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Trilium Notes

TriliumNext · Notes

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What is Trilium Notes?

Trilium Notes is for people whose notes have grown into a large personal library. It organises everything in a tree, lets one note live in several places, and offers note types well beyond plain text. It runs offline on the desktop with no account, and you can add your own sync server to reach the same notes from other devices and the browser.

Trilium Notes is a cross-platform app for hierarchical notes, aimed at building large personal knowledge bases. Notes sit in a tree of any depth, one note can appear in several places, and note types range from rich text and code to canvas sketches, mind maps and spreadsheets. It works offline on the desktop and can sync through a server you host yourself.

Core capabilities

  • Notes form a tree, and one note can be cloned into several places.
  • Collections show notes as a calendar, table, kanban board or map.
  • Per-note encryption, revisions, scripting and a REST API are built in.

A tree of notes with many note types

Notes nest in a tree of any depth, and cloning places the same note in several branches. Text notes use a visual editor with tables, images, maths and Markdown autoformat, and other note types cover code, Mermaid diagrams, Excalidraw canvas sketches, mind maps, spreadsheets and files. Labels and relations organise notes, and relation maps and note maps show how they connect. Every note keeps revisions, and protected notes are encrypted one by one.

  • Note tree
  • Rich text
  • Mind maps
  • Encryption

Collections, scripting and automation

Collections show the same notes as a calendar, table, kanban board, geo map with GPX tracks, presentation or dashboard. JavaScript can run in the frontend or backend for custom widgets and scheduled or event-based scripts, and a REST API supports outside automation. Optional AI features, off by default, can chat with your notes through your own provider or a self-hosted model. Markdown and HTML import and export, Evernote import and a web clipper bring content in from elsewhere.

  • Collections
  • Scripting
  • REST API
  • Web clipper

Desktop, server and licence

Desktop builds for Windows, macOS and Linux run on their own with local data, and Linux users can also install from Flathub. A server installation, such as the triliumnext/trilium Docker image on port 8080 with a data volume, adds a web interface, a mobile web frontend and a sync target for desktop clients. Server logins support OpenID and TOTP two-factor authentication. TriliumNext/Trilium is the community continuation of zadam/trilium and is released under the AGPL-3.0 licence.

  • Self-hosted
  • Docker
  • Sync
  • AGPL-3.0

Where it fits

Use cases

  1. 01

    Build a personal knowledge base you can search

    Create notes in a tree by topic, and clone a note into a second branch when it belongs in two places. Add labels and relations as attributes, then find notes with full-text search or a saved search. Note hoisting narrows the tree to one branch while you work on it.

  2. 02

    Track projects on a kanban board

    Turn a note into a board collection so its child notes appear as cards in columns. Give columns a colour or a card limit, create cards from a template such as a Bug note, and filter the board with the search syntax. Switch the same notes to a table or calendar view when dates matter more than status.

  3. 03

    Publish selected notes as a website

    On a server installation, share a subtree to publish it as a public, read-only website. Keep private material in protected notes, which are encrypted and need a password to open.