HelixNotes is completely free, open source, with no bloat. Your notes should be yours.
So we made sure they are. https://helixnotes.com/
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Is this the Google Keep replacement we’ve all been waiting for?
Naw no decent widget on android
boooo
Seems quite good - I’ve tried a LOT of MarkDown editors over the years, but until quite recently, I’d stuck with Zettlr for a long time. I’ve recently reinstalled my laptop, which made me look for alternatives to some software, and I’ve been playing round with MarkText for the last few days, which seems nice.
HelixNotes is definitely good - if I had to drop MarkText, I think I could get on well with it. I like that they have a debian repository, so I can keep it updated with the usual system update software. I downloaded the AppImage as a quick test, but it didn’t work because it was compiled against an old version of glibc.
The only thing I don’t like so far is the format toolbar is at the bottom of the editor screen, and I haven’t found a way to move it.
Great suggestion on the movable toolbar. This is definitely something we can add.
It’ll take a lot for me to move from silverbullet.md but I’m always up for checking out alternatives : D
I’ll give this a spin tonight
I’ve been using Joplin on my phone and laptop with WebDAV sync to my NAS. Have plans to update to Joplin server so can share notes with the Baroness.
i upgraded to using Joplin from my old notes app that was not as robust.
i absolutely love Joplin and it’s really great for organization as well.
simple and effective.
Iirc Joplin has a Nextcloud plugin so Nextcloud can be the self hosted cloud storage. I’ve been meaning to set it up
As someone who used NC with Joplin for a long time, I wouldn’t recommend it. I prefer syncthing now, much simpler to manage and find your files vs it being nested in a big clunky NC instance.
I need to look into sync thing I hear good things. Basically you point it to some storage and have it copy a local folder/file?
It’s super easy to configure over a LAN.
You set up a folder path to sync, authorize it between two machines, and set up your configuration (mirrored sync, one way, etc).
For photos taken by my phone for example, I have two syncs set up (maybe not the best way to do it it’s just how I did it in 5 min when I started and never changed it)
Phone has a 2 way sync set up with my photo folder with my desktop. Meaning, when I delete/modify a photo either at my phone or the desktop it deletes/modifies the photo on the other device.
Additionally, I have a 1-way sync of my photo folder between my desktop and my server archive, so the server only pulls in new files and never deletes or modifies existing files in the archive. So if something happens to my sync folder or if I delete something on accident then I have an archive copy, important for precious memories. Every now and then I just delete the contents of the archive folder and it immediately re-syncs the existing folder of all the stuff I actually wanted to keep. Could set up a cron job but I’m too lazy.
For Joplin I just have a folder on each device that’s JUST my Joplin notes that syncs between my devices that use Joplin. Easy as pie - as soon as I turn on my laptop or desktop it syncs up with whatever changes have happened on the other two.
For syncthing I like to make a top level sync folder on each device and then nest many folders under that top level, each to sync distinct things depending on what device it is. You can just sync a main folder if you want but I like the granular control, and as you figure out more stuff to sync it scales much better if you start that way, and name folders consistently.
Just be careful in the beginning and always back stuff up. It’s not TOO easy to mess up but if you did it would be unforgiving. Test it with some random stuff before you start sending anything important.
I’ve using Joplin for more than a year now and it’s awesome.
I also have Joplin and recently moved to self-hosted joplin server (from filesystem sync) and it was smooth af and works so flawlessly i love it!
Been using Joplin with self hosted server for years and it’s been great. It’s not the prettiest app, but it’s been the stickiest for my needs.
Please, please, add forgejo integration for sync provider.
I use Forgejo with Helixnotes. But I sync with the App PuppyGit.
I’ll try PuppyGit. I wish GitNex had this feature.
Is there an option to make check boxes for shopping lists? I cant find one.
Edit - yes there is. I found it.
Light mode - what’s wrong with you? /s (but not really).
Im old lol
No vibe coding. No AI. No slop. This is absolutely screaming LLM
the advertising is troubling to me somehow; it has a budget and someone deciding were to spend the money on advertising.
the advertising is troubling to me somehow; it has a budget and someone deciding were to spend the money on advertising.
I’m not being paid to advertise. This is just my contribution to the project.
that’s impressive af; it looks really professional!
Thank you, that’s very kind of you to say!
you should go pro; you clearly already have the skills.
The whole website looks like AI.
Also the commit history is only 3 month old and the first commit is 26000 lines. How ever this could be longer in development and commits could be squashed. At this point, I doubt it though.
He did one big rewritten before because of poor gui speed. I won’t comment on of if he use ai or not or code quality, but you can probably search old posts about his rewritten. I do agree dev should keep his git history less susceptible especially in this ai slop age
They could be hosting the source code on github or something like that and changed to couldberg no?
nope, the git history would move with the repo
Depends how you do it. Add a new remote and push, sure. Copy the src into a newly init repo, not so much. Granted there is no reason to do the latter but you could.
This isn’t a guarantee and also assumes the previous version management was git.
automatically responding that this was created with an LLM? this is absolutely screaming LLM
Huge amount of downvotes. Clearly openclaw orchestrating angent swarm. /s
i see the LLMs have learned to use the “/s” mark!
I’m afraid I won’t be locking the pod bay doors today, Dave.
Oh, hey, I saw your repo is stall for months and I thought your project go south. So you finally satisfied with your gui speed after rewritten? Good to see you make it, congrats. Already find a job? You should really design a good plugin sys with py, to expand more interactive data type. Let me know if you want to hear more.
This looks like the slightly less bloated Logseq/Obsidian I’ve been dying for!
Genuinely curious what bloat does Obsidian come with? But yeah my first thought too was FOSS Obsidian
Electron runtime in general. It seems all of the popular cross platform note taking / knowledge garden apps are electron.
I long so much for a native version that I started learning QTQuick to do just this.
Electron = bloat. That’s why HelixNotes is Tauri.
Personally I have only a hundred notes or so and really only the basic plugins and it still takes up to 10 seconds to load and become usable on my phone.
It is definitely not fast loading up but it is very fast in most other use cases I have seen. At work I use it with getting more towards 1000 notes and it works fine there usually, though there is some windows+ electron weirdness
Looks like a cool project, anyone here try it and have an elivator pitch on why this over Joplin?
It seems to have a hierarchical organization system like Obsidian. That’s a big difference imo.
Now, Joplin might have that hidden somewhere, but in that case the fact I can tell this from a glance with HelixNotes and not with Joplin still says something.
Nice to see a Tauri app around here !
At this point I just need a markdown editor for my phone and syncthing to move everything back and forth.
Obsidian is great. I believe syncing is an extra cost though.
Unfortunately not FOSS
I do this with “Markor”, great notes app for txt and md files. All files locally and synced via Syncthing. Been using this for years, love it.
I gotta try Markor. Been using Zettel Notes as a frontend to Obsidian/syncthing because they have postit widgets, and I need 4 on my home screen
Joplin works really well for me. Was syncing via nextcloud for a long time but syncthing is way easier to manage and more bulletproof as long as you configure it correctly
Is this obsidian2?
I like obsidian
Without plugins system - no
Looks cool… but as an Obsidian user, i’m uncertain as to the depth of the differentiators. Open source sure, but obsidian has served me well and is lightning fast to open even with all core plug-ins enabled plus several community plug-ins. Nearly all of which are optional anyway.
Obsidian also has quite a moat in terms of third-party functionality enhancements with very feature rich examples like Xcalidraw.
They also offer an end to end encrypted synchronization service that works better than file based synchronization services like iCloud, and a publish service that also works well.
No casting of aspersions, but as a former fortune 500 decision-maker for enterprise software in the millions, I have a tendency to critically think about why X vs Y for my personal stack as well. Counterpoints welcome!
Enshitification.
If they were really committed to keeping it “for the users” they would open source it.
The fact that they haven’t means they are keeping in their back pockets enshitification to drive more users to paid options in case their current investment dries up.
I love FOSS and Obsidian is literally the only close-sourced software in my stack, but open source is not necessary to prevent enshittification, not if you have interoperability. As long as data is stored in md files, if the obsidian team makes bad moves people can pack up and migrate to logseq or other competitors. While the 3rd party plugins add enhancements that might bog down switching, many of those plugins are open source and could be ported.
Just downloaded it and opened it and the first thing it does is to ask me for a “notes folder” with .md files, which I don’t have. I just wanted to try it by writing notes.
Try creating a blank folder and open it that way. Does it let you in after that?
