Trilium Notes

What is Trilium Notes?

Trilium Notes is a hierarchical note taking application with strong focus on building large personal knowledge bases. It supports note trees, cloning notes into multiple places, rich attributes, scripting and end-to-end encrypted sync with a self-hosted server.

Best for

People building a long-term structured knowledge base

Why choose Trilium Notes

Trilium is built for people whose notes have a shape. It organises everything in a deep tree, lets you clone a note so it appears in several places at once, attaches attributes for metadata and scripting, and adds canvas and relation maps for thinking that is not linear. It is a knowledge base that grows with a decade of material without collapsing into a flat pile of documents, and its sync is encrypted and can point at your own server.

Replaces

• Evernote
• Obsidian Sync
• Notion

Key features

• Deep note hierarchy with cloning
• Attributes and scripting
• Canvas and relation maps
• Encrypted sync to self-hosted server

What to watch out for

The feature depth is real, and so is the learning curve — this is not an app you will master in an afternoon, and the hierarchy-first model will frustrate anyone who thinks in tags. Scripting and custom attributes are powerful but assume a technical user. The desktop application is the primary experience; the browser version requires running a server, and the mobile story is a responsive web interface rather than a native app. Development pace fluctuates, so some rough edges persist.

How to deploy

• Docker
• Desktop app

Getting started

Start with the desktop application and the default notebook, and spend time with the tree structure before creating anything elaborate. Learn note cloning and attributes early — they are the features that change what the tool can do, and discovering them after building a large notebook is more work. If you set up sync, host the server yourself and treat its data directory as critical; back up both the server and your local workspace. Export to Markdown occasionally to confirm your notes remain readable outside the application.

Typical setup

The desktop application is the primary home, with a self-hosted sync server on a small machine providing encrypted synchronisation between devices. Users who want the browser experience run the server in a container and reach it over the local network or a VPN. Notebooks tend to be long-lived and large, so the workspace directory is usually included in whatever backup routine the user already runs for documents.

Who should look elsewhere

Not for someone whose notes are linear and few. The hierarchy, cloning and attribute model is a genuine investment to learn, and it rewards heavy users rather than light ones. Anyone wanting a simple, fast Markdown notebook will spend more time learning this than the tool returns.

Project health

• GitHub stars: 38,108
• Last code push: 2026-09-30
• Open issues: 671
• Status: actively developed

Figures pulled from the GitHub API and refreshed periodically.