A sanctuary for your thoughts.
Local-first, purely Markdown.

Notewell marries the fluid speed of live Markdown editing with rock-solid SQLite local storage, bidirectional wikilinks, and per-note encryption. Zero cloud accounts. Zero surveillance.

macOS 12+ Monterey or newer Apple Silicon (M1 / M2 / M3 / M4) 100% Offline & Private Free forever

Opening Notewell the first time

Notewell is open-source and isn’t notarized by Apple, so macOS adds one safety step on first launch. After dragging Notewell into Applications:

Right-click (or Control-click) Notewell → Open, then Open again in the dialog.
If macOS says the app is “damaged” or can’t be opened, open Terminal and run this once:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Notewell.app

This just clears the download quarantine flag — you only do it once. Prefer a signed build? Grab the source and run npm run dist.

Welcome to Notewell 👋

🔒

Notes

✏️

Welcome to Notewell 👋

Notewell is a local-first Markdown notes app. This note is a quick tour…

Just now

Another note 📝

This note is linked from [[Welcome to Notewell 👋]]. Notice how backlinks work…

Today

Welcome to Notewell 👋

Notewell is a local-first Markdown notes app. This note is a quick tour — edit it however you like, or press ⌘N to start your own.

Formatting

Write bold, italic, ~~strikethrough~~, and inline code. You can even mix them for bold italic.

Blockquotes are handy for a highlighted thought.
— someone wise

Tasks

An open task
A finished task
Toggle me by clicking the checkbox

Links, tags & backlinks

A web link: Notewell on the web
A tag: #welcome — click it in the sidebar to filter
A note link: [[Another note]] — wiki-style backlinks

Tables

Action	Shortcut
New note	`⌘N`
Search	`⌘F`
Lock / Unlock	`⌘L`
Live / Markdown	`⌘\`

A few tips

Switch between Live and Markdown modes from the top-right.
Change the look with the appearance button — there are nine themes.
Lock a note with ⌘L to encrypt it behind a passphrase.

Happy writing! #notewell

RAW MARKDOWN (CODE)

# Welcome to Notewell 👋

Notewell is a local-first Markdown notes app.
This note is a quick tour — edit it however
you like, or press **⌘N** to start your own.

## Formatting

Write **bold**, *italic*, ~~strikethrough~~,
and `inline code`. You can even mix them for
***bold italic***.

> Blockquotes are handy for a highlighted
> thought.

## Tasks

- [x] An open task
- [x] A finished task
- [ ] Toggle me by editing brackets

## Tables

| Action | Shortcut |
| --- | --- |
| New note | ⌘N |
| Search | ⌘F |
| Lock / Unlock | ⌘L |
| Live / Markdown | ⌘\ |

RENDERED HTML

Welcome to Notewell 👋

Notewell is a local-first Markdown notes app. This note is a quick tour…

Action	Shortcut
New note	`⌘N`
Search	`⌘F`

Nine hand-crafted themes.
Tailored for every hour of the day.

Click any swatch below to switch the interactive app mockup theme instantly.

Designed for focus. Engineered for speed.

Everything you need to write and connect ideas, without the bloat of web-wrapped cloud suites.

⚡️

Local-First SQLite Engine

Your notes are stored in a dedicated local SQLite database on your Mac. Instant search across thousands of notes, instantaneous launches, and zero sync spin-wheels.

✨

Live Markdown Conceal

Raw Markdown syntax markers fade away while you read, giving you the clarity of a book. The exact moment your cursor lands on a line, markers seamlessly reappear for precision editing.

🔗

Bidirectional [[Wikilinks]]

Connect thoughts intuitively using [[Note Title]]. Notewell tracks all incoming references and displays interactive backlink pills at the footer of each note.

🏷️

Organize with #Tags

Tag thoughts on the fly with #work, #ideas, or #project/alpha. Click any tag in the sidebar to filter your note collection instantly.

🔒

Per-Note AES-256 Encryption

Press ⌘L on any note to seal it behind military-grade AES-GCM 256-bit encryption with PBKDF2 key derivation. Your secret thoughts stay private even if your laptop is borrowed.

📂

Zero Lock-In Markdown Export

Export any note anytime as clean, standard Markdown with ⌘⇧E. Your writing remains your property forever, readable in any text editor on any device.

No account. No telemetry. No servers between you and your thoughts.

Most modern note applications want your email address, your phone number, a monthly subscription, and access to all your thoughts on their cloud servers.

Notewell takes the opposite path: an offline-first desktop tool written to respect your privacy. Everything stays on your disk inside ~/Library/Application Support/notewell/.

🔒 AES-256-GCM Vault 💾 SQLite WASM Core 🛡️ Zero Telemetry 🌐 100% Offline Capable

{ "id": "7f8b9e01-...", "title": "Private Journal", "encrypted": 1, "blob": { "salt": "base64(16 bytes)", "iv": "base64(12 bytes)", "ciphertext": "base64(...)" }, "keyDerivation": "PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256", "iterations": 250000 }

Keep your fingers on the keyboard.

Every essential note-taking action has a native macOS shortcut.

⌘N

New Note

Instant scratchpad

⌘F

Find in Notes

Real-time full-text search

⌘1

Live Mode

Concealed formatting preview

⌘2

Markdown Mode

Side-by-side split view

⌘\

Toggle View

Switch between views

⌘L

Lock / Unlock

Toggle note encryption

⌘⇧E

Export Markdown

Save clean .md file to disk

⌘⌫

Move to Trash

Safely archive or delete

A sanctuary for your thoughts. Local-first, purely Markdown.

Welcome to Notewell 👋

Formatting

Tasks

Links, tags & backlinks

Tables

A few tips

Welcome to Notewell 👋

Nine hand-crafted themes.Tailored for every hour of the day.

Designed for focus. Engineered for speed.

Local-First SQLite Engine

Live Markdown Conceal

Bidirectional [[Wikilinks]]

Organize with #Tags

Per-Note AES-256 Encryption

Zero Lock-In Markdown Export

No account. No telemetry. No servers between you and your thoughts.

Keep your fingers on the keyboard.

Start writing with clarity today.

A sanctuary for your thoughts.
Local-first, purely Markdown.

Nine hand-crafted themes.
Tailored for every hour of the day.