Memos

Last reviewed Aug 26, 2026 · 744 words

Memos is a private microblog: one timeline, short Markdown posts, #tags, a search box. It replaces Google Keep and the notes-to-self chat you keep on your phone, and it does that job on 64 MB of RAM in a single container. It does not replace Notion or Obsidian, however the comparison pages frame it, and people who install it expecting folders, backlinks, and long documents leave disappointed within a week. Install it for capture, not for structure, and it is one of the lowest-maintenance services you will run.

One container, one volume, one port

services:
  memos:
    image: neosmemo/memos:stable
    ports:
      - "5230:5230"
    volumes:
      - ./memos:/var/opt/memos
    restart: unless-stopped

That is the entire deployment. The first browser visit to port 5230 creates the admin account. Everything, including the SQLite database and uploaded attachments, lives under /var/opt/memos, so backup is a copy of one directory. Memos also supports MySQL and PostgreSQL through the MEMOS_DRIVER and MEMOS_DSN environment variables, and I have never found a reason for a single-user instance to use them; SQLite handles years of memos without noticing, and it keeps the backup story to a single tar of that folder, which is the point of running something this small.

The stable tag is there for a reason

Memos moves quickly, and it has shipped breaking changes to the API and the database schema more than once since its first release in 2022. The project's own recommendation is the stable tag rather than latest, and I would go further: pin a specific version, read the release notes before bumping, and take a copy of the data directory first. Schema migrations run automatically on startup, which is convenient going forward and useless going back. A 30-second cp -r memos memos.bak before each upgrade has saved me a restore twice.

Tags and visibility are the whole organisation model

There are no folders and no notebooks. Structure comes from inline #tags (a tag list appears in the sidebar automatically) and three visibility levels per memo: private, protected (visible to logged-in users), and public. Public memos can be shared by link, which quietly turns Memos into a tiny personal blog for anyone who wants one. Search is full-text across content and covers tags. If that sounds thin, it is; the catalogue's "limited organization features" con is exactly right, and it is also why the capture workflow is fast. Fewer decisions at write time means more things actually get written down.

The API makes it a capture inbox for everything

Memos exposes a REST API and issues per-user access tokens from the settings page. A memo posted from a shell script, an automation, or a phone shortcut looks like this:

curl -s -X POST https://memos.example.com/api/v1/memos \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $MEMOS_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"content": "Check the UPS battery #homelab", "visibility": "PRIVATE"}'

Wire that into an n8n workflow or an iOS Shortcut and you have a capture box that accepts input from anywhere without opening the web UI. Webhooks fire the other way when a memo is created or updated, which is how people pipe memos into other tools. The mobile apps are third-party and vary in polish; the web UI works well enough as a home-screen bookmark that I stopped looking.

When to graduate

The tell is a memo that runs past a screen, or a wish for a second level of hierarchy. At that point the honest move is a real notes app rather than fighting Memos. Joplin is the safe default for notebooks and sync across devices; Trilium if you want deep hierarchy and scripting. Plenty of people keep Memos alongside one of those as the intake layer, and the notes apps you own roundup lays out that split in detail.

What I'd do

The compose file above with a pinned version tag, the data directory in the nightly backup job, one access token for a phone shortcut, and a #tag convention decided in the first hour (mine is one tag per project plus #idea and #todo). Use it as the place thoughts land, review the timeline weekly, and move anything that grows into a document over to Joplin. Left alone it will run for a year on a Raspberry Pi with nothing but the occasional pinned upgrade.