Herkos Notes
In development: it cannot be downloaded yet.
Private notes for Android, Windows, Linux and the web. Every note is encrypted on your device, to your own key, before it leaves, and kept on Nostr relays that you choose. There is no Herkos account and no Herkos server: your notes belong to your key, not to a company.
What it does
- Markdown, with a preview that shows text and nothing else: no scripts, no images loaded from elsewhere.
- Drawings made with a finger, kept inside the note as text: encrypted, synced and kept in the history like the rest of it.
- Three panes on a desktop, tabs and a focus mode; a list and the note on a phone. In 25 languages.
- Notebooks, tags, pinned and favourite notes, and a trash you can empty or restore from.
- Search on your device. Everything is encrypted, so no relay can search for you: the index is built here, from the notes once they are decrypted.
- Works without a connection. The notes are kept on the device, encrypted, and go up when the network comes back.
- Conflicts that lose nothing. If you edit the same note on two devices while offline, you see both versions side by side and choose: this one, the other, or keep both.
- History. Earlier versions are saved as encrypted checkpoints, and you can go back to any of them.
- A lock for a note, with its own password, and a PIN for the app, with fingerprint or face where the system has them.
- Share a copy with another account. Paste its
npub: the note goes to that account alone, sealed and gift-wrapped (NIP-59), and it finds it in "Received from others", to keep among its notes or discard. From then on each has its own copy; nothing is edited together. A locked note is not shared. - Your relays: three to start with, up to eight, added by hand or from a
list of known ones. A relay on your own device or home network may be
ws://. - Backups: your notes in a file protected by a password of their own;
every week, without asking, a copy encrypted with your account in a folder
of the device (the last five are kept); and your key as an encrypted
ncryptsec. Signing out first sends what is only on this device, then says how many notes you would lose, if any. - Drafts from other Nostr apps, read-only in a section of their own. You can import one as a note; the original is never touched.
- Sign in with the key you already have: an
nsec, anncryptsec, abunker://link or the QR code of a remote signer. The same key as Herkos Mail and Herkos Calendar.
How it differs from other encrypted notes apps
Some companies make good encrypted notes apps, and if you already use one, it may be all you need. The difference with Herkos is not whether your notes are encrypted. It is who keeps them, and what you need to get in.
| Herkos Notes | An encrypted notes app from a company | |
|---|---|---|
| What you need | A Nostr key, made in Herkos Mail or any Nostr app. No email address, no password with us, no sign-up | An account with the company: an email address and a password |
| Where your notes are | On the Nostr relays you choose, your own included | On the company's servers, or on your own if it lets you host one |
| Title, text, tags and notebook | Encrypted (NIP-44, to your key) | Encrypted |
| What the server knows | A random identifier for each note, how many there are and when you edit them | Your account, how many notes you have and when they change |
| Format | Open: Markdown in Nostr's standard for private drafts (NIP-37), described in public | The company's own; to leave, you export |
| If the service closes or your account is blocked | There is no account to block: your notes stay on your relays | You keep what you exported |
| Source code | All of it, MIT. There is no server | The best known publish theirs too |
What they do better
- They are finished. The best known have been in use for years, and some have been audited. Herkos Notes is still in development and has not been.
- More than text. Images, files, web clippers and rich editors. Herkos Notes keeps to Markdown text and drawings for now.
- Working together. Herkos Notes can send a copy of a note to another account, but two people cannot edit the same note together.
- Deleting is final on their side. On Nostr a deletion is a request: a relay may keep its copy, still encrypted.
- Very long notes. Many relays refuse events above a size limit, so one very long note may not fit in a single event.
- iPhone and Mac. The best known have apps for both; Herkos does not yet.
Two things are no better anywhere. The relays you use see your IP address and when you write, as any server sees its visitors. And if you lose your key with no backup, nobody can open your notes again, us included: keep both backups.