this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
126 points (94.4% liked)

Selfhosted

56463 readers
721 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

  7. No low-effort posts. This is subjective and will largely be determined by the community member reports.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I built a note-taking app because the one I wanted didn't exist. Clean UI, local .md files, no cloud, no account.

Built with Rust + Tauri 2.0 + SvelteKit. Full-text search powered by Tantivy. Graph view, AI writing tools (bring your own key), Obsidian import, version history.

Available for Linux (AppImage, APT, AUR), Windows, and macOS. Source: https://codeberg.org/ArkHost/HelixNotes

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Qzr@programming.dev 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

If you want to try HelixNotes, be aware it overwrites the front-matter of notes you open (view only, no edit needed).


Hi ArkHost,

Obsidian user here. I tried HelixNotes for a couple of minutes and here's my feedback:

  • I like that you support compatibility/converting Obsidian vaults. I wish you would at least support Obsidian's wiki links directly. I won't convert all my notes just to try if I like your editor.
  • View mode doesn't seem to really do anything. Ah wait, seems like I can only click links in view mode (no visual distinction between normal editor and view-mode apart from the tiny view mode badge). But that opens the linked note in my default .md viewer, not the HelixEditor itself. IMO view-mode should be visually distinct and also work together with source-mode (so I can edit in source mode and then click view-mode to see the rendered note).
  • I like the simple look, although the UI is not as polished compared to Obsidian.
  • I need Math support ($ ... $).
  • I hate that you update notes front-matter even if I just view and not edit them. Only change notes I am editing myself. I just had a look and now you changed the format of my notes. Re front-matter it would also be good if that behavior is documented somewhere.
  • I closed my vault (clicked on the folder icon in the top right) and wanted to reopen it, but got an error: Failed to acquire LockFile: LockBusy.
  • The graph view opened but stayed empty.

Feel free to use my feedback however you want, or don't. Personally, there's more than one deal-breaker for me to switch from Obsidian to HelixNotes, without even considering the nice-to-have features added by all the plug-ins. I recommend you to listen to people who are more likely to use your editor than me, or are already using it. I hope my comment doesn't come over too negatively. I tried to give honest feedback why personally I won't use HelixNotes anytime soon. I wish you all the best.

[–] Qzr@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

You even overwrite previously existing front-matters. From just looking at a note. This is a fucking no-go! Luckily I was able to revert all the unwanted changes HelixNotes applied to my vault.

This is a warning for everyone who wants to try HelixNotes with an existing vault.

[–] ArkHost@lemmy.world 1 points 19 hours ago

Fixed in v1.1.0

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)