HelixNotes - a local-first markdown note-taking app (Rust + Tauri, AGPL-3.0) (helixnotes.com)
from ArkHost@lemmy.world to selfhosted@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 00:30
https://lemmy.world/post/43147928

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: codeberg.org/ArkHost/HelixNotes

#selfhosted

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Lodra@programming.dev on 15 Feb 01:21 next collapse

Not to be confused with helix the TUI text editor

ArkHost@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 01:25 next collapse

Correct, this has nothing to do with the helix TUI text editor in any way.

clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works on 15 Feb 01:30 collapse

That was gonna be my question.

early_riser@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 02:35 next collapse

Oh hey I’ve been looking for “obsidian but with version history “ for a bit now.

ArkHost@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 02:35 collapse

Give HelixNotes a try :)

msokiovt@feddit.online on 15 Feb 03:18 next collapse

Since this looks to be similar to Obsidian, why not name it something else like it, but without the Obsidian name?

I’ll need to do some numerology on that….

EDIT: On the note of Obsidian, my producer and I use it all the time, however, there is another one that someone in a community I’m in looked at, that being Trilium Next. Judging by the looks, it’s got similarities to Trilium, which is actually pretty nice.

ArkHost@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 10:00 collapse

The name comes from the double helix. Structured but flexible, like how notes should be. Trilium is a solid project, but it stores notes in an SQLite database and runs on Electron. HelixNotes keeps everything as plain .md files and uses Tauri, so much lighter on resources.

dan@upvote.au on 15 Feb 03:21 next collapse

Looks like an interesting project!

Could you please consider publishing it to Flathub?

msokiovt@feddit.online on 15 Feb 03:29 next collapse

Not the developer, though that could be an option for sure. I’d highly recommend looking at the security holes for Flatpak, and it’s got a ton of them. They’re getting fixed, though I don’t even have Flatpak installed on my machine.

LazerDickMcCheese@sh.itjust.works on 15 Feb 03:43 next collapse

I’ve been hearing people suggest staying away from flatpaks, but I haven’t heard the reasons why. I guess that’s it?

dan@upvote.au on 15 Feb 04:40 collapse

Are there security issues specific to Flatpak? I would have thought it’d be more secure than Appimage, since it’s sandboxed.

ArkHost@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 09:54 collapse

It’s on the list. Flatpak packaging is coming.

IllNess@infosec.pub on 15 Feb 03:44 next collapse

Mac user her. I’ve been using Markflowy after MacDown stopped development. I will give this a shot.

Thank you for your work.

IllNess@infosec.pub on 15 Feb 04:02 collapse

Hi OP. I am really enjoying using HelixNotes.

I love the way it looks and all the features. I was able to use the same folder I use MarkFlowy and Marknote.

My only critique is the Ctrl key in Windows and Linux menu shortcuts is usually changed to Cmd for Mac. It really isn’t a big deal but I think a lot of Mac users will notice this instantly. I tried creating an note with Cmd + N since is the default for all other Mac apps. I saw the Shortcuts in the Info section and I was hoping you could customize the Keyboard Shortcuts, but you can’t.

It isn’t a big deal with me. So far I am enjoying this more than MarkFlowy and Marknote. If you don’t change for whatever reason, I understand and I will continue to use your HelixNotes.

Again thank you for your work.

IllNess@infosec.pub on 15 Feb 04:40 next collapse

Me again. Last time tonight, I promise.

My favorite features so far, making the edit toolbar disappear in source mode and Focus mode. Quick access is also really useful.

One more thing I don’t like, it was adding a header to my edited notes.

Example:

---
id: "9242199e-992b-4c58-9b4f-85a6949d424d"
title: "Books"
tags: []
pinned: false
created: 2026-02-15T04:32:13.600656+00:00
modified: 2026-02-15T04:32:17.240423+00:00
---

This doesn’t look great in MacOS preview. This might be one of those things that it was simplest to just add this directly to the file rather than creating some kind of database or a bunch of dot files. Again, not a deal breaker for me. Would adding it to the bottom be possible instead?

Thank you.

Jayjader@jlai.lu on 15 Feb 09:35 next collapse

Hi, not OP, but: that’s known as frontmatter, it’s somewhat widespread, and thus I suspect that it’s much more difficult to have it live at the end of your markdown files than in a separate file or db altogether - unless OP is already rolling their own markdown parser.

IllNess@infosec.pub on 15 Feb 13:32 collapse

Interesting. Thank you for the info.

ArkHost@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 10:11 collapse

Really appreciate the detailed feedback.

You’re right about the Mac shortcuts - Cmd should replace Ctrl on macOS. That’s a bug, I’ll fix it.

As for the frontmatter - Jayjader is correct, it’s standard markdown frontmatter. It’s how HelixNotes tracks metadata without using a database or sidecar files. Moving it to the bottom would break compatibility with every other markdown tool that reads frontmatter. But I understand it’s not pretty in a plain preview - that’s the tradeoff for keeping everything in plain .md files with no hidden database.

Glad you’re enjoying it. Keep the feedback coming, this is exactly what helps improve the app.

IllNess@infosec.pub on 15 Feb 13:41 collapse

Thank you for the explanation.

I will continue to use it and provide feedback. So far, really great.

I nearly take all my notes in markdown. I am always excited to try another open source markdown program.

HelixNotes is super polished.

Thanks!

ArkHost@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 13:46 collapse

Thanks, appreciate it!

ArkHost@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 21:49 collapse

Mac Cmd shortcuts fixed in v1.1.0, just shipped. Thanks for reporting it.

Calfpupa@lemmy.ml on 15 Feb 03:45 next collapse

Plugin support?

ArkHost@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 09:54 collapse

Not at this stage. It’s something I’m considering but the priority is getting the core experience right first.

Calfpupa@lemmy.ml on 15 Feb 12:12 collapse

Totally understandable at this stage. As soon as it appears on the roadmap I’m in. Need my templater :)

brbposting@sh.itjust.works on 15 Feb 04:46 next collapse

Very nice. The screenshots look promising!

MacDown is pretty solid, but I’ve been looking at alternatives. Unfortunately, while MarkText may be feature-rich, latency is untenable. I think that one’s an Electron app.

ArkHost@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 10:03 collapse

Thanks! Latency was one of the main reasons I went with Tauri instead of Electron. HelixNotes launches instantly and stays light. Give it a try.

3abas@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 05:52 next collapse

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?

vext01@lemmy.sdf.org on 15 Feb 07:55 next collapse

I assume you could use syncthing to sync the notes.

ArkHost@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 09:41 collapse

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.

3abas@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 10:56 next collapse

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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:

  1. I have to install and configure syncing on every device, and make sure they’re connected
  2. 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.
ArkHost@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 11:00 collapse

Great feedback.

  1. Daily notes - not there yet but it’s a straightforward feature to add. I’ll put it on the roadmap.
  2. Templates - same, noted.
  3. 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.

teawrecks@sopuli.xyz on 15 Feb 16:58 collapse

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.

fierysparrow89@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 09:21 next collapse

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?

ArkHost@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 09:49 collapse

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.

coherent_domain@infosec.pub on 15 Feb 11:08 next collapse

Does this have anything to do with the Helix text editor?

ArkHost@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 11:10 collapse

No, completely separate project. Just a coincidence in naming.

jjlinux@lemmy.zip on 15 Feb 11:45 next collapse

Isn’t this basically just an Obsidian replacement then? I haven’t tried it, but reading the info in Codeberg does point to that.

Qzr@programming.dev on 15 Feb 12:26 next collapse

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 mode badge). But that opens the linked note in my default .md viewer, 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.

Qzr@programming.dev on 15 Feb 12:35 next collapse

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.

ArkHost@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 13:34 next collapse

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.

ArkHost@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 21:48 collapse

Fixed in v1.1.0

ArkHost@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 12:50 collapse

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.

ki9@lemmy.gf4.pw on 15 Feb 16:40 next collapse

If it were me, I’d have chosen a different name to avoid confusion with helix the editor.

unlisted@feddit.org on 15 Feb 16:45 next collapse

I just downloaded. Looks amazing. I will try it out. Do you have a Patreon Page or something?

ArkHost@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 16:50 collapse

Thanks! No Patreon yet, but I’ll set something up. For now, the best support is feedback and bug reports.

cenariodantesco@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 16:55 next collapse

Notix. Notes + helix avoid confusion with the other app, Notix

teolan@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 18:28 next collapse

Note taking App, AI in the front page… I don’t think you understand the point of taking notes.

ArkHost@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 18:32 collapse

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.

KaKi87@jlai.lu on 15 Feb 18:51 next collapse

Is the Markdown editor WYSIWYG, like Typora ?

ArkHost@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 18:54 collapse

You have both - the WYSIWYG editor and a way to switch to the Markdown editor.

KaKi87@jlai.lu on 15 Feb 19:29 collapse

I specifically asked whether the Markdown editor is WYSIWYG, like Typora, which isn’t the same thing as MS Word WYSIWYG.

ArkHost@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 19:32 collapse

Not like Typora, no. HelixNotes has a WYSIWYG editor and a source mode toggle, two separate views. Not inline markdown rendering.

amateurcrastinator@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 18:54 next collapse

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

boonhet@sopuli.xyz on 15 Feb 19:10 collapse

Tauri isn’t actually a language in this instance, it’s a framework to create WebView based GUI applications with Rust

amateurcrastinator@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 20:03 collapse

Alright now I am learning something!

ArkHost@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 21:46 collapse

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