Notable

Last reviewed Aug 26, 2026 · 775 words

Notable's entire storage format is a folder of .md files with a few lines of YAML at the top of each. That single design decision is why it earned 23,499 stars, why you can quit using it tomorrow without an export step, and why "self-hosting" it means running a file sync rather than a server. It is a desktop app, not a service, and the honest guide to it is about where it sits in a stack, what it pairs with, and why I now recommend it only with a caveat attached.

A note is a file, and that is the whole architecture

Open Notable's data directory and you find notes/ full of Markdown and attachments/ full of whatever you dragged in. A note looks like this on disk:

---
title: Router config 2024
tags: [Homelab, Networking]
created: '2024-03-02T10:14:00.000Z'
modified: '2024-03-09T18:41:00.000Z'
---

WAN on port 1, VLAN 20 for IoT...

Tags are a front-matter list, nested tags use slashes, and the sidebar is built by scanning that folder. There is no database, no index file you can corrupt, and no proprietary block format. Search is full-text across the folder. Rename a file in your editor and Notable picks it up; grep works; a git repository over the folder gives you history for free. For a 256 MB-of-RAM Electron app, that is a remarkably light footprint on your data.

Sync is your job, and it is an easy one

Because Notable never talks to a network, cross-device use means putting the data directory somewhere that syncs. Syncthing is the natural fit: point it at the folder, and 2 laptops share notes with no server at all. A Nextcloud folder works just as well if you already run one, and gets you a web view of the raw Markdown on a phone. The one rule is not to edit the same note on 2 machines while one is offline; you will get a conflict copy rather than a merge, which is the same behaviour as any file sync. Set the app's data directory to the synced path on each machine and you are done. Any other file sync you already trust will do the same job.

Development slowed, and the source stopped with the 1.8 series

This is the caveat. Notable's public repository, the one with the stars, contains the source up to the 1.8 releases from around 2020. Newer builds have shipped as binaries without corresponding source, and activity on the open repository has been sparse for years. The listed con "development has slowed" is putting it gently. In practice: the app works, it is stable, and there is nothing in a Markdown reader that rots quickly. But if "open source" is a requirement rather than a preference, you are running an old release or trusting a closed one, and you should know that going in. The desktop-only con is the other limit: there is no mobile app, so phone access means a generic Markdown editor over the same synced folder.

Joplin, SilverBullet or Logseq if the caveat bothers you

The good news is that the plain-file architecture makes leaving trivial. SilverBullet is the closest philosophical successor: a folder of Markdown, but served from a small self-hosted server with a proper web app, so phones work and there is a live project behind it. Joplin is the mainstream choice with mobile apps and end-to-end encrypted sync, at the cost of storing notes in a database and exporting to Markdown rather than living as Markdown. Logseq is the pick if your notes are an outliner and a graph rather than documents. All three read a Notable folder with, at most, a front-matter tweak. The notes apps you own post compares the field, and if you are leaving Evernote specifically, the migration path into any of them is better documented than the path into Notable.

What I'd do

If you already use Notable and it works, keep it: put the data folder under Syncthing, add a nightly git commit, and stop worrying about the app because your notes do not depend on it. If you are choosing today, do not start here. Start with SilverBullet for the same plain-Markdown promise with a maintained server and phone access, or Joplin if you want the conventional app experience. Either way, insist on the one thing Notable got right: notes as files you could read with cat in 20 years.