Trilium Notes

A hierarchical knowledge base for building a large personal wiki, with note cloning, custom attributes, scripting and a server you host yourself.

View project on GitHub

The original Trilium project entered maintenance mode, and development continues in the community-maintained repository linked above. Flink is not affiliated with the project.

What it is

Trilium arranges notes in a tree of any depth. What makes it unusual is cloning: a single note can appear in several places in the tree at once, so a meeting note can live under both the project and the person it involves without being duplicated. Notes can carry attributes such as labels and relations, which can be used for search, automatic organisation and templates.

Beyond text notes, Trilium supports code notes, relation maps, canvas drawings, saved searches and scripts written in JavaScript that can extend the app itself. A sync server can be installed on a home server or VPS, which also gives you access to your notes through a web browser.

Key features

Many note types

Besides rich-text notes, Trilium offers code notes with syntax highlighting, diagram notes, canvas drawings, relation maps that show how notes connect, saved searches and "book" views that display a whole branch of the tree as a single document.

Attributes and templates

Labels and relations can be attached to any note. They power advanced search, but they can also define templates: link a note to a template and it inherits a predefined structure and fields, which is handy for recurring formats such as book notes or meeting records.

Protected notes

Individual notes or whole branches can be marked as protected. Their content is encrypted and only becomes readable after you enter your password for the current session, which adds a second layer of privacy on shared or synced machines.

Web access

When you run the server, the same notes are available from any web browser after logging in. This makes it possible to read and edit notes from a work computer or tablet without installing the desktop app, and the browser interface closely matches the desktop one.

Getting started

The desktop app works on its own without any server, so you can try it immediately. When you want sync or browser access, install the server, for example with Docker on a home server or VPS, and enter its address in the desktop app's sync settings.

Who it is for

Trilium is aimed at people who want to build a long-term, highly structured knowledge base and are happy to invest time learning a powerful tool. It is popular with developers and tinkerers who enjoy customising their setup.

Pros and cons

Alternatives

If you want something simpler with mobile apps, use Joplin. If you prefer plain-text files and daily journals, try Logseq.