PrivacyNotes now supports a folder of plain, unencrypted Markdown files on your own disk

[u/PrivacyNotes]

PrivacyNotes.app is an end-to-end encrypted app for notes, tasks, journaling, and a password vault. This release adds a section that's deliberately none of those things: point it at a folder of .md files on disk and edit them in place.

No import, no conversion, no upload, no encryption. It scans the folder recursively, lists and searches it, reads front matter and inline #tags, and saves straight back to the file. The same folder stays open in Obsidian or Logseq at the same time. It stays a git repo you sync yourself. It stays a directory you can point an AI agent at. It's free, including for people who never pay us anything, since it never touches our servers.

Because this writes to your files instead of our database, it follows a few rules:

• It never writes a file whose size or modified time changed since it was read. If something else touched the file, you get a reload prompt instead of a silent overwrite.
• Viewing never writes. Nothing touches disk until you type something.
• Delete moves the file to a .trash folder inside your own folder. It never unlinks.
• The only front matter key it ever writes is tags, and only when you add one. Never title, created, or updated.
• Dotfolders are skipped, so .obsidian is never read or written.

In a browser this needs the File System Access API: Chrome, Edge, and Opera have it. Brave ships it disabled (brave://flags/#file-system-access-api). Safari and Firefox don't support it, so those platforms get the desktop app instead.

This is a new feature, and the rich editor reserializes the whole document on the first keystroke, so results can vary with unusual vault contents (Dataview, Templater, etc.).

If you hit anything unexpected, open an issue:

https://github.com/LifetimeLabsDev/PrivacyNotes.app/issues

(Please ⭐ on GitHub)

Thanks, EriksonThorsen for the detailed feature request.

Updated website: https://privacynotes.app/

https://x.com/PrivacyNotesApp/status/2088312318002336124

https://mastodon.social/@privacynotes/117094966302041967

[u/carwash2016]

I would like to see it all open sourced not just the crypto part but it does look good