Use cases
A second brain
that answers to no one.
Journals, reading notes, plans, and ideas as real files on your own disk. NoteX Desktop works without an account, offline, free, and every note will still open long after the apps of 2026 are gone.
Local-first
No account. No cloud.
No permission needed.
Download NoteX Desktop, open it, start writing. The full editor, templates, PDF toolbox, and themes work without ever signing in. Your notes live in a real folder on your disk, in an open JSON .notex format or plain Markdown, and the Local workspace never syncs anywhere, by design.
Offline is not a degraded mode; it is the default. On a plane, in a village, during an outage: your second brain does not care.
Get NoteX freeJournal: July 20
Slow morning, fast ideas.
Three good things
- Finished The Design of Everyday Things, notes in the Reading List
- 12 km along the corniche before the heat
- Kyoto trip: flights finally booked
Tomorrow
A journal entry in the Local workspace. It exists on one disk on Earth: yours.
Files with faces
A folder that looks
like your life.
Every NoteX note carries its own icon inside the file, and NoteX renders it live in Windows Explorer, on the desktop, and in open and save dialogs. Your journal looks like a sunrise, your trip plan like a plane, your budget like a receipt. Copy a note to a USB stick and the icon travels with it.
Notes stay kilobytes, not megabytes, so a decade of thinking fits anywhere.
How file icons workWindows Explorer, not a mockup of an app: each note shows its own icon.
Starting points
Six templates,
zero blank-page dread.
The built-in starters. More templates are on the way.
Daily mechanics
Small features that
make a habit stick.
⭐ Favorites
Pin the journal, the reading list, and whatever this month is about. They sit at the top of the sidebar, one click from anywhere.
🔍 Search that keeps up
Cross-note search finds that half-remembered idea from March. Ctrl+F inside a note, and because notes are files, even grep works.
⚡ Opens before doubt does
Under a second to open in our internal benchmarks. The distance between a thought and a note is one keystroke, not one loading screen.
🎨 Blocks for everything
To-dos, toggles, callouts, tables, even LaTeX for the mortgage math. Type / and the whole toolbox appears.
🗑️ Trash with restore
Deleted is not gone. The trash keeps your notes until you decide, and restore is one click.
🌗 8 themes
NoteX Dark for midnight journaling, Sepia Warm for Sunday reading notes, High Contrast when your eyes ask for it.
The long game
Your second brain should
outlive every app.
Notes apps come and go; your notes should not. Everything you write in NoteX is an open file you can read without NoteX: JSON you can parse, Markdown you can open in anything, exportable in bulk with one command. Back them up like photos, version them like code, will them to your grandchildren like letters.
And it is free. If someday you want sync across devices or a shared workspace, sign in and choose a server. Until then, NoteX asks nothing of you but the writing.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an account to use NoteX?
No. The desktop app is fully usable without signing in: the whole editor, templates, themes, and the PDF toolbox. An account only matters if you later want sync across devices or shared workspaces.
Where exactly are my notes stored?
In a real folder on your disk (by default ~/Ultra/NoteX), as open JSON .notex files or plain Markdown. You can browse them in Windows Explorer, back them up, or put them in git. See files you own.
What templates come built in?
Six starters: Meeting Notes, Journal, Project Plan, Weekly Planner, Reading Notes, and Blank. More templates are on the way.
Does it work offline?
Completely. The Local workspace never syncs anywhere, and the app does not need a connection to open, edit, search, or export. Offline is the default state, not a fallback.
Is the desktop app really free?
Yes, free to download and free to use with local files. Teams and enterprises with bigger needs can talk to us. It runs on Windows today, with macOS in the works.
Your notes deserve a better engine.
A Notion-style block editor on the engine behind the world's most popular code editor. Notes stay files you own, extensions add what you need, and AI plugs in natively. Free to start, on web and desktop.
Free to start · Your files, your disk · Windows desktop & web