macOS) ·sudo apt install poppler-utils tesseract-ocr tesseract-ocr-spa(Linux) · Poppler/Tesseract installers on Windows. OpenNote finds them on its own and indexes existing files in the background (GET /api/index/statusshows progress) - Note history: automatic versions, restore any earlier one
- Reminders with in-app and desktop notifications
- Import/export ENEX (Evernote's documented export format) including tags, dates, checklists and attachments, so you can bring your notes over or leave at any time
- Import Markdown / HTML / zip (Obsidian vaults and folders become notebooks and stacks, relative images become attachments) and export everything as a zip of Markdown files plus attachments; export single notes as Markdown
- Web clipper (Chrome, Edge, Firefox): save articles, pages, selections, bookmarks and screenshots, with images downloaded into the note — see extension/README.md
- Sync between devices without any cloud: through a folder you choose (Syncthing, iCloud Drive, Dropbox, USB…), with conflict copies instead of data loss and optional AES-256 encryption — see docs/SYNC.md
- Light/dark theme (or follow the system), five accent colours, notebooks overview, focus mode, English and Spanish UI
- Loopback-only server: Host and Origin checks protect your notes from other websites
| Layer | Choice |
|---|---|
| Storage | SQLite (node:sqlite), FTS5 full-text index, attachments as files |
| API | Hono REST API (server/src/app.ts) |
| UI | React + TipTap (web/) |
| Tests | Vitest (npm test) |
server/src/store.ts notes, notebooks, tags, versions, search
server/src/enex.ts ENEX <-> HTML conversion (ENML, en-todo, en-media)
server/src/app.ts HTTP API and local-only protections
server/src/sync.ts serverless folder sync
server/src/clip.ts web clipper endpoint
extension/ browser extension (TypeScript)
desktop/ Electron app (TypeScript)
web/src/ React client
- Single user (sync is by shared folder, not a hosted service; there is no real-time collaboration or note sharing)
- Single-note Markdown export references attachments as
attachments/<name>without bundling them (use the zip export for that) - ENEX import loads the file in memory, so very large exports (hundreds of MB) may be slow
- Evernote-only features that need a server (shared notebooks, Spaces, AI) are out of scope
See the roadmap in docs/FEATURES.md.