[opensourcedex]

Beaver Notes is a free, open source note taking & knowledge management project written in JavaScript and released under MIT. It has 1,344 GitHub stars, 65 forks and 18 open issues, and was last pushed 3 days ago. On this registry it ranks #19 of 25 tracked projects in Note Taking & Knowledge Management, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available. It gained 1 stars over the last 6 tracked days.

What is Beaver Notes?

What it is

Beaver Notes is an open-source, local-first workspace for notes, projects, and meetings. It is a JavaScript application under the MIT license, and it presents itself as a privacy-focused note-taking tool. The core idea is that notes stay on the user's device unless the user explicitly chooses a sync method.

The problem it addresses is the common trade in many note-taking apps, where convenience is exchanged for access to the user's data. Beaver Notes aims to avoid that by keeping notes local, working offline, and not requiring an account to use the editor. The project says notes are not indexed, not processed, and not readable by anyone but the user unless sync or sharing is configured.

Key capabilities

  • Beaver Notes is markdown-native and supports folders, tags, note linking, and locked notes.
  • It runs locally on macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS, with offline use as a design goal.
  • It offers flexible sync through the user's own cloud storage, a self-hosted server, or the planned BeaverSync service.
  • Version 5 is a rewrite from Electron to Tauri, which the project says gives smaller binaries and better native behavior.
  • The v5 roadmap includes real-time collaboration, version history, backlinks, and a plugin system.
  • The editor has no telemetry, no account wall, and no monthly fee to keep notes accessible.

Who uses it and how

  • Individuals who want a private local notes workspace can use Beaver Notes without an account and keep data on their own device.
  • Users who work across desktop and mobile can use the same application on macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS.
  • Self-hosters can use a self-hosted server or their own cloud storage as the sync layer, which gives them control over where data goes.
  • Teams or collaborators may be interested in the planned real-time collaboration, version history, and backlink features, although v5 is still in active development.

Getting started

For the stable release, users download installers from the Beaver Notes downloads page, and package managers such as AUR, Flatpak, Scoop, and Brew are expected to track stable once v5 ships. For the v5 beta, the README instructs users to clone the repository, check out the tauri branch, run yarn install, and start development with yarn tauri dev.

When to use it — and when not to

Beaver Notes is a good fit for users who want local-first, markdown-based notes and who are willing to manage their own sync or self-hosted infrastructure. It is less suitable for users who need a finished collaboration product today, because v5 is described as a beta rewrite with rough edges and several features are still on the roadmap. The project's main trade-off is that privacy and local control come with more user responsibility for storage, syncing, and platform installation.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline
Beaver Logo

Beaver Notes

Built for people who actually read privacy policies.

Your notes, your rules: on your device, your server, or ours.

All Contributors GitHub Release GitHub Repo stars GitHub forks Translation status

Website · Blog · Docs · Downloads · Roadmap

You're on the tauri branch. The v5 rewrite. This is where Beaver Notes is heading. The current stable release lives on development.

Most note-taking apps make the same quiet trade: your convenience in exchange for access to your data. It's easy to miss in the onboarding flow, buried somewhere in a terms-of-service document most people never open.

Beaver Notes starts from a different place. Your notes live on your device. They're not indexed, not processed, not readable by anyone but you. When you want to sync, you choose how, your own cloud storage, a self-hosted server, or BeaverSync (coming later this year) if you'd rather not think about it. No vendor lock-in either way.

We're rebuilding Beaver Notes from the ground up in Tauri for v5, faster, smaller, and properly cross-platform, including mobile, because we outgrew our original Electron foundation.

Beaver Notes demo

What it is

Beaver Notes is a local-first, markdown-native notes app for macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS. It has folders, tags, note linking, locked notes, and flexible sync. It starts fast. It works offline. It doesn't ask you to create an account to use it.

The things that make it worth switching to aren't features. It's the absence of things. Beaver has no telemetry in the editor, no account wall, no monthly fee to keep your notes accessible and no moment where you wonder who else can read what you're writing.

What's new in v5

Version 5 is a rewrite, not an update. We moved from Electron to Tauri, which means meaningfully smaller binaries and better native behaviour on every platform. More importantly, mobile is no longer a separate app, Beaver Pocket is being folded into Beaver Notes itself, so the experience is consistent whether you're on a laptop in a coffee shop or on your phone at 2am.

We're also adding things people have asked for since the early days: real-time collaboration, version history, backlinks, and a plugin system. These were hard to build correctly on the old architecture. On the new one, they're not.

The roadmap is public if you want to follow along or push back on priorities.

Installing v5 (beta)

v5 is in active development. It will have rough edges. We'd genuinely love bug reports.

git clone https://github.com/Beaver-Notes/Beaver-Notes.git
cd Beaver-Notes
git checkout tauri
yarn install
yarn tauri dev

For stable builds, the Downloads page has installers for every platform. Package managers (AUR, Flatpak, Scoop, Brew) will track stable once v5 ships.

Linux Installation

Binary Tarball (Recommended)

  1. Download the appropriate tarball for your architecture:

    • Beaver-Notes-{version}-x86_64.tar.gz for x86_64 systems
    • Beaver-Notes-{version}-aarch64.tar.gz for ARM64 systems

  2. Extract and install:

    tar -xzf Beaver-Notes-*.tar.gz
sudo cp -r bin /usr/local/bin
sudo cp -r lib /usr/local/lib
sudo cp -r share /usr/local/share

  3. Update desktop database:

    sudo update-desktop-database

AppImage

  1. Download the AppImage for your architecture
  2. Make it executable: chmod +x Beaver-Notes-*.AppImage
  3. Run it: ./Beaver-Notes-*.AppImage

Flatpak

flatpak install flathub com.beavernotes.beavernotes

Contributing

Beaver Notes exists because people decided to build something better and kept showing up. The contributors below translated strings, wrote code, caught bugs, improved docs, and packaged the app for platforms we'd have missed. That kind of work is what makes the difference between a project that goes somewhere and one that doesn't.

If you want to get involved, whether that's code, translations, design, or just a well-written bug report, the contributing guide is a good place to start.

The community is on Reddit, Mastodon, and Bluesky. For everything else: [email protected].

Contributors

Algernon
Algernon
🐛 🌍 💻 🚧		 Danny Schellnock
Danny Schellnock
🌍 🚧		 Darío Hereñú
Darío Hereñú
📖		 mee_
mee_
🌍 🚧		 Bryan Ricker
Bryan Ricker
📖 🌍 💻		 Olav Rønnestad Birkeland
Olav Rønnestad Birkeland
📦		 Ahmet Kaan GÜMÜŞ
Ahmet Kaan GÜMÜŞ
🌍 💻
Rian Orie
Rian Orie
🎨		 readme truncated — read the full docs on github

Frequently asked questions

Is Beaver Notes free to use?

Beaver Notes is open source under the MIT licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does Beaver Notes do?

Local-first notes app with no cloud, no AI, no tracking

What is Beaver Notes written in?

Beaver Notes is primarily written in JavaScript. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/beaver-notes/beaver-notes, and it has 1,344 GitHub stars.