Standard Notes is an end-to-end encrypted note-taking application for individuals and professionals who want to capture notes, files, and long-term work in a place only they can read, with clients on Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, and the web.
What it is
Standard Notes is an open-source, end-to-end encrypted notes app written in TypeScript and licensed under AGPL-3.0. It lives in the note-taking and knowledge-management ecosystem, alongside the markdown and snippet workflows its topic list names. Notes and files sync between devices through encrypted sync, and the project's own framing states that only the user can read the content. The repository carries 6,633 stars, 551 forks, and 99 open issues, with the last push recorded on 17 September 2026. The homepage is standardnotes.com.
The concrete problem it solves is keeping personal and professional writing in one secure place without handing readable content to a hosted service. It positions itself as the open alternative to Notion, and its topic list also points at Evernote as the category it displaces. Where those products are hosted services, Standard Notes ships public source code and the option to run a private sync server, so the data path stays under the owner's control. It also states a focus on longevity and sustainability, which matters for anyone treating notes as a decades-long record rather than a temporary scratchpad.
Key capabilities
- End-to-end encrypted sync for notes and files, so only the account holder can read the stored content.
- Free, encrypted cross-platform sync across an unlimited number of devices.
- Native clients for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android, plus a web app at
app.standardnotes.com.
- Self-hosted sync server support, selected on the client with the
DEFAULT_SYNC_SERVER environment variable, for example DEFAULT_SYNC_SERVER=https://sync.myserver.
- An extensions and plugins system that developers can publish into, documented at
standardnotes.com/help/plugins/intro.
- Publishing through Listed, which turns notes into an online publication with automatic email newsletters delivered to readers, at
listed.to.
- Markdown and snippet-oriented authoring, reflected in the repository topics.
Who uses it and how
- Individuals and professionals who keep notes, files, and life's work in a single encrypted store, and who read and write across several platforms in a day.
- Privacy-focused users who need end-to-end encryption on the sync path rather than encryption at rest on someone else's server.
- Writers who draft inside the app and then publish through Listed, using its automatic email newsletters to reach readers without a separate mailing tool.
- Developers who build and publish their own extensions against the documented plugin interface.
- Self-hosters who register and log in against their own sync server by pointing the client at their own host instead of the default.
Getting started
The fastest start is the hosted web app: launch app.standardnotes.com, click Register, then download the client for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, or Android. To run the web app yourself, clone https://github.com/standardnotes/app.git, run yarn install and yarn build:web, then serve packages/web behind a web server such as python -m http.server 8080; for development, cd packages/web && yarn start and open http://localhost:3001.
How it compares
Against Notion, the product it names as the thing it replaces, Standard Notes offers source code under AGPL-3.0 and a self-hostable sync server rather than a closed hosted workspace. That difference decides data ownership: with Standard Notes the encryption keys and, if desired, the server belong to the user, and sync on unlimited devices is free rather than tied to a paid workspace tier. The trade-off is that it targets encrypted note capture and publishing, not the database-style pages and team workspaces that hosted suites bundle.
When to use it — and when not to
Choose it when encrypted notes that stay readable only to you, across many devices, are the priority, and when self-hosting your own sync server is acceptable work. A self-hoster takes on running that server and serving the compiled web app themselves, and the repository's own guidance for that setup links out to external help pages rather than covering it in the README. Skip it if the requirement is real-time collaborative documents or a shared team workspace, since nothing in the project's material describes those; the README also stays thin on server deployment detail, so anyone planning a production self-host should read the help documentation before committing.
