Trilium Notes
Hierarchical notes for large personal knowledge bases, self-hosted.
About
Trilium Notes is an open-source hierarchical note-taking application for building large personal knowledge bases, now continued by the TriliumNext community after the original author stepped back in 2024. Notes arrange into an arbitrarily deep tree, and a single note can be cloned to appear in multiple places. The rich WYSIWYG editor handles tables, images, and math with Markdown autoformat; specialized note types cover source code with syntax highlighting, canvas sketching via Excalidraw, mind maps, geo maps with GPX tracks, and book-length content.
Power features include full-text search with advanced operators, note relations and attributes for semantic connections, relation/link maps, seamless note versioning, per-note encryption, JavaScript scripting, custom widgets and themes, a REST API, Evernote/Markdown import-export, and a web clipper. It runs as a desktop app or a self-hosted server (Docker-friendly) with a touch-optimized mobile web frontend, and the project claims it scales to 100,000+ notes — a provider claim with no published independent benchmarks. It is AGPL-3.0 licensed with roughly 38,400 GitHub stars on the community fork, and documentation lives at docs.triliumnotes.org. Tradeoffs: there are no native mobile apps, the learning curve is steep, and the community-fork transition means long-term governance is still proving itself.
What it can do
- Arbitrarily deep note tree with note cloning across locations
- Rich WYSIWYG editing with tables, images, math, Markdown autoformat
- Code notes with syntax highlighting; canvas (Excalidraw), mind maps, geo maps
- Note relations, attributes, and relation/link map visualizations
- Full-text search with advanced operators and note hoisting
- Per-note encryption and seamless note versioning
- JavaScript scripting, custom widgets, themes, REST API
- Self-hosted sync server; Evernote/Markdown import-export
- Web clipper browser extension
- Touch-optimized mobile web frontend
- AGPL-3.0, ~38.4k GitHub stars on the TriliumNext fork
Setup
Download the desktop app for Windows, macOS, or Linux from the TriliumNext releases, or deploy the server with Docker (docker run per the docs) and open it in a browser. Set a password on first launch. Notes live in the app's database — back up the data directory. Sync across devices via the self-hosted sync server.
Prerequisites
A desktop OS for the app, or Docker/a server for the self-hosted edition.
Use cases
Works with
Trust score — 8/10
Scored 8/10 (metrics tier, metrics-v1). Evidence: ~38.4k GitHub stars on TriliumNext/Trilium with commits pushed October 16, 2026; AGPL-3.0; the fork's own documentation confirms the hierarchical model with cloning, per-note encryption, scripting, REST API, self-hosted sync, and the 2024 community-takeover history. Strengths: the deepest hierarchical organization of any open notes app, strong power-user automation, active community maintenance. Docked for: (1) the 100k+ note scaling claim is provider-stated with no published independent benchmarks; (2) no native mobile apps; (3) community-fork governance is still proving long-term stability. License: AGPL-3.0.
★ 38,355 GitHub stars
How the trust score is built
Full methodology →- Adoption · stars/downloads, log-scaled vs peers
- 9.0/10
- Maintenance · recency, releases, issue load
- 8.0/10
- Openness · license + docs
- 10.0/10
- Manual review · sanity read + red-flag check
- 7.0/10
- · ~38.4k GitHub stars on TriliumNext/Trilium (Oct 16, 2026 snapshot); AGPL-3.0; community fork after original author stepped back 2024
- · Deep tree + cloning, per-note encryption, note versioning, JS scripting, REST API, self-hosted sync, Excalidraw canvas, web clipper
- · No native mobile apps; steep learning curve; 100k-note scaling claim provider-stated; fork governance still proving itself
Sources
Every fact above was checked against these sources. Where a claim comes from the provider and couldn't be independently verified, the text says so.