Flatnotes

Last reviewed Sep 13, 2026 · 759 words

Backing up Flatnotes is cp -r notes/ /backup/. That is the entire product decision in one command: every note is a plain .md file in one flat folder, there is no database, no attachments table, no proprietary export step, and if the project vanished tomorrow your notes would still open in any text editor. What you trade for that is features. There are no folders, no sharing, no mobile app, and one user per instance. If you can live inside those limits, it is the most honest notes app in the notes category.

The folder is the database

Flatnotes watches one directory. A note's filename is its title, its content is Markdown, and tags are #hashtags written anywhere in the body. That means you can create or edit notes from outside the app, with vim over SSH, with a script, with Obsidian or any editor pointed at the same folder, and Flatnotes picks the change up. The search index (built on Whoosh, a pure-Python full-text engine) is rebuilt from the files, so it can be deleted and regenerated at will. This design is why the app is genuinely lightweight: idle memory is around 60 to 80 MB, and the catalogue's 128 MB is generous.

Setup: six lines and one secret

services:
  flatnotes:
    image: dullage/flatnotes:latest
    environment:
      FLATNOTES_AUTH_TYPE: password
      FLATNOTES_USERNAME: me
      FLATNOTES_PASSWORD: pick-a-long-one
      FLATNOTES_SECRET_KEY: generate-32-random-chars
    volumes:
      - ./notes:/data
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"

FLATNOTES_AUTH_TYPE accepts password, totp (password plus an authenticator app), read_only for a public wiki-style view, and none if it sits behind your own auth proxy. The secret key signs the session token; change it and everyone is logged out, lose it and nothing bad happens beyond that. Put it behind TLS like anything else with a password field.

What it will not do, so you can decide in a minute

No hierarchy. Every note lives at the top level, and the intended replacement for folders is tags plus search. This works well up to a few hundred notes and starts to feel crowded past a thousand. No multi-user: it is one login, one folder, and there is no plan to change that. No first-party mobile app, though the web interface is responsive and works as an installed web app on a phone. No end-to-end encryption, no note sharing by link, no attachments beyond the image upload that drops files into an attachments subfolder. No sync engine of its own; it is a server, and you reach it through a browser.

Everything on that list is a deliberate cut, not a roadmap gap, and it is what keeps the code small enough to have shipped steadily since 2021.

The pairing that makes it a system

The trick most Flatnotes users discover is to sync the notes folder with Syncthing to a laptop and a phone, then edit locally with Obsidian on those devices and use Flatnotes as the always-available web window plus search. Because both sides are plain files, nothing conflicts as long as you do not edit the same note in two places within the same minute. Add the notes directory to your git or restic job and you have versioned history for free. The wider argument for owning your notes as files rather than as rows in someone's database is in notes apps you own.

Joplin, SilverBullet and Memos are the neighbours

If the missing pieces bite, the answers are nearby. Joplin has proper mobile apps, end-to-end encryption and notebooks, at the cost of a sync server and a SQLite database on every client. SilverBullet keeps the plain-Markdown model and adds a query language, live templates and a plugin system, which makes it the choice for people who want their notes to be a small programmable wiki. Memos is for short timestamped thoughts rather than documents, closer to a private Twitter. Flatnotes sits in the middle: longer than Memos, simpler than SilverBullet, and with none of Joplin's moving parts.

What I'd do

Flatnotes with TOTP auth behind Caddy, the notes folder synced by Syncthing to my laptop, Obsidian for long writing sessions, Flatnotes on the phone for lookups and quick captures. Restic snapshots of the folder nightly, which takes under a second because it is text. If a second person ever needs in, that is the signal to move to SilverBullet or Joplin rather than to bend Flatnotes into something it is not.