head to head · open source
MiaoYan vs dstask
MiaoYan has 8,651 GitHub stars, 512 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. dstask has 1,204 stars, 68 forks, 44 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. MiaoYan leads on adoption by 619% (8,651 vs 1,204 stars). MiaoYan is written in Swift under MIT; dstask is written in Go under MIT. MiaoYan has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, dstask 6%. MiaoYan was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (notes-app), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| MiaoYan | dstask | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.7K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Swift | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-05-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 512 | ⑂ 68 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick MiaoYan if
- You weight community size — 8.7K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick dstask if
- You want the dstask feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and dstask fits your workflow better
About MiaoYan
MiaoYan is a lightweight, local first Markdown note taking app for macOS, written in Swift and released under the MIT licence, aimed at people who want fast plain text notes on their own disk without accounts, telemetry, or a hosted service.
read the full MiaoYan overview →
About dstask
dstask is a personal, terminal based task and note manager that keeps every task in a Git repository, built for developers and command line users who want Taskwarrior style tracking without operating a sync server.
read the full dstask overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is MiaoYan or dstask more popular?
MiaoYan has 8,651 GitHub stars and dstask has 1,204. MiaoYan has the larger community by that measure.
Are MiaoYan and dstask free?
Both are open source. MiaoYan is licensed under MIT and dstask under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between MiaoYan and dstask?
MiaoYan is written in Swift and dstask in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, MiaoYan or dstask?
Choose MiaoYan if you want the larger community (8,651 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose dstask if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.