Launching today
MinkNote
Private macOS notes built on plain Markdown files
97 followers
Private macOS notes built on plain Markdown files
97 followers
MinkNote is a native macOS notes and journal app built on plain Markdown files you own. No database, no account, and no vendor lock-in. Organise work with projects, journals, tags, fast search, rich text or Markdown editing, and automatic image organisation in one private, local-first workspace.
Congratulations on the launch, and great product. The "no lock-in" pitch is a bit undercut by the app itself being closed source, that's the part people actually worry about long term, not just the file format. Open sourcing even just the editor/sync layer would make the durability claim a lot more credible!
@aidan_codefox Thanks Aidan for kind words, appreciate it :-)
I agree Open Source can make long-term trust easier, especially for local software tools. For MinkNote, the main longevity/durability promise is that your notes are plain Markdown files in folders you control, so even if the app disappeared tomorrow, your work does not.
I ran a fairly popular FOSS project between 2003-10 and learned that it can be a huge time sink and requires a different kind of guidance and focus. For this product I’m aiming to keep the app sustainable as a commercial Mac app while making sure the users' data stays portable and independent of MinkNote.
That said, I’m already planning to open up some of the app’s components for sharing with other devs. For both myself and MinkNote users, it’s very beneficial to have community review of the work.
Hey Demian,
Congratulations on releasing this app.
This is just what I needed. I don't like cluttered, fancy notes apps.
I tried a few notes apps and I always returned to my TextMate editor with tabs - simple and effective.
Now I am actually using MinkNote. It's simple, no clutter. I have all the text editing tools and options that I need.
I was a bit confused at the beginig with how to create a different folder. Perhaps, for me, "Journal" might not be the best wording - it doesn't give me instant feedback that this is actually a folder.
I have a free trial, so I am going to port some of my notes from TextMate and here and see how it goes.
Hi @jopetric - that’s great to hear you’re already using MinkNote. Thanks so much for the thoughtful feedback!
Lack of clutter is one of the main design goals, so I’m really glad that came through. I’m aiming to refine that even further.
Talking about tabs, I’ve avoided adding them for now because MinkNote lets you open notes in separate windows, then use the Mac’s App Exposé to quickly choose the note you want. That said, I know tabs are a very natural workflow for a lot of people coming from editors like TextMate, so I’ll keep listening there
Great point about naming with "Journal". I've been a heavy Day One user for too long to mention so got it from there, but you're right that it can be confusing when the thing is really just a folder of notes. Exactly the kind of feedback I'm looking for.
Would love to hear how the TextMate porting goes. Please do keep in touch.
the "no database" promise is what caught my eye, but tags and fast search are usually where apps quietly cheat on that. when you tag a note, does that tag actually get written into the markdown file itself (like YAML frontmatter), so it survives if you open the file in a totally different editor, or does MinkNote keep tags in its own separate index that only it understands?
@galdayan Hi Gal, thanks for the feedback.
Yeah it was a lot of work to support no database and only use the filesystem but I've found the performance is pretty good. One of my "vaults" is ~10k files so I'm testing real use cases.
The app is not cheating: note metadata (tags, favourite, etc) is written to its Frontmatter, and there's a scoped indexing system that updates when changes are made. The indexes and some minimal metadata are stored as JSON and the user can choose to rebuild them, if needed.
Congrats on the launch! Coming from TextMate, I really appreciate the minimalist, local-first approach.
Quick question: Are there already built-in keyboard shortcuts for quick navigation?
Excited to test it this weekend!
@hannesh thanks for the kind words!
Keyboard shortcuts have been central focus in the app's development, more than 90% of all operations are mapped to keyboard shortcuts, here's a preview:
@demianturner Perfect, exactly what I was hoping for. Excited to give it a try!
The no account, no database line is the part that lands for me. I built something else where the pitch to the other side was also no account to create, and the thing that surprised me is who it actually converts. Almost nobody exercised the escape hatch and walked off with their files. But knowing the hatch was there is what made them commit in the first place. It read as a trust signal more than a feature people used day to day.
Curious whether you are seeing the same, or if your Markdown crowd genuinely round trips out to Obsidian and back the way the other folks here are asking. Those feel like two different kinds of user and I could never tell which one I was actually building for.
Been using MinkNote for a bit and it's exactly what i wanted. super minimalistic, no clutter, nothing fighting for attention. the fact that it's just plain markdown files means i'm not locked into anything, no account, no database, just my notes as files i actually own. journal + project organization is simple without feeling barebones. if you want something quiet and local-first this is it
Thanks so much@velogan_boy :-)
There's more essential work needed but I felt it was finally time to launch an MVP and get user feedback. If anything feels missing as you keep using it, I’d love to hear it.
Quick thank you to everyone who's checked out MinkNote, upvoted or left comments, it means a lot to me. The comments have already clarified a few priorities, especially around external edits and making the "journal" naming more clear.