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Alternatives

Products that do what DailyNote – one-note-per-day app with local-first encryption does

Hi HN and Happy New Year! I built DailyNote, a minimalist daily notes app: one note per day, a year-at-a-glance calendar, and local-first storage. The interesting bit is the encryption + sync model: - Notes are always encrypted locally before syncing to Supabase. - A dedicated data key (DEK) encrypts notes; your password only wraps that DEK (KEK). - So when you change your password, it just re-wraps the DEK — no re-encryption of note data. I built the whole project in one day using Claude + Codex with a spec‑driven approach (tight PRD → implementation). It’s React/TypeScript, IndexedDB…

  1. 1IO

    Look, every journaling app out there wants you to organize things into folders and tags and templates. I just wanted to write something down every day. So I built this. One note per day. That's the whole deal. - Can't edit yesterday. What's done is done. Keeps you from fussing over old entries instead of writing today's. - Year view with dots showing which days you actually wrote. It's a streak chart. Works better than it should. - No signup required. Opens right up, stores everything locally in your browser. Optional cloud sync if you want it - E2E encrypted with AES-GCM, zero-knowledge,…

    Mar 2026

  2. 2ME

    I wanted to see how far I could go building a notes app using only what modern browsers already provide – no frameworks, no storage APIs, no build step. What it does: Single HTML file, no deps, 111 loc Notes live in the URL hash (shareable links!) Auto-compressed with CompressionStream Plain-text editor (contenteditable) History support Page title from first # heading Respects light/dark mode No storage, cookies, or tracking The entire app is the page source. https://textarea.my/

    Dec 2025 · github.com

  3. 3UT

    Hi HN! I created Unforget out of years of frustration with Google Keep and the lack of alternative that met all my needs. I hope you find it useful too! Features include: - import from Google Keep - offline first including search - sync when online - own your data and fully encrypted - Desktop, mobile, web - lightweight, progressive web app without Electron.js - markdown support - programmable with public APIs - open source [1] While I still use org mode for long-form notes with lots of code, Unforget has become my go-to for quickly jotting down ideas and to-do lists after migrating the…

    2024 · unforget.computing-den.com

  4. 4

    End-to-end encrypted collaborative notes app

    2021

  5. 5GC

    2015 · ghostnoteapp.com

  6. 6IW
  7. 7

    Notes app that puts privacy first

    2018

  8. 8M2

    Hey HN, I want to share with you something I and my four colleagues have been working on for the last several years. It’s a whiteboarding and notes tool called Muse[1]. We just released a 2.0 version which includes local-first sync. A little backstory: I’m one of the authors of the 2019 essay Local-first software[2]. (Past HN discussions[3][4].) The thesis is to reclaim some of the ownership over our data that we’ve lost in the transition from filesystems to cloud/SaaS. So I’m excited to bring CRDT technology “out of the lab” and into a commercial product as a chance to prove the value…

    2022 · museapp.com

  9. 9
    Notea288

    Free self-hosted open source note taking app, like Notion

    2021

  10. 10NC

    Thank you for your comments, just some context: - The app is available for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Apple Vision Pro, and the Web. - The Web version is implemented as a Progressive Web Application that is very responsive, local first, offline first, can be installed, and is entirely free to use. - Native (hybrid) versions do not require subscription fees and have small one-time payment. - You can store your notes in Git using any Git provider such as GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket. However, it has the best built-in integration with GitHub. Self-hosted scenarios like Gitea are also…

    2024 · about.noteshub.app

  11. 11

    A simple and private notes app.

    2017

  12. 12

    Decentralized note keeping app

    2019

  13. 13
    MinkNote157

    Private macOS notes built on plain Markdown files

    Jul 2026 · muse23.com

  14. 14FD

    Hey Everyone, been working on a note-taking app called janta (Just Another Note Taking App) the past few months. You can try it out at app.janta.dev (you will be redirected to app.janta.dev/canvas/temporary, which is the locally-stored whiteboard you can access) I felt limited with OneNote, Excalidraw, and other infinite-canvas style apps, so I built an alternative. You have access to code-editors, Desmos graphs, and rich text editors (SlateJS). This is because the canvas is designed in a way that allows web components to exist on the same layer as pen-strokes, so you can annotate…

    Sep 2025 · app.janta.dev

  15. 15
    Dumbnote141

    Offline-first Markdown note app. No lock-in. Just write.

    2025

  16. 16
    Dash122

    Private, encrypted OSS notes app

    2025

  17. 17BT

    It's blowing my mind that I could build an app from scratch in 3 hours and deploy it with the click of a button - without writing a single line of code myself CacheNotes is a browser-based note-taking app that saves your notes, threads, and AI conversations securely in your browser's local storage 100% free. No login required. You get, - simple, minimal note taking app in your browser - no login required - you can connect your claude api key for the ai integration - visualise notes and twitter threads Check it out! Would love some feedback :)

    2024 · cachenotes.kanishkdan.com

  18. 18

    Minimalist, offline-first diary with auto cloud sync.

    Feb 2026

  19. 19

    Notes, tasks, calendar, and AI in one E2E encrypted app.

    Jul 2026 · notte.com

  20. 20

    So, I built this little thing over the past month or so now, I got tired of places for tickets, notes, and such being shoved front and center in apps. Thus I created Mininote to get away from the noise I wanted something simple to move out of the way completely when I don't need it but be there when I do need it It contains a slew of features built right in, but the coolest is the sites own API is also the sites own public API no split seam

    23d ago · mininote.ink

  21. 21WB

    Hello HN, Over the last year we've been building snote.app, a Privacy focused, End-to-End Encrypted alternative to Notion. You can write, plan, collaborate and get organized - it allows you to take notes, store files, add tasks, manage projects & more. Whether you're working solo or in a team. We are hoping to use this post as an opportunity to collect feedback from fellow hackers. If there's anything we can do better, please let us know

    2023 · snote.app

  22. 22LR

    Hi HN! I've been building this solo for about three and a half years. I kept trying every new project/notes tool (Notion, Asana, Trello, etc.) and always ended up back in a plain text file. I wanted something that felt like a text editor on first touch but could grow into real structure when you needed it. https://lightwave.so (desktop only) The tech stack is Laravel, MySQL, Redis, and hand-rolled JavaScript on the client. No frameworks like React/Vue/etc. ~270 lines of jQuery (out of 80k+ total LOC) for a few legacy DOM utilities, plus IndexedDB for local…

    Feb 2026

  23. 23

    One note per day. End-to-end encrypted. No signup required.

    Mar 2026

  24. 24AS

    I wrote this to easily create daily notes. It does very little - creates a file with a template and puts them in a directory of the current month and year. I was using Obsidian to manage my daily notes before this but in the back of my mind I was worried about privacy. I hope you try it once!

    2023 · github.com

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