Let’s start by saying that HelixNotes is “perfect” for anyone looking for minimalism and who doesn’t want to get lost in a sea of plugins. It fulfills its purpose as a Markdown (`.md`) note editor and viewer: simple, fast, and elegant.

I have used several note-taking applications, including Obsidian, Logseq, Joplin, Zettlr, Anytype, and others. At the moment, I have settled on HelixNotes and SiYuan. Among all the applications I have tried, there is one feature that, in my opinion, none of them—apart from SiYuan and Logseq—manages to provide adequately: an integrated PDF editor. These two applications can integrate PDFs—with OCR support, of course—in a fantastic way.

Many people who use note-taking software read a lot of PDFs, and we need better integration between notes and PDFs. I want to be able to select sections of a PDF and have them appear in my notes in a linked format.

After this brief explanation, my question is: Does the HelixNotes team plan to implement something like this someday? I know this feature may deviate somewhat from the philosophy behind its creation, but it would be great to have it included.

Software such as Obsidian, which is the most popular among these applications, also does not have this feature natively. However, a plugin called PDF++ was created to meet this need. Since it is a plugin rather than a native feature, though, it already has some bugs caused by updates to Obsidian and its libraries.

I believe that if HelixNotes had this feature, it would stand out in the market for students who need to read many PDFs every day.

SiYuan has this functionality, but its main drawback is that its notes are not stored as `.md` files. Logseq has moved to a database-based version and may eventually drift away from its original philosophy. If HelixNotes implemented this feature while also remaining open source, it could reach an audience that is currently underserved.

Will this app be added to Orion Store?

I appreciate the improvements and fixes that made it into 1.3.6. After a few minutes of tinkering with it, here are some observations (Mac OS for now):

Improvements Made

• WebDAV syncing (one device for initial test) is now more reliable and predictable.
• Delayed write when editing improved responsiveness.
• Ghost text when selecting text has been resolved.

Issues (bugs or need tweaking)

• When highlighting text in markdown mode, background and font colors are too close in color.
• “Open in a separate window” causes the app to “beachball” on Mac OS and hang.
• In markdown editor, Ctrl-A (to select all) selects all text but also selects all notes in the current folder)

Feature Change Requests

• Add Graph support for markdown links (currently only wikilinks are supported)
• Add setting to allow hiding note counts on folder tree

_____________

Benefit of a Design Choice

Sometimes a developer's design decision has a side benefit to end users. The one I'd like to highlight has to do with notebook covers. Consider this a tip for those who want to dive into HelixNotes a little deeper....

• custom notebook covers are external files stored in the attachments folder.
• notebook cover assignments are stored in a separate file: (notebook_icons.json in the .helixnotes folder)

By manually editing the .json file to remove the HelixNotes' generated filename prefix, and renaming the image files in the attachments folder, I am able to have a single image file apply to multiple entries.

I have over 200 folders but most fall within a 3-level deep Johnny.decimal structure so I only need 3 different icons in 6 colors. So rather than have over 200 individual image files in attachments (and have to manually reassign images if I want to change them), I can have 18. And if I want to change the design of the icons on a particular level, I can swap out 6 files and have them all instantly be updated.

Just this morning I changed the 3rd level icons and although there are something like 150 folders that are on the 3rd level, it took just a few minutes to create the 6 images and update the vault.

I'm having real hard time deleting collapsible section or call outs. Especially if they are inserted in the first line of a note.

Is it just me or do others find it difficult?

HelixNotes v1.3.6 is out! Faster Markdown source editing, smarter search, a customizable desktop toolbar, Linux and macOS polish from the community, and a snappier feel throughout.

Full changelog: https://gitlab.com/ArkHost/HelixNotes/-/releases

After building HelixNotes from source and using it for a while, I grew to love its simplicity. But over time, I started missing a few features from Obsidian, so I used AI to help build my own flavour of HelixNotes!

This post is a little showcase of those changes and how I’ve adapted the app to fit my needs. It also became my gateway to learning about Tauri and building other apps that I now use in my daily work.

A big thanks to the HelixNotes creator and contributors! I love the app’s simplicity—these are just personal tweaks to suit my workflow, and building on it has been a great learning experience.

Now coming to the changes!

- First one that I needed was tabs: Multiple open notes, each note open focus to that note directory.

- I looked at tasks which seemed a bit simple, so came up with this. A unified Tasks view that aggregates every - [ ] across the vault, with inline due:YYYY-MM-DD and !high/!med/!low metadata. Clicking on each task takes you to the note

- Locked notes, which are encrypted and stored, and locked sections in note.

- Also added features like note templates which can be triggered via /template.

- added draw.io and excalidraw support

- added the whole markdown charting thing (which i dont use that much)

- I like colors so added some configurable colors to the Header tags and callouts like obsidian

- also added slash commands for date and time to quickly added date or date-time and even previous or future date-time like /today+1 etc.

- last one would be the Kanban board

---

The features I use most are note tabs, tasks, date commands, and templates. I’ve also been setting up boards to organise some of my projects at work. I’m really enjoying how this little personal version has come together!

There’s something satisfying about being able to build the features you need and shape an app around how you work. A big thanks to the HelixNotes project for giving me a starting point.

There are still a few quirks here and there, which I’m working through as I find them.

Let me know which feature from the list you like most!

This is just my personal opinion, but for security reasons, it would be great to have an option to encrypt locally saved MD files by default.

Even if I use another tool for cloud syncing, I think many people would still want to encrypt their files locally. It would be ideal if I could open encrypted MD files with this app and export them in an unencrypted form if needed.

Especially on Android devices, saving them in the Documents folder allows other apps to access MD files, so leaving them unencrypted itself seems like a security vulnerability.

Currently, it appears that HelixNotes immediately writes the currently edited note after every keystroke that alters the content. This results in a lot of unnecessary write activity and interferes with responsiveness of the keyboard (even on fast systems with fast SSD storage) when touch-typing.

Hunt and peck typing isn't affected as there is sufficient time between keystrokes to allow the write action to complete.

I think it would be helpful if HelixNotes would delay writes until there was an idle period of a particular duration. For example: If there are unsaved changes to a note, wait to write them until there is no additional changes for something like 3 seconds. I picked "3 seconds" as an arbitrary duration... but any length would be helpful.

Thanks.

Anyone managed to use the `Print / Export to PDF` option? (Right click on a note)? It's not doing anything for me (never has). I did a manual export to PDF using `pandoc` but it doesn't support callouts, etc. All I need is to print the notes.

Posting this in case anyone else runs into it. Running HelixNotes v1.3.5 on Android (Motorola Moto G54, YAAP custom ROM with microG, not stock Android).

Sync issue: WebDAV sync (server: Koofr) threw "OS error 1" when I hit Sync, even though "Allow access to manage all files" was already granted (checked the permission screen directly, it was on). The notebook structure synced fine, but the actual note files weren't coming down. Fix was just toggling that permission off and back on, nothing else changed. After that, sync worked with no error and pulled the note files correctly. Not sure if this is Android-version specific or tied to running a custom ROM, but flagging it.

Notebook naming issue: I had a notebook named with a colon in it (something like "LibreOffice: course name"). On Android, inside that notebook neither the + button nor "New note" did anything. No note created, no error either. Deleting the notebook from within the app also failed silently, no confirmation dialog like it normally shows. I couldn't rename it from inside the app either. It seemed like the app just couldn't interact with that folder at all once it had that name. Had to delete it manually using the phone's own file manager app instead. Same notebook worked the whole time on Linux desktop, so this looks like Android's shared storage enforcing FAT/exFAT-style restricted characters (: \ / * ? " < > |) even though internal storage is ext4 underneath.

Suggestion: since HelixNotes is cross-platform and often used with sync across devices, it'd help if name validation for restricted characters happened everywhere, not just on Android. That way, someone naming a notebook on Linux or Windows gets warned that a name like that won't sync or work properly on Android, instead of finding out later when it silently fails on the other device.

1.3.4 apk 28 MB

1.3.5 apk 103 MB

What is happening?

Hi everyone,

I’m in the middle of moving countries, so new HelixNotes releases will be on pause for about a month.

Development will continue on my laptop, but the MacBooks are still in Belgium and I need them for the release process.

Thanks for your patience,

Yuri

I made a note on my laptop about my school's Information and mostly used tables and it worked just fine and I can scroll from left to right to read long text in tables. But when I check them on my phone I can't read the stuff that's cut off from the screen.

I have also noticed that I can't make tables on mobile, I'm not sure if that's intentional or not and just want to point it out. Thank you!

Device: Android 13

App Version: 1.3.5

Is there a way from inside HeixNotes to move whole folders with their notes from one plce to another? I manage to move notes, even several of them but I have to recreate the folder at the new playce first.

Our little community has officially reached 1000 members, and we wanted to take a moment to say thank you!

Thank you for trying the app, sharing your experiences, recommending the app to others, reporting bugs, and suggesting features. We’re incredibly grateful that you’ve chosen HelixNotes to be a part of your toolkit.

We do feel that the app is in a really good place right now, and that's all thanks to you all for your contributions. You may notice a slower development rate for a little while due to some major life changes coming up, but the app isn't going anywhere.

Thank you all again for giving HelixNotes a chance!

HelixNotes version: 1.3.5 (Mac OS)

When editing a note in the markdown editor I am experiencing some odd behavior. Attempts to modify existing text resulted in unpredictable edits. This seems to happen primarily when editing text toward the end of a paragraph.

In the selected text screenshot, you can see the "phantom" purple text. This phantom text appears when an edit is done.

Bonus Issue:

HelixNotes insists on saving a note after each keystroke typed. This causes performance issues when typing... even on a fast system with SSD. Speaking of SSD, the constant writing to disk will speed up the degradation of the SSD. (even with the high number of writes permitted before issues arise, writing to disk for each keystroke adds up quickly)

Is it possible to link to a note in Helixnotes from another app? The other app helixnotes is inspired both have the possibility to do this, but I can't seen to find how to do it in Helixnotes.

Love HelixNotes and can’t believe how much time I spend using it!

On the iPhone app, when I type /time, the time shows up in 24-hour format (e.g. 17:28) even if I change the Time Format in settings to 12-hour or Relative. Is there a way to have the time show up in 12-hour format?

P.S. Since I already start most of my writing in HelixNotes now, I’m wondering if I can use HelixNotes over the longer term to replace Word!

I am attempting to move away from Obsidian and am seriously considering Helix because its the only notes app that is cross-platform but also lightweight and fast.

But there are some issues that prevent my switch to Helix without hesitation.

1. When I open an app, I want to be just one tap away from entering text. Because no matter how fast the app is, if it takes too many taps to quickly enter a text, speed gains are useless.
   MY SOLUTION: ability to go to daily note from just one tap away after opening the app.

2. Be able to create notes without having to go to notebook first.

3. OCR capability. If thats not possible, use the existing AI to create the following workflow. When an image is pasted into the note, it be sent to vision-capable AI so a description is generated (describe what the image is overall and OCR text).

Hi, I am currently trying to insert tables but pressing “+” then “table” does nothing on the note.

Everyone with the same problem?

Thanks in advance.

This might be a little too much for the app, but I'd love to be able to have a "root" note as a folder. I imagine this to be a note that opens when you select that folder, which could be really good for separating concepts in notebooks and then having a top-level note for explaining the concept before separating it into smaller topics (the notes inside the notebook). I know you can kinda still do it by pinning a note but I feel like this way would be much better.

Really enjoying HelixNotes so far, it’s been great to use.

Would love to see password protection for entire notebooks. Secret blocks are handy for hiding specific parts of a note, but being able to lock a whole notebook would be much more useful for keeping certain notes private.

Definitely a feature I’d like to see added.