What is Notesnook used for?

Notesnook is listed as a Productivity tool on TiloBox. Review the overview, features, and official documentation on this page to decide whether it solves your specific workflow.

How do I get started with Notesnook?

Start with the project's GitHub repository and official website for supported installation and deployment instructions. Test the setup with representative data or a small project before rolling it out more widely.

What license does Notesnook use?

Notesnook is listed under the GPL-3.0 license. Read the complete license text and the project's notices before using, modifying, or distributing the software.

Is Notesnook ready for production use?

Production readiness depends on your requirements. Review maintenance activity, security practices, documentation, backup and upgrade procedures, and compatibility with your stack; then validate it in a non-production environment.

Is Notesnook an alternative to Notion?

Notesnook is listed as an alternative to Notion. Compare the core workflow, deployment model, integrations, and licensing against your must-have requirements before switching.

Productivity Alternative to Notion Alternative to OneNote Alternative to Evernote

Notesnook

Fully open source, end-to-end encrypted note-taking app and alternative to Evernote and Notion.

View on GitHub Visit website

LicenseGPL-3.0

GitHub stars14.5k

Last commit1 weeks ago

Tags6 topics

E2eeEvernote AlternativeNotesPrivacyEncryptionSelf Hosted

Overview

Why consider Notesnook?

Notesnook is a private, zero-knowledge note-taking application. It features XChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption, rich text editing, notebooks, tags, attachments, and cross-device sync.

Guided learning

Learn Notesnook by building

Practical setup notes, real use cases, and copy-ready examples in one focused guide.

3 min read 10 sections

In this guide10 sections

What is Notesnook?

Notesnook is a fully open-source, end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) note-taking application developed by Streetwriters. It operates as a private, zero-knowledge alternative to proprietary cloud note applications like Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, and Notion.

Notesnook provides 100% client-side encryption using XChaCha20-Poly1305 and Argon2id. Every note, notebook title, tag, image, and file attachment is encrypted on your local device before being synchronized across servers, ensuring that no third party—not even the server hosting the database—can ever read your notes or metadata.

Who Is It For?

Privacy-Conscious Individuals: Writing personal journals, daily thoughts, and health records with guaranteed cryptographic confidentiality.
Professionals & Executives: Storing sensitive meeting minutes, client briefs, and confidential strategy notes.
Students & Researchers: Organizing class notes, research articles, and checklists across mobile and desktop devices.

Key Features

100% End-to-End Encryption (E2EE): XChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption with Argon2id key derivation computed strictly on user devices.
Full-featured rich text editor: Tables, task lists, code blocks with syntax highlighting, math formulas (KaTeX), and embedded images.
Flexible organization: Hierarchical Notebooks, Topic sub-notebooks, colored Tags, and Color labels.
Multi-device instant synchronization across Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux, and Web browsers.
Native self-hosting support: Run your own self-hosted sync server for total data autonomy.

Deploying Notesnook Self-Hosted Sync Server with Docker

yaml

1version: '3.8'

3services:

4 notesnook-server:

5 image: streetwriters/notesnook-sync-server:latest

6 container_name: notesnook_server

7 restart: unless-stopped

8 ports:

9 - "8282:8282"

10 environment:

11 - PORT=8282

12 - DATABASE_URL=postgres://notesnook:secure_notesnook_db_pass@db:5432/notesnook

13 - JWT_SECRET=generate_a_secure_random_64_character_jwt_secret

14 - ENCRYPTION_SECRET=generate_a_secure_random_64_character_secret

15 depends_on:

16 - db

18 db:

19 image: postgres:15-alpine

20 container_name: notesnook_db

21 restart: unless-stopped

22 volumes:

23 - ./pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data

24 environment:

25 - POSTGRES_DB=notesnook

26 - POSTGRES_USER=notesnook

27 - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=secure_notesnook_db_pass

Start the instance:

bash

1docker compose up -d

In any Notesnook client app (desktop, mobile, or web), navigate to Settings -> Sync -> Custom Sync Server and enter http://your-server-ip:8282.

Practical Use Cases

1. Private Daily Journaling

A user writes daily personal journal reflections with password-locked vault sections, knowing that personal thoughts are mathematically unreadable to external servers.

2. Multi-Device Study Notebooks

A student creates lecture notebooks with mathematical KaTeX equations and code blocks, syncing seamlessly between a lecture hall tablet and a dorm desktop.

3. Client Meeting Minutes Storage

A consultant organizes client consultation notes into tagged notebooks, exporting clean PDF documents for clients when requested.

Troubleshooting and Limitations

Recovery Key Storage: Notesnook generates a private cryptographic recovery key upon account creation; store this key safely, as losing both your password and recovery key makes encrypted note recovery impossible.
Attachment Size Allocation: When self-hosting, ensure your server storage volume has sufficient disk space for large media attachments and image uploads.

Official Resources

Official Website: https://notesnook.com
GitHub Repository: https://github.com/streetwriters/notesnook
Documentation & Help: https://help.notesnook.com

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