HelixNotes
Hi HN. I tested literally dozens of note-taking apps over the years — free, paid, everything. They all sucked except UpNote. Great UX, clean, fast, just works. But your data lives in Google Firebase. Dealbreaker. So I tried Obsidian. Local files, markdown, own your data — great philosophy. But the app itself? Even with everything disabled, as a plain markdown editor it was painful. I actually stopped taking notes entirely. So I built what I wanted: inspired by UpNote's clean design but taken further; less clutter, more polished, with Obsidian's local-first ideology. Your notes are standard…
HelixNotes launched on August 10, 2026 with 7 votes, #1,411 of 23,274 launches that month and more than 90% of that year's launches.
What it does
A local markdown note-taking app. Plainmd files on your disk. Sync them your way, or don't.
A local markdown note-taking app. Plain .md files on your disk. Sync them your way, or don
Notes you format as you write, saved as ordinary .md files on your disk. Free, open source, no account. Yuri Karamian of ArkHost built HelixNotes for comfortable editing of local Markdown files without configuring plugins. Read the story Recorded in HelixNotes 1.3.6 on Linux with the Nord theme and Inter font, using sample notes. Tables, highlighted code and KaTeX math, saved as Markdown you can read with cat . Each - [ ] item from every note, with priorities, due dates and a calendar. Free and open source. Available for desktop, Android, iPhone and iPad. HelixNotes is in the official Solus repository. Install it with eopkg: Blank or white screen on X11 or Wayland? If you see Failed to…from helixnotes.com
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hi HN. I tested literally dozens of note-taking apps over the years — free, paid, everything. They all sucked except UpNote. Great UX, clean, fast, just works. But your data lives in Google Firebase. Dealbreaker. So I tried Obsidian. Local files, markdown, own your data — great philosophy. But the app itself? Even…
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