Local Notes

Markdown notes stored in a local folder on your computer, with [[wiki links]], backlinks, graph view, web clipper and search.

Local Notes - Markdown notes, stored on your own computer Local Notes turns Chrome into a private, local-first notebook. You write in Markdown, link notes together with [[wiki links]], see every connection in a graph, and clip text from the web straight into your notes. Everything is saved as ordinary .md files in a folder you choose. There is no account, no sync service, no cloud and no tracking. Your notes never leave your computer. If you like linked, local-first note-taking but want something that lives right inside your browser, this is for you. Because the files are plain Markdown, you are never locked in: you can open the same folder with any other Markdown editor at any time. WHY LOCAL NOTES - Your notes, your folder. Pick any folder on your disk and Local Notes reads and writes .md files there. Back it up, sync it with the tool you already trust, or put it under version control. - Private by design. The extension makes no network requests of its own and has no server. Nothing is uploaded, ever. - No lock-in. Plain Markdown files open in any text editor, including VS Code, Typora and many other Markdown apps. - Fast and lightweight. It opens in a browser tab or in Chrome's side panel, and it handles large folders thanks to caching and parallel loading. - Works the way you think. Link ideas, follow backlinks, explore the graph, search everything. GETTING STARTED 1. Click the Local Notes toolbar icon. The app opens in a new tab. 2. Choose "Open notes folder" and pick a folder. Use an empty one to start fresh, or point it at an existing folder of Markdown notes. 3. Click "+ Note" and start writing. After a browser restart, Chrome asks you to confirm access to the folder once more. Click "Reconnect" and you are back exactly where you left off, with your last note and open tabs restored. WRITING AND EDITING Markdown editor with three views. Switch between Edit, Split (editor and live preview side by side) and Preview. Ctrl+E cycles through them. Notes autosave about half a second after you stop typing, and you can press Ctrl+S to save immediately. Formatting bar and shortcuts. One-click buttons for bold, italic, strikethrough, inline code, heading levels, bullet lists, numbered lists, checkbox lists, quotes, code blocks and wiki links. Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I and Ctrl+K work as shortcuts. All formatting actions keep your undo history, so Ctrl+Z always behaves. Smart lists. Press Enter inside a bullet, numbered, checkbox or quoted line and the next item starts automatically. Press Enter on an empty item to end the list. Clickable checkboxes. Task lists in the preview are interactive. Tick or untick a box and the change is written back into the note file. Rich Markdown preview. Headings, bold, italic, strikethrough, ==highlights==, inline code, fenced code blocks, block quotes, horizontal rules, nested lists, task lists, tables and images. YAML frontmatter is read but kept out of the way. Syntax highlighting. Fenced code blocks that name a language are colored. Supported families include JavaScript and TypeScript, JSON, Python, shell and PowerShell, YAML, SQL, CSS, HTML and XML, and C-style languages such as Java, C, C++, C#, Go, Rust, PHP, Swift and Kotlin. Colors follow your light or dark theme. Images. Paste a screenshot or drag an image file into a note. It is saved into an attachments folder inside your notes folder and shown in the preview. Images are linked in the familiar ![[image.png]] form, and standard Markdown images work too. Outline and statistics. A live outline of your headings sits in the side column. Click any heading to jump to it in both the editor and the preview. The top bar shows a running word count and estimated reading time. Templates. Keep reusable note layouts in a Templates folder. Create a new note from a template, or insert one into the note you are writing. Templates can use {{title}}, {{date}} and {{time}}, and you can pick your own date format, for example {{date:YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm}}. If you have no templates yet, one click creates sample Daily, Meeting and Project templates. Daily notes. Press the calendar button or Alt+T to open today's note, created automatically in a Daily folder. If you have a template named Daily it is used to fill the new note. LINKING YOUR NOTES This is the heart of the app. Wiki links. Type [[Note Name]] to link to another note. Links also support folder paths, [[Folder/Note]], display text, [[Note Name|shown text]], and headings, [[Note Name#Heading]], which opens the note and scrolls straight to that section. Autocomplete. As soon as you type [[, a suggestion list of your notes appears. Use the arrow keys and Enter or Tab to choose one. Create from a link. Links to notes that do not exist yet are shown with a dashed underline. Click one and the note is created for you, in the right folder, and opened. Embeds. Write ![[Note Name]] on its own line to show another note's content inline. Write ![[Note Name#Heading]] to embed just one section. Embeds are depth-limited and cycle-safe, so notes can embed each other without breaking anything. Backlinks. The side panel lists every note that links to the one you are reading, together with the line that contains the link, so you see context, not just titles. Unlinked mentions. The app also finds notes that mention the current note's title in plain text without linking to it. Press "Link" and the mention is turned into a proper [[link]] in that note. It is the easiest way to weave an existing pile of notes into a connected network. Outgoing links. See every link in the open note at a glance, with missing targets clearly marked. Safe renaming and moving. Rename a note by editing its title at the top. Every [[link]] in your other notes that pointed to it is updated automatically. Moving a note to another folder updates links that use its full path. Graph view. Open an interactive map of your whole knowledge base with the graph button or Alt+G. Notes are nodes, links are lines, and well-connected notes grow larger. Zoom with the mouse wheel, pan by dragging the background, drag nodes to rearrange them, and click a node to open that note. The current note and its neighbors are highlighted. For very large collections, switch on "Only around current note" to see just the local neighborhood. Tags. Use #tags anywhere in a note, or add a tags: line to the frontmatter, for example tags: [project, idea]. The Tags tab in the sidebar lists every tag with its note count. Click a tag, in the sidebar or in a note, to see all matching notes. You can also type #tag into the search box and combine it with ordinary words. ORGANIZING AND FINDING Folder tree. Notes and folders appear in a collapsible tree. Right-click for New note, New subfolder, Rename, Open in new tab and Delete. Drag and drop. Drag a note or a whole folder onto another folder to move it. Drop on empty space to move it to the top level. Full-text search. The search box looks through note titles and note content as you type, ranks title matches first, and shows a highlighted snippet from each result. Press Ctrl+Shift+F to jump to it. Quick switcher. Press Ctrl+O, type a few letters and press Enter to jump to any note. If no note matches, the same box offers to create one with that name. Tabs and history. Open several notes in tabs: Ctrl-click or middle-click a note or link to open it in a new tab. Middle-click or use the cross to close a tab. Back and forward buttons, or Alt+Left and Alt+Right, walk through the notes you have visited, like a browser. Your tabs are restored the next time you open the app. WEB CLIPPER Capture what you find online without leaving the page. - Save selection. Select text on any web page, right-click and choose "Save selection to Local Notes". The text is saved into a Clips folder in a note named after the page. - Keeps formatting. Links, bold and italic text, lists, code, tables and images in your selection are converted to clean Markdown. - Save whole page. Right-click anywhere on a page to save its main article, with navigation, footers and sidebars left out. - Append to the open note. Prefer to add to what you are already writing? Choose "Append selection to the open note". - Keyboard shortcut. Alt+Shift+S clips your selection, or the whole page when nothing is selected. You can change the shortcut at chrome://extensions/shortcuts. - Source and metadata. New clip notes record the page address, the date and automatic tags (by default, "clip"), so you can always find where something came from. Clip the same page again and the new quote is added to the same note. If the app is not open when you clip, it opens quietly in a background tab and files the clip for you. If Chrome needs you to reconnect to your folder, clips wait safely in a queue until you do. SIDE PANEL OR FULL TAB Use Local Notes as a full-page workspace, or keep it next to the page you are reading. Right-click the toolbar icon and choose "Open in side panel", or press Alt+Shift+P. The layout adapts to narrow widths, with a menu button for the file list and a button for backlinks and outline, so it stays comfortable in a slim panel. SAFETY AND RELIABILITY Your notes are valuable, so Local Notes is careful with them. - Trash with restore. Deleted notes and folders are not erased; they move to a hidden .trash folder inside your notes folder. Open the trash to restore anything, delete individual items forever, or empty it. - Conflict protection. If a note changes on disk while you are editing it, for example because another program or a sync tool touched it, you are asked what to do. Overwrite it with your version, or keep both: your version is saved as a separate "(conflict)" note and the disk version is loaded. Nothing is silently lost. - Ordered saving. Saves are queued so they can never trip over each other. - Changes from outside are picked up. Edit your files in any other editor, then come back to the tab and Local Notes refreshes automatically. - Hidden folders are respected. Folders starting with a dot, such as .and .git, are never scanned or touched. SETTINGS Open the gear button to customize: - Clip folder, and the tags added to clipped pages - Daily notes folder and the name of the daily template - Templates folder - Attachments folder for pasted images - Theme: follow your system, or force light or dark Settings are shared between the full-tab app and the side panel. PERFORMANCE Local Notes is designed to stay quick as your collection grows. Note contents are cached between sessions, so only files that actually changed are read again. Files load in parallel with a visible progress counter, and links, tags and search text are parsed once per note rather than on every keystroke. Even folders with thousands of notes open quickly after the first load. KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS Ctrl+S - save now Ctrl+O - quick switcher Ctrl+E - cycle Edit / Split / Preview Ctrl+Shift+F - search Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I, Ctrl+K - bold, italic, wiki link Alt+N - new note Alt+Shift+N - new note from template Alt+I - insert template Alt+T - today's daily note Alt+G - graph view Alt+Left, Alt+Right - back, forward Alt+Shift+S - clip selection or page (browser shortcut) Alt+Shift+P - open the side panel (browser shortcut) Esc - close the graph, dialogs and pop-ups PRIVACY AND PERMISSIONS Local Notes does not collect, transmit or sell any data. It has no analytics, no remote code and no servers. Your notes stay in the folder you chose. Why the extension asks for each permission: - Access to your chosen folder: granted by you through Chrome's folder picker, used only to read and write your notes. - storage: remembers your settings and holds web clips until they are filed into your notes. - contextMenus: adds the right-click clipping commands and the "Open in side panel" item on the toolbar icon. - activeTab and scripting: when you choose to clip, reads the selection or main article of the current page, and only then. The extension has no background access to the sites you browse. - tabs: opens the notes app in a tab, or focuses it if it is already open. - sidePanel: lets you show Local Notes beside the page you are reading. The extension requests no access to your browsing history, and it does not read pages unless you clip them. WHO IT IS FOR - Students who want linked lecture notes and a clean way to clip sources. - Researchers and writers building a connected library of ideas, quotes and references. - Developers who keep technical notes and code snippets in Markdown. - Anyone who wants a private second brain, a journal or a daily log, without handing their thoughts to a cloud service. TIPS - Start a "Home" note and link to your main topics from it. Then explore with the graph. - Use one note per idea and link generously. Backlinks and unlinked mentions will show connections you did not plan. - Put your notes folder inside a folder that is already backed up or synced, and you get backup and multi-device access for free. - Keep a Daily template with Tasks and Notes sections, and open it every morning with Alt+T. - Clip with Alt+Shift+S while researching, then tidy and link the clips later. Local Notes: your notes, in your folder, under your control. WHAT'S NEW IN VERSION 2.0.2 - Fixed a false "file changed on disk" warning that could appear while you were typing. Saves now run strictly one after another, and differences that are only Windows versus Unix line endings no longer count as a conflict. - Packaging and store-listing updates, with a refreshed icon set.