Open Source Mac Note-Taking Apps
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Note-Taking Apps for Mac
View 80 business solutionsBrowse free open source Note-Taking apps and projects for Mac below. Use the toggles on the left to filter open source Note-Taking apps by OS, license, language, programming language, and project status.
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Skim
A PDF Reader and Note-taker for OS X
Skim is a PDF reader and note-taker for OS X. It is designed to help you read and annotate scientific papers in PDF, but is also great for viewing any PDF file. Skim requires OS X 10.10 or higher. -
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Obsidian
Community plugins list, theme list, and releases of Obsidian
The Obsidian Releases repository provides the official distribution builds and installers for Obsidian, the popular markdown-based knowledge management and personal wiki application. Obsidian itself is a powerful, offline-first note-taking tool that helps users build interconnected knowledge graphs using markdown files stored locally on their devices, with plugins and community themes for extensibility. This repository houses versioned compiled binaries and packages for multiple platforms such as Windows, macOS, and Linux, enabling users to download stable or nightly builds directly without needing to build the app from source. By maintaining clear version history and downloadable artifacts, it makes it easy for individuals and organizations to audit, rollback, or pin specific Obsidian releases for workflows that depend on stability or particular plugin compatibility. -
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Notepad Next
A cross-platform, reimplementation of Notepad++
A cross-platform, reimplementation of Notepad++. Though the application overall is stable and usable, it should not be considered safe for critically important work. There are numerous bugs and half-working implementations. Pull requests are greatly appreciated. Windows packages are available as an installer or a stand-alone zip file on the release page. The installer provides additional components such as an auto-updater and Windows context menu integration. -
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Joplin
Open source note taking and to-do app with synchronization
Joplin is a free and open source note-taking and to-do application that can handle a large number of notes in Markdown format, organize them into notebooks and synchronize them with various cloud services. All notes can also be copied, tagged, searched and modified directly from the app or through your own text editor. Notes that are exported from Evernote can be imported into Joplin, be it formatted content, resources, complete metadata or plain Markdown files. When notes are synchronized with cloud services, notebooks, tags and other metadata can easily be moved, inspected or backed up as plain text files. Supported cloud services include Nextcloud, OneDrive, Dropbox and WebDAV. Joplin is available for Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS and Android, with three types: desktop, mobile and terminal. All of them have similar user interfaces and can be synchronized with each other. -
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Xournal++
A handwriting notetaking software with PDF annotation support
Xournal++ (/ˌzɚnl̟ˌplʌsˈplʌs/) is an open-source and cross-platform note-taking software that is fast, flexible, and functional. A modern rewrite and a more feature-rich version of the wonderful Xournal program. Support for pressure-sensitive stylus and drawing tablets (Wacom, Huion, XP-Pen, etc.) Robust and customizable pen, highlighter and eraser tools, allowing you to write how you want to write. Use layers to make complex notes that are still pleasant to work with. Keep track of the notes by using page previews. Add images and create various shapes, from circles to splines to axis. Snap objects to rectangular grid or degrees of rotation. Create anything from differential equations to electrical circuits or the structural formula of molecules using our built-in LaTeX editor. Customize your toolbar to create a new layout, tailor-made for you. -
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Open Notebook
An Open Source implementation of Notebook LM with more flexibility
Open Notebook is an open-source, privacy-focused alternative to Google’s Notebook LM that gives users full control over their research and AI workflows. Designed to be self-hosted, it ensures complete data sovereignty by keeping your content local or within your own infrastructure. The platform supports 16+ AI providers—including OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, Google, and LM Studio—allowing flexible model choice and cost optimization. Open Notebook enables users to organize and analyze multi-modal content such as PDFs, videos, audio files, web pages, and Office documents. It combines full-text and vector search with context-aware AI chat to deliver insights grounded in your own research materials. With advanced features like multi-speaker podcast generation, customizable content transformations, and a comprehensive REST API, Open Notebook provides a powerful and extensible research environment. -
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MindZJ
An open-source, offline note-taking app with native AI & CLI
MindZJ is a knowledge management and idea organization tool designed to help users structure, connect, and visualize information in a meaningful way. It focuses on enabling users to create and manage interconnected notes, forming a network of ideas that can evolve over time. The system provides tools for organizing thoughts, tracking relationships between concepts, and building a personal knowledge base. It is particularly useful for research, learning, and creative workflows where capturing and linking ideas is essential. The platform emphasizes simplicity and clarity, offering a clean interface that minimizes distractions while supporting complex knowledge structures. It also supports extensibility, allowing users to adapt the system to their specific needs and workflows. Overall, mindzj serves as a flexible environment for building and navigating structured knowledge systems. -
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QOwnNotes
QOwnNotes is a plain-text file notepad and todo-list manager
QOwnNotes is a fully open-source markdown-focused note-taking and personal information manager that runs natively on Linux, macOS, and Windows, with a strong emphasis on plain-text storage and cross-device synchronization. Because all notes are stored as markdown files in user-controlled directories, you avoid vendor lock-in and can sync through services like Nextcloud, ownCloud, Dropbox, or Git without proprietary cloud dependency. The application is optimized for performance and minimal footprint, so it runs smoothly even with large note libraries, and it includes features like a live markdown preview panel that lets you see rendered text alongside raw markdown as you type. QOwnNotes supports hierarchical folders and tagging, making it easy to organize, filter, and retrieve information quickly, and it also integrates to-do lists and task markers directly in your notes. -
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Notesnook
A fully open source & end-to-end encrypted note taking alternative
Notesnook makes it impossible for anyone to spy on your notes. Unlike Evernote and other note taking apps, your data is private, not open for everyone to see. Ditch other note taking apps that don't care about your data privacy. With app lock and private notes vault, your personal diary & journal are always safe. Worried that your friend will read your private notes? Notesnook fixes that by having an app lock built-in. Use a pin or biometrics to protect your notes. Protect your online journal or personal diary with an extra layer of security. Your notes vault is a super secure way to store your passwords, credentials & other secrets. Free or Pro, you get the same level of privacy. Making privacy a paid feature means only the privileged few deserve it but privacy is your right. And rights don't have a price tag, or do they? To verify that your notes are actually encrypted (and we aren't just lying), you can use our open source tool, Vericrypt. -
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10
Lorien
Infinite canvas drawing/whiteboarding app
Lorien is a fast, lightweight infinite-canvas drawing and note-taking application designed for brainstorming, sketching, and freeform diagramming without the bloat of traditional bitmap editors. Instead of storing raster image data, Lorien saves each brush stroke as vector-like points and reconstructs drawings at runtime, resulting in extremely small save files and smooth performance even on large canvases. The app runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and it’s built using the Godot game engine, which gives it a responsive and modern user interface across platforms. Users get features like infinite zoom, undo/redo, and a grid that stretches endlessly, making it well suited to both quick scribbles and detailed conceptual layouts. Lorien supports pressure-sensitive tablets for natural drawing, and it includes a range of basic tools — from freehand brush and eraser to shapes and selection tools — so you can mix freeform sketches with structured diagrams. -
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Makagiga
To-do manager, notepad, RSS reader...
Makagiga is an open-source, easy-to-use, portable application for doing a variety of tasks, such as todo listing, text editing, or RSS reading. Plugins are used to implement its various capabilities. -
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GloboNote
Create sticky notes, to-do list, journals & reminders all in one app
GloboNote is a free and easy to use desktop note taking application. It lets you create sticky notes, to-do lists, journals, reminders and other notes in one place. There are no limits to the number of sticky notes you can create. Notes can be organize by groups and search using the search tool. GloboNote can be run in any OS that has Java 8 installed. -
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Notes
Note taking application, write down your thoughts.
Notes is an open source, cross-platform note-taking application. Write down your thoughts with ease, and always have them with you with this simple, streamlined app. -
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TagSpaces
TagSpaces is an offline, open source, document manager with tagging
TagSpaces is a free, no vendor lock-in, open source application for organizing, annotating and managing local files with the help of tags. It features advanced note taking functionalities and some capabilities of to-do apps. The application is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS and Android. We provide a web clipper extension for Firefox, Edge and Chrome for easy collecting of online content in the form of local files. File and folder management - TagSpaces provides a convenient user interface for browsing, viewing and man files and folders. The application supports two ways for tagging files. The default one embeds the tags directly in the name of the file, the other one uses a so called sidecar files for persisting the tags. The search functionality supports fuzzy functionality and can filter your locations for files and folders containing one or more tags. -
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Laverna
JavaScript note taking application with Markdown editor
Laverna has a simple and robust markdown editor, which can help you write faster than ever before with our live markdown preview. The editor can be switched to distraction free mode where you can focus solely on writing notes. Make your notes available on any device with your Dropbox & RemoteStorage account. You can make your notes available only to you by enabling encryption. Keep simple to do lists organized in notes and notebooks. You can manage your notes without ever lifting your hands from your keyboard. Keep snippets of code to have access to them anytime and anywhere. Do you prefer to stay anonymous? You do not need to go through registration process to start using Laverna. You can export your notes from Laverna and import them back anytime. You are not tied to using it forever. Every line of code can be reviewed on GitHub and is available under MPL-2.0 license. -
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Hypernomicon
Hypertext-infused philosophy personal database software
Hypernomicon is a personal productivity/database application for researchers that combines structured note-taking, mind-mapping, management of files (e.g., PDFs) and folders, and reference management into an integrated environment that organizes all of the above into semantic networks or hierarchies in terms of debates, positions, arguments, labels, terminology/concepts, and user-defined keywords by means of database relations and automatically generated hyperlinks (hence ‘Hyper’ in the name). Hypernomicon keeps track of all these things in a highly structured, thoroughly indexed and user friendly relational database, automatically generates semantic hyperlinks between all of them, and presents this information in many different forms so that you are constantly informed of ways all of your information is related that you had not realized. -
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FSNotes
Notes manager for macOS/iOS
FSNotes is a modern notes manager for macOS and iOS. App respects open formats like GitHub Flavored Markdown, so you can easily write documents on iPhone and MacBook. It's simple and blazing fast! Sync via iCloud Drive. 3D Touch and configurable keyboard. TextBundle and EncryptedTextBundle containers. Pinned notes are kept in sync with the desktop app. Dynamic fonts (iOS 11+). Night mode by location or screen brightness. Sharing extension. Encrypted note support. -
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Poznote
Poznote is a personal note-taking and documentation platform
Poznote is an open-source, self-hosted note-taking and personal knowledge management platform that combines modern editing features with robust organizational tools to help users capture, structure, and retrieve information efficiently. It supports rich text and Markdown editing alongside outline-style notes, attachments, workspaces, folders, and tags, making it suitable for everything from quick daily journaling to long-term documentation projects. Poznote includes a RESTful API that enables programmatic access and integration with other tools, and it even offers an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server to let AI assistants interact with your notes via natural language commands. In addition to basic note creation and editing, the platform features powerful full-text search, public sharing links, backups and exports, trash management, and multi-user support with profiles isolated per user, giving individuals and teams control over their content. -
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Crossnote App
An interesting markdown note taking application
Crossnote is a Progressive Web Application built as a markdown-focused note reader and editor that works both offline and online, giving users a flexible platform for writing, organizing, and synchronizing notes. It distinguishes itself by supporting markdown editing with a rich set of formatting options, and by enabling integration with version control systems like git for syncing notebooks in arbitrary repositories. Users can add, edit, and manage markdown documents in the browser, and because it uses modern web technologies, the app caches itself and local data to work seamlessly when a network connection is unavailable. While the backend server that used to support hosted functionality is no longer maintained, the core frontend still offers a slick note-taking experience. Crossnote’s design takes inspiration from tools like markdown preview extensions and collaborative editors. -
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Neorg
Modernity meets insane extensibility
Neorg is an all-encompassing tool based around structured note taking, project and task management, time tracking, slideshows, writing typeset documents and much more. The premise is that all of these features are built on top of a single base file format (.norg), which the user only has to learn once to gain access to all of Neorg's functionality. Not only does this yield a low barrier for entry for new users it also ensures that all features are integrated with each other and speak the same underlying language. The file format is built to be expressive and easy to parse, which also makes .norg files easily usable anywhere outside of Neorg itself. A good way of thinking about Neorg is as a plaintext environment that can be adapted to a variety of use cases. If a problem can be represented using raw text, it can be solved using Neorg. -
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Notepad3
Light-weight Scintilla-based text editor with syntax highlighting
Notepad3 is a fast and light-weight Scintilla-based text editor with syntax highlighting. Notepad3 is an excellent replacement for the default Windows text editor. Notepad3 offers many extra features over Notepad. It has a small memory footprint, but is powerful enough to handle most programming jobs. -
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UPDATE 2024: Get a new version here: https://github.com/ivoras/EncryptedNotepad2 "Encrypted Notepad" does only one thing, but aims to do it perfectly - a Notepad-like simple text editor where files are saved (and later loaded) encrypted with industrial strength algorithms. Available both for the desktop (as a Java application) and on Android. Unencrypted data is never stored on-disk. Source is released (on SourceForge) under the BSD license.
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Piggydb
Piggydb helps you have more fun with knowledge creation.
Piggydb is a flexible and scalable knowledge building platform that supports a heuristic or bottom-up approach to discover new concepts or ideas based on your input. You can begin with using it as a flexible outliner, diary or notebook, and as your database grows, Piggydb helps you to shape or elaborate your own knowledge. Piggydb is a Web application provided as a self-contained package that contains a Web server and database engine. With Piggydb, you can create highly structured content by connecting knowledge fragments to each other to build a network structure, which is more flexible and expressive than a tree structure. Fragments can also be classified using hierarchical tags. -
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BoolHub
A fully functional personal information management software.
[Native application]: Developed with QT, pure native application, faster response; Cloud synchronization: Data is recorded in the cloud, and the data is no longer lost. Data synchronization is unlimited, everything is in your control; [Rich note types]: Support rich text, Markdown, code, tables, drawings, flowcharts and other note formats; [Manage your customers]: A customer relationship management system that supports team collaboration to grasp every lead and every customer; [Manage daily affairs]: Manage your affairs in an orderly manner through the feature-rich to-do list view; [Free without function limit]: There is no limit to the software functions, free to use, we are just to make a friend; [Different moods and different themes]: Notes and to-do lists, support a variety of exquisite themes, do whatever you want, change it if you want; [More application scenarios]: Memo view, timeline view, passwordbook view, statistics view to meet your different needs. -
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PASTE
An app for storing code, text & more. A popular Open Source pastebin.
Paste is a PHP application for storing code, text and more. DEMO: https://paste.boxlabs.uk/ Initially forked from the freely available source pastebin.com used before the domain was sold in 2010, lots of improvements have been included over the years such as user accounts and a featureful administration backend. See https://github.com/boxlabss/PASTE/blob/master/docs/CHANGELOG.md
