Trilium Notes

About Trilium Notes

Trilium Notes is a free, open-source application for building a personal knowledge base, designed for people who accumulate large amounts of notes and want a powerful way to structure them. Unlike simple note apps, Trilium is built around a hierarchical tree of notes that can be nested deeply, with the unusual ability for a single note to appear in several places at once through cloning.

Trilium supports rich text as well as code notes with syntax highlighting, and it can store many types of content, from formatted documents and to-do lists to diagrams, images and even small scripts. Powerful features such as note attributes, saved searches, relation maps and scripting let advanced users turn it into something close to a personal database or wiki, while newcomers can simply write and organise notes in the tree.

A distinctive strength is its flexible deployment. Trilium is available as a desktop application for Windows, macOS and Linux, and it can also run as a web application on your own server, with synchronisation between a server and your desktop clients. This lets you keep a private, self-hosted knowledge base accessible from anywhere while retaining full control of your data, and content can be protected with encryption for sensitive notes.

Because of its depth, Trilium rewards users who want structure and scripting more than those who need a quick scratchpad. For researchers, developers and knowledge workers assembling a long-lived personal wiki, it offers an unusual combination of hierarchy, linking and extensibility in a free, open package.

Key features

• Deep hierarchical note tree with cloning
• Rich text and code notes with highlighting
• Attributes, saved searches and relation maps
• Desktop apps plus self-hosted web server with sync
• Encrypted protected notes and scripting

System requirements

A Windows, macOS or Linux desktop, or a server to host the web version. Notes are lightweight, so hardware demands are modest.

Tips

• Use note cloning to place one note under several topics without duplicating it
• Self-host the server edition if you want access from multiple devices