Digital Notes
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S.Notes is a free, open-source, and completely encrypted private notes app. It has a simple UI, yet packs in a lot of features, thanks to the Extensions Store, allowing for: To-Do lists, Spreadsheets, Rich Text, Markdown, Math Editor, Code Editor and many more. You can choose between a number of themes (yay, dark mode!), and it features built-in secure file store, tags/ folders, fast search and more. Standard Notes is actively developed, and fully open-source.
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A secure, collaborative notebook. Self-host it yourself, or use their hosted plan (free edition or $3/ month for premium).
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An offline markdown-based note editor for desktop, with a simple, yet feature-rich UI. All notes are saved individually as .md files, making them easy to manage. No mobile app, built-in cloud-sync, encryption or web UI. But due to the structure of the files, it is easy to use your own cloud sync provider, and additional features are provided through extensions.
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Cross-platform desktop and mobile note-taking and todo app. Easy organisation into notebooks and sections, revision history and a simple UI. Allows for easy import and export of notes to or from other services. Supports synchronisation with cloud services, implemented with E2EE.
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Privacy-first, open-source knowledge base that works on top of local plain-text Markdown and Org-mode files. Supports lots of different note modes, including task management, PDF annotation, flashcards, whiteboards strong markdown support and more. Includes themes and extensions, backed by a strong community
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A powerful knowledge base that works on top of local plain-text Markdown files. It has a strong community, and a lot of plugins and themes. Generally privacy-respecting, but no encryption out of the box, and some of the code is obfuscated or not fully open source
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Privacy first, open-source alternative to Notion, monday.com and Miro. It is a knowledge management tool that allows you to create, organize and share your knowledge.
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Private & encrypted rich-text documents. Cryptee has encryption and anonymity at its core, it also has a beautiful and minimalistic UI. You can use Cryptee from the browser, or download native apps. Comes with many additional features, such as support for photo albums and file storage. The disadvantage is that only the frontend is open source. Pricing is free for starter plan, $3/ month for 10GB, additional plans go up-to 2TB.
Not Open Source
Objective of this page
Find the best free, open source, E2E encrypted and private alternative to evernote, microsoft onenote, google keep, apple notes, simplenote, notion, now.
Compare Standard Notes vs Turtle vs Notable vs Joplin vs Logseq vs Obsidian vs AFFiNE vs Cryptee vs
Discover the best Digital Notes tools for Android, iPhone, Linux, PC and Chrome to download now. And choose secure, self-hosted, peer-to-peer and independant alternatives in 2024
Stop the invasion of privacy from big tech, improve data security stay safe.
Notable Mentions
If you are already tied into Evernote, One Note etc, then SafeRoom is a utility that encrypts your entire notebook, before it is uploaded to the cloud.
Org Mode is a mode for GNU Emacs dedicated to working with the Org markup format. Org can be thought of as a more featureful Markdown alternative, with support for keeping notes, maintaining todo lists, planning projects, managing spreadsheets, and authoring documents -all in plaintext.
For a simple plain text note taking app, with strong encryption, see Protected Text, which works well with the Safe Notes Android app. Laverna is a cross-platform secure notes app, where all entries are formatted with markdown.
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