About

NOTER is an open source, minimalistic, themeable markdown editor that seamlessly integrates with large-language models (LLM). If you happen to run ollama locally, NOTER will automatically connect to the instance. It is currently in beta stage: you can download it, run it and use it, but some functionality may be incomplete or missing.

Installation

NOTER is available for MacOS, Windows and Linux (deb, rpm, AppImage) - you can download our latest version from our releases page.

Note that we currently do not sign the MacOS and Windows binaries and that you may need to pass security warnings in order to run the application.

Features

edit markdown and preview rendered markdown
custom theme configuration
export markdown notes directly to good looking PDF (example)
navigate your notes (in a default notes folder) quickly with sidebar and filename filter
seamless integration with open source large language models, such as provided by ollama
informative status bar shows live character count and more
load and save any text document
inline help

A note on privacy

We value privacy and NOTER comes with all assets like fonts packaged and we also do not track you on this website, nor does NOTER connect to any other server except for the LLM endpoint, which you can run locally with ollama as well. In 2025, where almost any interaction on the web is tracked, enjoy a moment of calm with a classic desktop application, that respects your online freedom.

Demo

Screenshots

Reference

Access help within the editor with CTRL-H or F1.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard Shortcut	Functionality
CTRL-E	Export note to PDF
CTRL-B	Toggle sidebar
CTRL-G	Call out to the configured LLM and insert response to a prompt
CTRL-H, F1	Toggle help
CTRL-N	Create a new note
CTRL-O	Open an existing file
CTRL-P	Toggle HTML preview
CTRL-S	Save file
CTRL-SHIFT-S	Save file as …
CTRL-+	Increase font size
CTRL– (minus)	Decreate font size

Configuration

You can customize the editor in many ways, using a config.json file located in standard locations for different platforms.

OS	Location of configuration file
Windows	`%APPDATA%`
Linux	`$XDG_CONFIG_HOME` or `~/.config`
MacOS	`~/Library/Application Support/noter`

Changes are applied at editor startup time. Below is an example config file.

{
  "window": {
    "opacity": 1,
    "width": 900,
    "height": 550
  },
  "font": {
    "colour": "blue",
    "size": "16px",
    "family": "monospace, monospace"
  },
  "background": {
    "colour": "white",
    "gradient": null,
    "image": null,
    "opacity": "100%"
  },
  "status-bar": {
    "font": {
      "colour": "black",
      "size": "14px",
      "family": "Arial"
    },
    "background": {
      "colour": "white"
    }
  },
  "preview": {
    "font": {
      "colour": "black",
      "size": "20px",
      "family": "Arial"
    },
    "background": {
      "colour": "blue"
    }
  },
  "ollama_host": "http://localhost:11434",
  "ollama_model_name": "gemma"
}

Authors

NOTER was written in winter 2025 by The Distributed Temporary Working Group.

Development notes

We compiled a Git tutorial to get started with version control.