Home
Open to a room, not a form
Today's note, your writing streak, what you were last editing and anything still pending — all against a backdrop you chose. Everything one click away, nothing demanding attention.
Live preview
See it as you type
Linked notes
Type @ to connect
Daily pages
Ready when you open
Mermaid diagrams
Rendered as you write
Everything a notes app should have.Nothing it shouldn't.
Built for people who write every day and want their words to stay theirs — plain Markdown on disk, no lock-in, no subscription.
Markdown, all the way down
The full GitHub flavour: tables, task lists, footnotes, callouts, syntax-highlighted code and emoji shortcodes. Live preview beside you, or split the view and watch both at once. What you type is exactly what gets stored — no proprietary format between you and your words.
Diagrams from plain text
Write a mermaid block and watch it become a flowchart, a sequence diagram, a state machine, a gantt chart, a pie or a mindmap. Click any diagram to open it full screen and zoom in. It renders inside the app — no browser, no export step, no account with a diagram service.
Notes that link to notes
Type @ and pick a note to drop a link right into your text. Follow it with a click and your thinking starts forming a shape instead of a pile.
The graph of it all
Every link draws an edge. Open the graph to see your whole library laid out, or toggle the panel beside the editor to see just what the note in front of you connects to. Drag notes around, focus one to dim the rest, click through to open it.
A note for every day
Today's note is waiting when you open the app, titled and ready. Browse the whole month on a calendar and find the day you are looking for.
One search, everything
Search once and reach your notes and your Markdown files together, each result labelled and opened where it lives. No remembering which side you filed it under.
Folders that nest
Group notes into colour-coded projects, nest them as deep as your thinking needs, and filter the sidebar down to just the branch you care about.
Several notes at once
Tile the window into a grid and work across notes side by side. Every pane keeps its own toolbar, preview toggle and auto-save, so drafting one note out of three others stops meaning constant tab-switching.
Focus time, tracked
Start a timer against a project and see the week add up. Writing stats keep a streak from the days you actually wrote, not the days you happened to open the app.
Yours to take
Export the whole library to a folder of .md files, folders and all, or save one note wherever you like. Import a folder back just as easily. Your notes outlive the app.
Sync if you want it
Sign in and your notes follow you across devices. Skip it and everything stays on your machine, in a local database. The choice is yours, and it is reversible.
Make it yours
Thirteen accent colours, your own wallpaper or a looping video behind the glass, seven fonts, and type sizing that stays out of your way. The accent even adapts itself to your background.
Graph
See the shape of what you know
Every link you make draws an edge. Notes you keep returning to grow larger and brighter than the ones you wrote once — so the structure you have been building without noticing becomes something you can actually look at.
- Type @ anywhere in a note and pick another to link them.
- Open the graph to see the whole library at once, or toggle the panel beside the editor to see just what this note touches.
- Drag a note to move it, click to focus it and dim everything unrelated, click again to open it.
A look around
Six screens, six things it does well.
Editor
Source on the left, result on the right
Full Markdown: headings, task lists, tables, footnotes, code blocks with syntax highlighting. Split the view to see both, or press Cmd/Ctrl+E to flip between them.
Calendar
Find the day, find the note
Every daily note lands on the calendar. Dots mark the days you wrote, so a month of work is legible at a glance and any day is one click away.
Focus timer
Time what you are working on
Start a timer against a project, let it run while you write, and watch the week total build. Your focus sessions live in the same app as the work itself.
Tiling
Four notes, one screen
Split the window into a grid and edit several notes side by side. Each pane keeps its own toolbar, its own preview toggle and its own auto-save — useful when you are drafting one note out of three others.
Personalise
Make it somewhere you want to be
Thirteen accent colours that can adapt themselves to your background, your own image or looping video behind the glass, seven fonts, and type sizing tuned to your eyes.
Start writing tonight
Free, open source and installed in a minute. No account, no trial, nothing to cancel later.
- macOSApple silicon & Intel · macOS 11+Download
- WindowsInstaller, 64-bitDownload
- LinuxDebian & UbuntuDownload
Your Mac or PC warns you the first time you open it — here is why
The releases are not signed with a developer certificate. Both Apple and Microsoft charge a yearly subscription for one, and NoteX is free, so the builds go out unsigned and the operating system says it cannot vouch for them. It is a statement about a receipt, not about the code — which you can read, and build yourself, in full.
- macOS
It says "Apple could not verify NoteX.app is free of malware."
- Open System Settings → Privacy & Security.
- Scroll to the Security section — it will name NoteX as blocked.
- Click Open Anyway, then confirm.
On macOS 15 and later, right-clicking the app and choosing Open no longer works — Apple removed that route. The Privacy & Security panel is the way.
- Windows
It says "Windows protected your PC."
- Click More info.
- Click Run anyway.
Version 1.63.0 · MIT licensed · All releases and changelog
Questions
Is NoteX free?
Yes. NoteX is free and open source under the MIT licence. There is no account required, no subscription and no paid tier. If it earns a place in your day, there is a Buy me a coffee link in the footer — entirely optional, and nothing is held back without it.
Where are my notes stored?
In a local SQLite database on your own machine. If you sign in, notes also sync to your Supabase project so they follow you across devices — but signing in is entirely optional.
Can I get my notes out?
Any time. Export the whole library to a folder of Markdown files, keeping your folder structure, or save a single note wherever you like. Notes are stored as Markdown already, so nothing is converted on the way out.
Why does my Mac say NoteX cannot be verified?
Because the build is not signed with a paid developer certificate, so macOS cannot check a receipt for it — it is not a finding about the code. To open it: System Settings → Privacy & Security → scroll to Security → Open Anyway. Note that on macOS 15 and later, right-clicking the app and choosing Open no longer works; Apple removed that route. Windows shows a comparable "Windows protected your PC" notice, where More info → Run anyway gets past it. The full source is public if you would rather read it or build it yourself.
Which Markdown does it support?
GitHub Flavored Markdown, rendered natively in the app: headings, tables, task lists, footnotes, strikethrough, autolinks, alert callouts (> [!NOTE] and friends), emoji shortcodes and fenced code with syntax highlighting. A ```mermaid block is drawn as a diagram — flowcharts, sequence diagrams, state machines, gantt charts, pies and mindmaps — which you can open full screen and zoom. Nothing is converted or uploaded: the file on disk stays the Markdown you typed.
Which platforms does it run on?
Windows, macOS and Linux. Every release ships all three, built from the same source.
Does it work offline?
Completely. NoteX is a local-first desktop app: everything works with no connection, and sync catches up when you are back online.