About TakeNote
TakeNote is a web-based note-taking app built specifically for developers. Rather than a WYSIWYG editor, it offers a plain-text, IDE-like writing environment with Markdown preview, syntax highlighting, and keyboard shortcuts for common tasks such as creating notes and categories.
Notes support linking to one another with a UUID syntax, drag-and-drop organization into categories or favorites, multi-cursor editing through CodeMirror, search across all notes or within a category, and on-the-fly formatting with Prettier. The public demo app at takenote.dev is a static site with no database: notes persist only in the browser's local storage, can be exported as a Markdown zip, and the app performs no tracking or analytics.
A hidden alternate version of the code includes a Node and Express server with GitHub OAuth integration, letting a self-hosted deployment back up notes to a private GitHub repository called takenote-data instead of relying on local storage alone. TakeNote is written in TypeScript and released under the MIT license.
Key features
- IDE-style plain-text note editor
- Markdown preview and Prettier formatting
- Note-to-note linking with UUID syntax
- Drag-and-drop categories and favorites
- Local storage only, with Markdown export
- Optional self-hosted GitHub sync version
Good fit for
- →Developers who want code-editor-style notes
- →Privacy-conscious note-taking without a cloud database
- Built with
- TypeScript
- Tags
- note-taking
- markdown
- developer-tools
- github-sync
- local-storage
- typescript
- privacy
TakeNote: questions and answers
- What is TakeNote used for?
- TakeNote is an MIT-licensed, web-based Markdown notes app for developers that stores notes locally in the browser, with an optional self-hosted GitHub sync. It is a good fit for developers who want code-editor-style notes and privacy-conscious note-taking without a cloud database.
- Is TakeNote open source?
- Yes. TakeNote is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at taniarascia/takenote and is written mainly in TypeScript.
- Is TakeNote free?
- Yes. TakeNote is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available.
- Can I self-host TakeNote?
- Yes. TakeNote can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
- What is TakeNote an alternative to?
- TakeNote is an open-source alternative to Bear, Evernote and Inkdrop. Other open-source alternatives to Bear include FSNotes.
- Is TakeNote actively maintained?
- The most recent commit to TakeNote was on 29 June 2024, and the latest release is v0.7.1, published on 26 October 2020. The project has 7.1k stars on GitHub.
Open-source alternatives to TakeNote
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Joplin
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FSNotes
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QOwnNotes
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SaaS alternatives to TakeNote
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Bear
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Evernote
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Evernote is a note-taking app for capturing notes, documents and web clippings and keeping them organized and searchable across devices.
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Markdown note app with a plugin ecosystem aimed at developers
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Tot
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Typora
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UpNote
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Notes app with notebooks, tags and sync across mobile and desktop
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