Solo — minimalistic private note‑taking app (HTML files, typography-first)

Solo is a privacy‑focused note‑taking app with a strong emphasis on typography and reading/writing experience. No cloud. No accounts. No AI. Your notes stay on your disk as plain HTML.

• Local-first: notes are files you own
• Typography-first: themes + fine-grained layout controls
• Timeline + notebooks + tags
• Integrations: Onyx Boox PDF annotations, Digikam tag-based image carousels

DEMO - see and test the app and it's visual themes.

Solo is a modern, privacy-focused note-taking application with an emphasis on typography and user experience. There's no AI, cloud storage and stuff. Just your thoughts.

I believe that your data is only yours and should not belong to any corporation or even single app. That's why it stays in your file system in plain HTML so that you could have access to it any time without additional instruments.

Why Solo

Most note apps lock you into a database, a cloud, or a proprietary format. Solo stores notes as HTML in your filesystem, so you can read, backup, sync, and migrate them anytime.

Download

Desktop (Linux, Mac)

• Download the latest release: Releases → Solo-x.y.z (recommended)
• Or build from source (see below)

Android

• Download the latest release: Releases → Solo-x.y.z (recommended)
• Or build from source (see below)

Contact

Contact me if you have any questions.

Features

Writing

• Rich text editor (TipTap)
• Links, images, tasks, headings
• Zen mode, keyboard shortcuts, word/paragraph count

Organization

• Notebooks (nested), tags (hierarchical)
• Timeline view + date picker navigation

Typography

• Themes: Air, Typewriter, Narrow, FBI, Alighieri, Terminal
• Controls: font, size, line height, margins, paragraph spacing, drop caps, content width

Integrations

• Onyx Boox: import / work with PDF annotations
• Digikam: insert image carousels based on tags

Technical Details

Development Stack

• React + TypeScript
• MobX for state management
• Vite for development and building
• TipTap for rich text editing
• Electron for desktop builds
• Kotlin for mobile

Feature Flags

Feature flags live in feature-flags.json at the project root and are read at compile time (inlined into the bundle via Vite define).

The top-level keys describe the run mode:

• PACKAGED — embedded/plugin build (__IS_PACKAGED__ === true)
• DESKTOP — native Electron client
• MOBILE — native Android client

{
  "PACKAGED": { "extended-search": false },
  "DESKTOP":  { "extended-search": true },
  "MOBILE":   { "extended-search": false }
}

The build mode is resolved entirely at compile time via the PLATFORM environment variable (each platform gets its own bundle):

Command	PLATFORM	Constants
npm run build:desktop	desktop	__IS_DESKTOP__ = true
npm run build:android	android	__IS_ANDROID__ = true
npm run build:packaged	packaged	__IS_PACKAGED__ = true
npm run build	—	builds desktop + android

Each flag is expanded into a compile-time boolean constant __FF_<NAME>__ (e.g. extended-search → __FF_EXTENDED_SEARCH__), so unused branches are tree-shaken out of the per-platform bundle.

Use the static flags object in code (best for tree-shaking):

import { flags } from './utils/featureFlags';

if (flags.extendedSearch) {
  // compile-time removed from bundles where the flag is false
}

A dynamic helper is also available (no tree-shaking, uses the inlined active flag set):

import { isFeatureEnabled } from './utils/featureFlags';

if (isFeatureEnabled('extended-search')) { /* ... */ }

Getting Started

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Development
npm run electron:dev     # Desktop version

# Production builds
npm run electron:build  # Desktop version

License

NO LICENSE

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