
Show HN: Trilium Notes – Scriptable note-taking application - The_Colonel
https://github.com/zadam/trilium
======
qwerty456127
I wish somebody would write a good comparative review of all the note-taking,
information organization and outlining apps... I'm in constant search of the
one that would actually suit my preferences. Perhaps this is the one (but
chances are it's not). Let's take a look...

~~~
fabiospampinato
I have made something like that [1] for my note-taking app. It doesn't
currently include Trillium though, and it may be skewed towards the features
I'm personally interested in, but if somebody would like to help make it
better I'm all ears.

[1]
[https://github.com/fabiospampinato/notable#comparison](https://github.com/fabiospampinato/notable#comparison)

~~~
laurent123456
It's a good start but since it's meant to compare your own note taking app to
others it's indeed a bit biased. Maybe make it easier for others to contribute
to the table, and add a few missing features (for instance web clipper is not
in the list). Also the negative categories like "no bloat", "no wysiwyg" being
marked a positive for your app is a bit weird. Many users will not see a web
clipper or wysiwyg as bloat.

~~~
fabiospampinato
You raised some good points. Some things are kind of biased by definition, as
I also mention in a paragraph below the table what I consider bloat can be
considered as useful features by somebody else, and the UI part is somewhat
subjective as well.

I think contributing to it should be easy enough, one just has to edit this
[1] HTML file. It was a plain Markdown/ASCII table earlier, but since it's
quite wide it wasn't looking too good.

[1]
[https://github.com/fabiospampinato/notable/blob/master/resou...](https://github.com/fabiospampinato/notable/blob/master/resources/comparison/table.html)

------
Jarwain
This is really impressive. I've always wanted a decent Journaling app that
also mapped well to hierarchies and how I think about things. It looks
incredibly fleshed out, and that a lot of thought and effort was put into this
project.

I'm curious about whether there's synchronization between the local desktop
application and the hosted web version. Also about how responsive the web
version is, and how well it works on a phone.

~~~
The_Colonel
Thank you for your kind words :)

Hosted web version actually serves a dual purpose - it is a full online app
(for both desktop and mobile) and also acts as a central sync server for
desktop clients.

There's a fully featured web version which is tailored for desktop and isn't
responsive. There's a separate frontend for touch based devices which doesn't
have a complete feature set, but scales nicely for both smartphone and tablet
layouts. But this is a brand new feature released just days ago so it has
probably rough edges.

~~~
rprameshwor
FYI - The link to images in the Screenshot tour seems to be broken.

[https://github.com/zadam/trilium/wiki/Screenshot-
tour](https://github.com/zadam/trilium/wiki/Screenshot-tour)

~~~
The_Colonel
What error does it give? This links works fine for me ...

~~~
rprameshwor
Nvm, when i disconnected out of the VPN to my workplace, the images loaded
fine. Tried connecting to VPN again to test if the images would load this
time, it didn't. Weird... It could be something specific with my VPN.

~~~
keedser
You should check out your workplace's firewall rules. About a week ago, my
works' firewall suddenly started blocking the domain where Github's CSS/JS
files were hosted and all formatting and images were gone. Not sure if Github
switched hosting servers or our firewall whitelist was updated incorrectly.

------
jungletime
Sort of related. Does anyone know of any note apps that will let you select
and area of web page, and drag it into the note. I just want easily make a
scrap book of relevant info from web pages I visit. The solution I know of,
Screen shot, saving, loading, and so on has too many steps. I just want
something that will let me select and drag into the note. And that will look
exactly like I see on the webpage. Bonus, if it lets me drag not only
rectangular boxes, but actually adjust the box so its not cutting off lines,
or other content. Sort of like pinterest, but not for just images, but text
also. Hyperlinked to the actual source page would be nice too.

~~~
c-smile
Sciter Notes: [https://notes.sciter.com](https://notes.sciter.com)

That if you mean something like this: [http://notes.sciter.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/01/notes-dra...](http://notes.sciter.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/01/notes-drag-n-drop.png)

Works with any browser, no plugins required.

------
bayindirh
First of all, congrats. It looks like a nice application with good thought out
features. I've esp. liked central syncing, source code capabilities and
markdown.

I personally use Zim [0] at work, which is pretty dependable, extensible and
mature. Zim also builds a personal knowledge base with exports, so you can
learn from its approaches I think.

However, I personally don't prefer to use electron applications, so Trillium
is not a real candidate for me, sorry. Wish it wasn't on Electron, so I'd try
it.

[0]: [http://zim-wiki.org/](http://zim-wiki.org/)

~~~
dagurp
I'm a zim user too but looking to replace it. Why is Electron a deal breaker
for you? (Also, in case you didn't notice, you can host Trilium on a server if
you want to)

~~~
bayindirh
I'm an old folk in terms of computer history [0], and while my computers are
not resource constrained, I'm resource conscious. Also, I'm a high performance
computing sysadmin and researcher, so I know what computers can do with what
amount of resources.

I'm extremely annoyed by the fact of running a complete browser engine and
sacrifice half gigabytes of memory and a lot of storage (I cannot remember the
exact size of Atom) just for a text editor or any other software with the same
caliber.

Also, Electron consumes more resources than it needs. When running on any
Electron app on my Mac, I generally get a notification about its power usage
too.

e.g.: Atom is not as powerful as Eclipse, but needs more resources per
feature. BBEdit is much lighter and compact, and is nearly as useful for me as
Atom, and I can run Eclipse if I need a full fledged IDE.

Server-only deployment is nice, but I'd rather sync the data, because I'm not
always online while taking notes, and if I'm going to keep my data
centralized, I'd rather keep it at my home, and I don't have enough upload
bandwidth to serve anything like Trillium.

BTW, Why are you trying to replace Zim? I'm interested in your reasons.

I'm open to and interested in discussion and, I'd happily stand corrected if
I'm mistaken.

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18839788](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18839788)

~~~
donblanco
I'm not sure why you would think that Trilium, even in Electron form, would be
resource intensive. It's not. Upload bandwidth? For syncing data? Unless you
keep full video files in it, I can't imagine how that would come into play
unless you are using only cell data at below 3G speeds. It seems as if your
objections are more based on principle than actual in this case...

~~~
bayindirh
> I'm not sure why you would think that Trilium, even in Electron form, would
> be resource intensive.

Because NixNote 2 uses 145MBs, Zim Wiki uses 60MBs, nvPy uses 45 MBs, and Atom
uses 660MBs _on start_.

> It's not.

Can you provide the memory consumption data?

> Upload bandwidth? For syncing data? Unless you keep full video files in it,
> I can't imagine how that would come into play unless you are using only cell
> data at below 3G speeds.

Sorry, but my home ISP is providing extremely asymmetric network speeds. I
have 1Mbps upstream bandwidth for every 16Mbps downstream. This is barely
keeping up if your home network is shared inside the home, consumed by 2
desktops, a laptop, three mobile phones at minimum. This network also needs to
keep up with the daily usage needs. It's not realistic to peg the upload
bandwidth just because I can.

> It seems as if your objections are more based on principle than actual in
> this case...

My principles are born out of actual cases. I'm not that conservative to try
new technologies or applications, but I'm against wasting resources on my
personal devices because _hardware is cheap_. I believe that efficient
applications (in resource utilization) are always better in the long run. At
least you can run more applications with the same hardware. I won't dive into
details about how heavy applications like Atom or frameworks like Electron
increases background CPU and power usage with interrupts, wakes, small spikes
and such.

------
mkl
Does this support maths notation? E.g. Latex code interpreted with Katex or
MathJax, or WYSIWYG with MathQuill.

I see there may be relevant CKEditor plugins. Could these be used?

~~~
The_Colonel
Currently no support.

I use CKEditor 5 which is very very nice, but still a bit immature in its
plugin ecosystem.

LaTex support is definitely something I've been thinking about, but I'm still
not sure about how to approach it.

This might be also one of the showcases for the scripting support. User can
load e.g. KaTex as a script, bind it to the "code note" which it will render
into a view e.g. above the code editor. But that's not very user friendly for
sure.

~~~
MrTrvp
You should look at [https://katex.org/](https://katex.org/)

------
lvs
This is very interesting. It's self-hosted and therefore not reliant on
someone's brittle/invasive business model. I'd consider switching over to this
in a heartbeat if it could handle attaching arbitrary files to notes (e.g.
office docs, pdfs, etc.) that would also get sync'd.

I haven't looked at the code, but can anyone say something informed about the
sync server auth and transport security? Is it running over TLS?

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Native integration is better, but file:// \+ syncthing could probably suffice?

~~~
The_Colonel
I can't really recommend this. Trilium Notes stores its data in an SQLite
database and syncing it as a single file would mean any kind of edit conflict
would have to throw out all changes from one side of edit conflict.

Native solution has an advantage of being able to resolve edit conflicts on a
very granular level (individual notes, attributes etc.)

~~~
mkl
Is there a way to do diffs between versions of notes?

~~~
The_Colonel
I'm not sure if you mean on a user level or possibly on a sync level?

Trilium Notes automatically versions notes by kind of taking a snapshot every
few minutes. It allows you to browse those "revisions", but there isn't a diff
built in yet. It is one of those features which I thought I might implement
some day but there's always something more important.

For the edit conflict resolution - no diff is being used. Newer change just
overwrite the old one. But since you have historical revisions from both sides
of edit conflicts, there's a good chance you didn't lose the data completely.
And in practical terms this happens quite rarely if you sync often (i.e. - are
online) since the sync is granular enough.

------
narak
This looks awesome! Clearly you have put in a lot of hard work and thought
into this.

Ive been itching for a scriptable personal knowledge base where I can store
arbitrary datastructures and executable code in addition to the typical
richtext note taking. Will be diving into the code asap. Cheers!

~~~
The_Colonel
> Ive been itching for a scriptable personal knowledge base where I can store
> arbitrary datastructures and executable code in addition to the typical
> richtext note taking.

Wow, this is actually exactly what Trilium Notes is. Perfect match!

------
hirundo
Thank you for the hoisting! For me this is a crucial feature missing on most
outliners. I got spoiled by one that had it in the mid 80s (one of the first,
can't remember the name). That one went away and ever since hoisting has been
my screening test. The fact that hoisting is hard to find 30 years later is
evidence of technical regression and the oncoming collapse of civilization. So
Trilium gives me hope.

~~~
explainplease
Emacs/Org-mode have had this feature for years. You can narrow-to-subtree, or
even subtree-to-indirect-buffer, presenting a subtree as its own buffer, like
having files within files.

------
mkl
The_Colonel, could handwritten notes fit into Trilium? It's technically
possible, with PointerEvents to get pressure, but I'm wondering about whether
it would fit with your goals for the project.

I'm guessing it would need to be another type of note, separate from the
CKEditor ones, or maybe some kind of drawing area plugin making space within a
rich text note.

~~~
The_Colonel
Yes, some kind of drawing is planned, but nothing concrete yet. Ideally I'd
use some library because it's probably not feasible for me to implement it all
by myself.

------
mkl
An informative 4-month-old discussion on Reddit:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9c34b8/trilium_notes...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9c34b8/trilium_notes_new_note_taking_application/)

------
jungletime
I've been using Typora to make todo lists, and keep notes. It also has
markdown, and I can do checkboxes with it quite easily, and add large titles,
and horizontal lines. I just save all related todo's and notes into a folder.
When I open a single note, it lists in the left pane all the other notes in
that folder. So for example, I have a todo folder. And a file for each day of
the week. If I open Monday, it lists all the other days in the left pane. I
love using it. Very similar concept to this program. I'll have to try out
trillium.

~~~
kevintb
+1 to Typora, it shows you the folder contents which is great.

------
projectramo
I compare everything with emacs editing text files with git for synching.
(Encryption is through a VM with encrypted Ubuntu which I use for note taking
and everything else.)

But this does work with mobile which is key...

------
sesc
Thanks for sharing. The cloning feature is really key. Looking to replace
Notion with a more compliant solution (reg. storage of data) for quite a while
and your combination of app/server nails it!

The only thing I would really love is a more open way to store notes, like
text files in a directory. Love how DevonThink does their file indexing. Can
imagine it being a headache though with the cloning etc. so good you have
export to at least have openly accessible backups.

------
MikusR
Looks like a mix of Leo and org-mode running on Electron.

------
tracker1
Looks really nice... I do wish it could use Dropbox/Google-Drive/MS-OneDrive
etc as a storage engine though... or local FS in the appropriate directories.
I'm also not sure about security on the server, may give it a try on a dokku
server to see how it goes.

------
Waterluvian
What I need most is guaranteed and easily accessible backups. I think, for me,
that's automatic commits to a git repo in some format and structure that isn't
bound to the app.

------
chrisweekly
This looks pretty impressively thorough. I noticed you support Evernote ->
ENEX -> Trilium; what about exports, ie going in the other direction?

~~~
The_Colonel
For the export there's a TAR archive which contains a directory structure of
HTML/Markdown files (you can choose the format) representing the notes in the
tree structure. Extra metadata are stored in a single JSON file (in the same
tar). Same tar archive can also be imported without losing anything in the
process.

Besides that there's an OPML file export which contains a tree structure with
plain text. Its import seems to be supported widely among outliners.

~~~
farcat991
So, say I export my note as a markdown document, what I'm seeing is that all
the images that I had pasted into my note are still referenced as a link. I
was thinking the image itself would be copied into an images directory and
referenced relative to the note, locally. Is it possible to do that?

~~~
The_Colonel
Actually image itself is also a note (of image type)and is placed into the
note tree so in export it appears at the same place as in the app.

But you're right that the exported note doesn't rewrite the link to correctly
point to the local exported image.

------
cygnion
Nicely done! Thanks for sharing. I've been using Tiddlywiki over TiddlyDesktop
(used on Win and Mac Os) and it suffices most of my needs (except drag-n-drop
images and web scraping). TW's extendable macro and plugin environment is
awesome. It works great off of cloud drives. Curious to know what others feel
about TW. KNote's note 'card' interface resembles TW. Thanks.

------
laurent123456
The releases could be improved using electron-builder. You'd then have one
executable file, instead of thousands of node_modules files.

~~~
The_Colonel
You're right. I kept it like this as a debugging solution of last resort. But
having single ASAR is probably more useful for regular use.

------
sali0
This app looks amazing. I see that it says there is support for arbitrary
amount of nested notes, but it seems the method to do this is to right click
and add child notes. Is there any way to add workflowy like nesting? Workflowy
has a very simple but very useful way of nesting notes that I personally find
intuitive for organizing my thoughts.

------
thunderbong
Just played around with it. Really nice application and seems very
comprehensive. I'll need to spend some more time with it though.

I was especially keen on the syncing to work, but unfortunately kept getting a
'DB not initialized' error on the server. I'll raise an issue for it.

Wonderful application overall. Congratulations.

~~~
The_Colonel
Hello, "DB not initialized" is not necessarily an error and may just mean you
didn't set up the sync between the nodes yet. If you can create the issue on
github, we can look into it in more detail.

------
jamilbk
This is awesome! Downloaded the binary and runs with no issues on Ubuntu 18.04
x64.

Two questions:

1\. Any plans to support OCR processing similar to Evernote?

2\. Any plans on offering a paid service for syncing the encrypted notes to?
I'll gladly pay $5 / mo for a more secure, open source Evernote if it means I
don't have to manage my own server.

------
anigbrowl
Really liking how lightweight, extensible, and flexible this is. It feels like
a mature product already!

------
monkeydust
Been using [https://usejournal.com](https://usejournal.com) for last few
months for taking quick notes and grabbing and tagging links. Works well
enough but no mobile support still means I am not that keen to over invest in
it.

Will check out Trillium

------
xingped
Woah, I can't believe I missed this 12-ish days ago, but just went looking for
a note-taking app today and I have to say this is the best one out there by a
hundred miles! It's incredible how exactly and perfectly it works in line with
what I needed it to do!

------
chrisMyzel
I'm looking for.a.tool replacing DevonThink, which lets.you also put Documents
(e.g. PDF) as a node in the hierarchical tree which is IMHO key for knowledge
systems. Your system looks great on first look, is this a planed feature?

~~~
The_Colonel
You can put any kind of file as a node in the tree. However it won't be
displayed in-app - instead opening it would start your PDF reader.

------
gumby
The only reason I still use Evernote (and I fervently want off) is its
excellent page scraper. If there were a non-web (i.e. local storage)
alternative for macos&ios I'd switch in a heartbeat. But so far, no luck.

------
shsethi
I have been looking for a note taking app that fits my needs for a long time.
I have tried Tiddly-wiki, Typora, Evernote, Boostnote, OneNote, Simple Notes.
So far this looks better than all of those combined. Thanks!

------
solarkraft
This seems like a super-version of Notion.so. I'll definitely have a look.

------
DarthDobber
This is an amazing project! It is extremely well documented and very well
thought out!

Do you have plans to build import functions to take data from OneNote and
Evernote?

~~~
The_Colonel
Evernote import is supported (by importing ENEX files). Nothing for OneNote
yet though.

------
rbosinger
This looks awesome! I've been looking through the docs. I can't wait to get
back to my computer to give it a whirl.

------
synaesthesisx
I've been using Ulysses but considering trying something else ever since they
changed to a subscription-based model.

------
fabiospampinato
The features set seems very interesting, I'll definitely take a closer look at
the code, good job!

------
7174n6
Is there a shortcut to create a new folder? It seems really difficult, or I am
just missing it?

~~~
The_Colonel
There's a CTRL-O for creating new note/folder on the same level and CTRL-P for
creating nested one.

------
michaelcampbell
I thought this was going to be some note-taking add-on for the cross-protocol
chat app Trilium.

~~~
The_Colonel
That one is called Trilian. But yeah, it sounds similar.

------
asaamaraa
Awesome app. Thanks for sharing.

------
submeta
Quickly checking on the way. Is there a way to import notes from Evernote?

~~~
The_Colonel
Yes, as the other commenters answered. Just a word of warning - there's not
many ENEX files floating on the net available for testing so I kind of expect
some bugs to appear here.

------
PurpleRamen
Quite rought around the corners. I guess in 3-5 years it can grow into
something good. I assume leo editor was a inspiration for this?

------
accountforih
do you have any plans to create a SaaS version? Maybe with some premium
features, that would be great

~~~
The_Colonel
No commercial plans at the moment.

It's not viable unless you have a lot of paying users and there's a lot of
competition.

