Submitted 2 days ago by ArkHost@lemmy.world to selfhosted@lemmy.world
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.
Available for Linux (AppImage, APT, AUR), Windows, and macOS. Source: codeberg.org/ArkHost/HelixNotes
What is about obsidian?
Not to be confused with helix the TUI text editor
That was gonna be my question.
Correct, this has nothing to do with the helix TUI text editor in any way.
Whats the difference between helixeditor.com and helix-editor.com, do you know if they are different projects?
Funny that you pointed this out. I didn’t actually know about the two distinct sites. The “missing” hyphen in my url was a confusing accident; I just assumed they revamped the website poorly 🤣. I had to check the install instructions and GitHub link before posting
They are the same; both refer to github.com/helix-editor/helix
Hi ArkHost,
Obsidian user here. I tried HelixNotes for a couple of minutes and here’s my feedback:
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).$ … $).Failed to acquire LockFile: LockBusy.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.
Appreciate the honest feedback, doesn’t come over negatively at all, this is exactly what helps improve the app.
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.
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.
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.
Fixed in v1.1.0
Note taking App, AI in the front page… I don’t think you understand the point of taking notes.
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.
Thanks for all the feedback everyone. Just shipped v1.1.0 based on what was reported here today:
Oh hey I’ve been looking for “obsidian but with version history “ for a bit now.
Give HelixNotes a try :)
Notix. Notes + helix avoid confusion with the other app, Notix
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?
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.
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.
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:
On sync, two problems with using “whatever” to sync entire vault:
I assume you could use syncthing to sync the notes.
Does this have anything to do with the Helix text editor?
No, completely separate project. Just a coincidence in naming.
I just downloaded. Looks amazing. I will try it out. Do you have a Patreon Page or something?
Thanks! No Patreon yet, but I’ll set something up. For now, the best support is feedback and bug reports.
So far it has been smooth sailing. But I will report. Only things Iam missing are:
maybe you can consider these for the future.
What does it do that obsidian doesn’t? Why would I switch? Genuinely interested.
Obsidian’s default editor is barebones, you need plugins to get a usable experience. HelixNotes gives you rich editing out of the box: formatting toolbar, slash commands, source mode toggle. No setup. It’s also not Electron. Rust + Tauri 2.0 & Svelte fraction of the RAM, launches instantly. Same philosophy though: local .md files, no cloud, no lock-in. If Obsidian works for you, no reason to switch.
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…), support for pandoc rendering, doc metadata management (tags, keywords, related docs) 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?
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.
Looks like an interesting project!
Could you please consider publishing it to Flathub?
It’s on the list. Flatpak packaging is coming.
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.
Are there security issues specific to Flatpak? I would have thought it’d be more secure than Appimage, since it’s sandboxed.
I’ve been hearing people suggest staying away from flatpaks, but I haven’t heard the reasons why. I guess that’s it?
I need my notes with me. I use SiYuan and I’m more than happy
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
Tauri isn’t actually a language in this instance, it’s a framework to create WebView based GUI applications with Rust
Alright now I am learning something!
Is the Markdown editor WYSIWYG, like Typora ?
You have both - the WYSIWYG editor and a way to switch to the Markdown editor.
I specifically asked whether the Markdown editor is WYSIWYG, like Typora, which isn’t the same thing as MS Word WYSIWYG.
Isn’t this basically just an Obsidian replacement then? I haven’t tried it, but reading the info in Codeberg does point to that.
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.
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.
Plugin support?
Not at this stage. It’s something I’m considering but the priority is getting the core experience right first.
Totally understandable at this stage. As soon as it appears on the roadmap I’m in. Need my templater :)
Mac user her. I’ve been using Markflowy after MacDown stopped development. I will give this a shot.
Thank you for your work.
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.
Mac Cmd shortcuts fixed in v1.1.0, just shipped. Thanks for reporting it.
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.
Thank you.
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….
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.
Is Tauri like Electron, or SQLite, but faster and FOSS? Are either of those what I’m getting at?
ki9@lemmy.gf4.pw 2 days ago
If it were me, I’d have chosen a different name to avoid confusion with helix the editor.