TriliumNext/Trilium

TriliumNext is the community-run continuation of Trilium Notes. It's worth a look if your notes have outgrown a flat file-and-folder hierarchy and you want the data on your own machine or server rather than inside a vendor's cloud. It is not a light notepad; expect a learning curve before the structure pays off.

The problem

You start with a pile of pages, then keep re-filing the same paragraph in three places because it relates to several projects. Web clippings, meeting notes and reference material get duplicated, and search across apps is weak. Trilium changes the filing step: one note lives in the tree but can be cloned into multiple locations, so editing it once updates every view. Attributes and queries then let you pull related notes together without moving them. The result is a knowledge base where cross-references matter more than where a note happens to sit.

What's different

The central idea is the tree plus cloning: a note keeps one identity and can appear in several branches, which is how it avoids the copy-paste duplication common in hierarchical apps. On top of that, attributes work like user-defined metadata and can drive queries and scripting, so the app is extensible without a plugin marketplace. A rich editor with tables, images and math, source-code notes, revision history, full-text search and note hoisting all sit in the same store, so you do not bolt three tools together.

The trade-off is that this is a power-user tool. The tree, clones and attributes are concepts you have to learn, and a small number of simple notes will feel over-engineered. The project is also on the AGPL-3.0 licence, which matters if you plan to modify and redistribute it inside a product. For a personal base, the bigger consideration is that the structure you invent is yours to maintain.

Who should try it

Good fit: a researcher, consultant or developer who accumulates linked notes over years and wants them on a self-hosted server with synchronisation to a desktop client, and who is comfortable with concepts like cloning and attributes. Poor fit: someone who wants a quick daily journal with almost no setup and no willingness to maintain a sync server, or a team looking for a shared wiki with granular role management the README does not describe. The desktop binaries for Windows and macOS are the lowest-friction path; sync between devices requires the self-hosted setup.

Requirements and limitations

Sync across devices is not a turnkey cloud service: you run your own sync server, and the installation instructions cover desktop, server and Docker paths. That means ongoing responsibility for upgrades and backups, not a one-time install. Note revision history helps recover edits, but it is not a substitute for backing up your database.

Migration is a real constraint. The README says instances through v0.90.4 remain compatible with the old zadam/Trilium v0.63.7, but later versions raise the sync version and block direct migration from that original project. If you are moving an old install, check that boundary before upgrading rather than assuming any release will open the old database.

HotRepo's take

HotRepo only began tracking this repository on 2026-10-24: it recorded 38,539 stars that day and 38,542 on 2026-10-25, with two daily-board appearances. That is a snapshot, not a growth curve, so persistence of interest cannot be judged. The project itself dates to 2017. Before committing, read the setup and upgrading pages for your target platform and confirm the sync-version migration boundary matches the release you plan to run.