Haptic is a new local-first & privacy-focused home for your markdown notes. It's a minimalistic, lightweight and fast note-taking app that's designed to be distraction-free.
Scratch – A minimalist markdown scratchpad
An offline-first, open source markdown note-taking app. No cloud, no account, no subscriptions.
What's the point of a note-taking app?
The true purpose of a note-taking app is to facilitate deep learning through three interconnected processes—externalizing ideas, internalizing them into new insights, and resurfacing them over time—and good design should minimize accidental friction while preserving the productive friction that enables genuine understanding.
The Best Note-Taking Apps
We recently polled readers with suggestions for the best note-taking apps. Most of you said you still do things the old-fashioned way with pen and p
outl — local-first markdown outliner & LLM second brain
Open-source bullet-point outliner. Plain markdown on disk (no UUIDs), peer-to-peer tree-CRDT sync that doesn't lose data when devices edit offline — your devices talk straight to each other, end-to-end encrypted, no cloud or third-party server holding your notes — and an MCP server so Claude, Cursor and ChatGPT use your notes as a second brain. A modern Roam, Logseq and Obsidian alternative built in Rust.
Marker — Read with intention
A reading and annotation browser for iOS and Android. Select text, create highlights, attach notes, and keep annotations on device.
iA Writer: The Benchmark of Markdown Writing Apps
Plain text. Total focus. The Industry standard Markdown text editor. Available for Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android, and Windows. Download it now, try it for free
Note-ifying all the things (with Boris Mann)
Conversation about note-taking, the overwhelm of tools, and future possibilities. (shortlink:…
9to5Mac Reports Apple Notes Will Gain Markdown Export at WWDC, and, You’ll Be Unsurprised to Know, I Have Thoughts
It’s quite gratifying that Markdown has not only become so popular, but after 21 years, continues to grow in popularity, to the point now where there clearly are a lot of people who seemingly enjoy writing in Markdown more than even I do. But I think it would be a huge mistake for Apple to make Apple Notes a “Markdown editor”, even as an option.
Best Notes App - Write and Organize with UpNote
UpNote is a clean and beautiful app for writing and organizing notes. It’s easy to use with rich features and delightful experience. Available on Mac, iOS, Android, Windows and Linux.
Reflect
A beautifully minimalist note-taking app designed to mirror the way you think. Now with a native AI integration.
Craft — Productivity App for Notes, Tasks, and Docs
A free notes and productivity app that follows you across all your devices. Premium features available.
Note taking apps
Notes, Outliners, Markdown Editors, PKMs, Memexs, Second Brains, Commonplace books, and more
OmniCanvas - Free Infinite Canvas Notes App
Best Notes App - Write and Organize with UpNote
Antinote — a $5 scratchpad for macOS
NotePlan – Notes, Tasks and Calendar in One Daily Note
Let your thoughts sink in — Gravity
Knowledgebase Apps (by Boris) — Semble