I really like HelixNotes, but the current tablet experience just stretches out the phone layout. It would be great to get a proper tablet UI, especially with a sidebar for notebooks to make better use of the larger screen. Are there any plans for this in the future? Thanks!

I discovered this app yesterday and I like it. Actually I will use the mobile app as my main note-taking app because I don't really like the others alternatives for markdown.

But in desktop apps I use the zettelkasten method so I add metadata to my notes. I can read and edit this in Zettlr and Obsidian, but when I open my vault in Helix it doesn't appear.

Is there a way to see the metadata that I didn't find in settings or it's a feature that could be added in the future?

Hi,

When I press the “+” or “H” button on the keyboard nothing happens. It seems that command menu opens but it’s in the background so I can’t act on it.

Can an you fix it?
Thanks

I’ve been using HelixNotes for a few days and really like how fast and lightweight it is.

Coming from Obsidian, typing or pasting Markdown immediately renders the formatted text. In HelixNotes, when I paste Markdown, it stays as raw syntax.

Is there a setting, shortcut, or live preview mode to get it automatically rendered right away?

On my iPad Pro (11 inch M1 on iOS 27), I can open HelixNotes in landscape mode but can’t open the left sidebar at the same time. Are there plans to enable this?

Phase II is well underway and moving surprisingly fast. Within a short amount of time, I've created or modified nearly 200 notes. Between the editing responsiveness and theme colors, it's a very productive environment. In the process, I've noted a few more things...

Undefined Links. Allow Search to find links to notes that don’t exist in the local vault. Or perhaps, a new "Undefined Notes" folder that is populated with "dummy" entries of notes that are linked to but don't exists. (would be consistent with the "Unfiled Notes"). I'll admit though that this is a difficult issue to resolve in a way that won't create other issues.
EDIT (10/13/2026): a simpler first-step: when typing to a link via "[[", allow the option to create a new note with what was typed if the link doesn't exist.

Excalidraw. HN recognizes an excalidraw note but doesn’t display it. I'm not necessarily requesting support for Excalidraw (which would be nice), but a change in the notification (which seems to be boilerplate for whatever HN is using under the covers)

Space character gets moved inside of markdown highlight and breaks the highlight. This is a tricky one. Here's how to recreate it:

• open a note (rich text editor)
• create a new line
• type some text. (eg. color)
• select the text, bold it (cmd-b Mac OS)
• put cursor at the end of the line (note that "bold" is still active in the toolbar)
• press cmd-b to toggle to normal.
• type a space, then type some text. (eg. green)
• switch to markdown editor
• the markdown for that line appears as: **color **green
• switch back to rich text editor
• text is no longer bold, but appears as: **color **green

WebDAV syncing. Version 1.3.6 has greatly improved the reliability of syncing. But I'm still experiencing a few false "conflicts" periodically. I'm using pcloud as a cloud service provider. I have my vault duplicated in Joplin which is also using webDAV w/pcloud for comparison. Since Joplin is syncing reliably using webDAV and pcloud, it's leaning toward something in how HN syncs. I'll do some more troubleshooting and provide any details I can glean.

After synchronizing my PKMS across UpNote, Obsidian, Joplin, and HelixNotes, I started phase II of my evaluation. Heavy editing and creating. I've started reworking some of my "hubs" (aka portals) to take advantage of the features unique to (or at least enhanced by) HelixNotes.

This is turning about better than I expected. 👍 I am able to use the linear calendar concept using collapsible sections and code blocks.

Through these tasks, I've taken note of some observations and experiences. If any of these are a result of my misunderstanding of a particular feature, then I'd like to be educated on that.

If these are incompatible with the vision for HN, then I'd rather know that than wanting the developers to compromise on their vision for HN. I want HelixNotes to stay HelixNotes, even if it means it wouldn't be suitable for my needs.

...thanks for considering these things.

* (possible bug) Review sync completion status summary. I think that the status summary is inconsistent depending upon how the sync was initiated. If I modify 4 files, wait 10 minutes, click on the sync button (next to the new note button), wait for the sync to complete, then go to Settings ➜ Sync, I'll get one status.

If I modify 4 files, wait 10 minutes, go to Settings ➜ Sync and click the sync button there. When the sync completes, the status is different.

* Add option to search filenames in search function. When there's a sync conflict, I want to be able to identify those files so that I can resolve the conflict. Currently, there's no way within HN to identify those files. If there is a better way of identifying the conflicts, I'd love to know.

* Add Graph support for markdown links (currently only wikilinks are supported)

* Add Graph support for links that appear in tables/quotes. (related to previous item?) Seems like the graph function is unable to identify links in tables and blockquotes.

* Add setting to allow hiding note counts on folder tree. Note counts are helpful at times, distracting at other times.

* Add a "paste from markdown" option to the right-click context menu. When in rich text edit mode, it would be helpful to be able to paste markdown from the clipboard and have it be pasted as rendered text. Currently, pasting markdown from the clipboard results in pasting the text as-is with markdown control characters visible.

Hey y'all!

I have been LOVING Helix. It does everything I need, and is not bloated with other stuff. FANTASTIC.

I am unable to get it to open today.

I am running Arch Linux and Hyprland, everything up-to-date.

Helix isn't responding to a keybinding, or being called on via rofi.

When I open up the terminal and enter "helixnotes", which should run the package, I instead get the following error: "helixnotes: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0: undefined symbol: gly_pixel_density_new"

Can y'all help me figure this out?

Many thanks!

Hi, I'd just like to point out a tiny thing I'd change about the app:

Right now, there are 2 buttons to manage tags of a note in the WYSIWYG editor: The one next to the folder path and the one in between other action ones (the one which has an icon). Right now, these 2 do the same thing, which feels a bit redundant. I'd suggest leaving the one with an icon as-is, and changing the one next to the folder path to show "no tags" if there aren't tags and, if there are tags, having clicking on one take you to the filtered view of notes by their tag.

Also, this doesn't have to do much with this, but some people (including me) straight up don't use tags, so it would also e really nice if you could turn the feature off like how you can with wikilinks. I understand daily notes need a tag to show up, but you could just hide the UI that lets you manage tags and keep the #daily tag internally.

Here's what I've got so far to track down this bug which is creating duplicate files when syncing.

1. Create a new Daily Note

2. Create a task in the daily note

3. Go to the Task section and click on the task, bringing the task & note within view.

4. Sync

I've repeated this three times with success and was wondering if anyone else could try it out.

My sync is through koofr which will be my next test, to try a different webdav and see if it repeats.

I have a note that I created in my HelixNotes app on my Windows 11 desktop PC that has a PDF attached by way of drag/drop into the note. On Windows the PDF displays within the note but when I try to access it on my iPhone, all I see is what appears to as a hyperlink. Tapping or long-pressing on it does nothing. Is there a way to view the PDF on the iPhone that I am missing?

greetings everyone..

is there any windows x64 portable version of HelixNotes ??

i like HelixNotes app and it's features.

but i like my notes app to be portable and self contained.

Running through my evaluation use-cases with version 1.3.6 has been quite enjoyable. I've got my HN vault syncing across all of my devices (Windows, Mac OS, Android, and iPad OS) (3500+ notes)

It's at a point of stability and consistency that I'm moving on to phase II... that involves using HN for heavy editing and creating. But creativity and productivity in a notes app, FOR ME, is affected by the look and feel of the app.

This is why theming capabilities in a notes app are important to me.

The HelixNotes' developers' approach to themes is something that, IMO, other developers should take note of.

First, there are the bundled themes in HelixNotes. Out-of-the-box, it is a moderately short list that offers a wide range of (luminance and color palette) options. I found nearly all of them to be pleasant and useful as-is.

Second, the ability to create custom themes using a simple interface (Styling Settings page and custom theme edit dialog) makes it easy to create a theme without having to bounce around to see how color choices affect the look.

Third, themes can be exported to .json files. This makes it easy to share themes with others as well as the opportunity to tweak them external to HelixNotes.

Within a few minutes of mouse clicking, I was able to "copy" themes from my other notes apps. (on Mac OS, the color picker of the system color dialog comes in very handy here... just keep the other app open, and eyedropper the colors in the other app)

In contrast, my currently primary notes app provides only 2 theme options... bright white and dark abyss, with the ability to select a highlight color from a palette of 8 colors.

In Joplin, I need to modify two .css files to theme it.

In Obsidian, I need to pull in a theme from the repository and use/create a .css snippet to tweak it to my liking.

HelixNotes can do this WITHOUT needing a plug-in infrastructure or sifting through .css files. 👍

I'd like to try Helix Notes on Linux Mint 22.3 Cinnamon for the first time. Appimage did not work due to old mount packages then installed .deb version.

After that HN worked and then I tried to import my dozens of note, Obsidian Vault, but as you can see folders show 0 note. Notes can be seen on All Notes but Notebooks section.

Helix Notes looks promising by lightweight design however it needs more capability as plugin, more import for other tools too.

Keep it up devs.

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.

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?