SideNotes

A quiet, local‑first second brain. Notion‑easy editor. Obsidian‑deep linking. Notes stay as plain markdown files on your Mac — no cloud, no account, no lock‑in.

Highlights

• Block editor — TipTap with a slash menu, drag handles, code blocks with syntax highlighting, and image paste/drop. Saves as plain markdown on every keystroke.
• Tables that actually grow — insert a 3×3 from the slash menu, then click any cell for a floating toolbar to add/remove rows or columns, toggle the header row, or delete the table. Drag column borders to resize.
• Markdown source view — one‑click switch in the top right of any note flips between rendered preview and the raw markdown source, so power users can edit the file directly without leaving the app.
• Wikilinks & mentions — type [[ for note autocomplete, @ for a unified picker (notes, tags, dates), # for tags. Backlinks panel always visible.
• Connections graph — Sigma + WebGL graph of every wikilink in your vault, coloured by folder, with hover highlighting and a "Focus on this note" mode that hides everything except the active note's neighborhood.
• Canvas — React Flow whiteboard for spatial thinking. Drag notes from the sidebar to embed them as live cards. Cards are freely resizable from any corner. Saves as .canvas JSON (Obsidian‑compatible).
• Daily notes — date masthead, mood strip, "yesterday's loose ends" auto‑pulled from the previous day. ⌘D opens today.
• Six themes — Paper, Ink, Forest, Dusk, Carbon, Rose. Each in light + dark. CSS‑variable driven so the editor, graph, and canvas all change at once.
• Local‑first — your vault is just a folder of .md files. Move it to iCloud Drive, Dropbox, or Syncthing for sync. The app doesn't run a sync service.
• Onboarding tour, daily tips, full shortcuts cheatsheet — opens on first launch and any time after via ⌘K or ⌘/.
• Export — PDF (via Electron's print engine), HTML, or plain markdown.

A look around

Connections graph Every wikilink in your vault, drawn as a Sigma + WebGL graph. Coloured by folder, with hover highlighting and a focus mode for one note's neighborhood.	Canvas React Flow whiteboard with sticky cards, text blocks, and live note embeds. Drag from the sidebar to drop a note on the board. Saves as Obsidian‑compatible .canvas JSON.
Daily notes A date masthead, a mood strip, and "yesterday's loose ends" auto‑pulled from the previous day so unfinished todos roll forward.	Project todos Any note can be a todo list. Open / done counters, a progress bar, and a backlinks rail down the right side.
Long‑form writing The same TipTap editor scales from a one‑line capture to a full essay. Tags inline, backlinks alongside, a clean reading column down the middle.	All notes Filter by title, path, or tag. Sort by edited or name. Tags render as coloured chips so you can scan a vault at a glance.
Six themes, light + dark Paper, Ink, Forest, Dusk, Carbon, Rose. CSS‑variable driven so the editor, graph, and canvas all repaint together.	Onboarding tour Opens on first launch and any time after via ⌘K. Daily tips drop a single hint per app open, and a full shortcut cheatsheet is one keystroke away.

Repo layout

side-deck/
├── electron/          # Electron main + preload (Node side)
├── src/               # React renderer (the app)
│   ├── components/    # Editor, GraphView, CanvasView, Sidebar, ...
│   ├── stores/        # Zustand stores (vault, theme, ui, ...)
│   └── lib/           # Markdown helpers, image saving, export
├── remotion/          # Product stills + launch video (Remotion)
├── scripts/           # Build helpers (electron rename, etc.)
├── build/             # electron-builder resources (icons, entitlements)
├── package.json
└── README.md

Install

Download SideNotes.app.zip from the latest release, unzip, and move to /Applications.

First launch is blocked by Gatekeeper (ad-hoc signed, not notarized). Right-click the app, click Open, then Open again. Or run:

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

Run the desktop app (dev)

npm install
npm run dev

Electron opens, you pick a folder for your vault, and you're off. The first launch opens an onboarding tour with the basics.

Build installers

npm run package:mac      # .dmg + .zip
npm run package:win      # .exe (NSIS)
npm run package:linux    # .AppImage + .deb

Tagged releases (vX.Y.Z) trigger .github/workflows/release.yml, which builds all three OSes in parallel and uploads them to a draft GitHub Release.

Stack

• Electron 33 + Vite 6 + React 18 + TypeScript
• TipTap (editor) with markdown round‑trip via tiptap-markdown
• Sigma 3 (graph) + Graphology
• React Flow / @xyflow/react (canvas)
• Tailwind 3 with CSS‑variable themes
• Zustand for state

Status

v0.2.0 — works on macOS, Windows, and Linux. The demo vault has rich linked notes for showing off the graph and canvas. PRs welcome.

Releases

• Latest release
• All releases & changelog

License

MIT.