Introduction

Noteside is a desktop notebook for people who'd rather keep their hands on home row — full vim if you want it, conventional shortcuts if you don't. Every note is a plain .md file in a folder you choose: grep it, back it up, sync it, or walk away with it. Nothing leaves your machine.

It's built on CodeMirror 6 + a real vim engine inside a native Tauri window, with a Rust core that treats your files as the source of truth — so what you see in the editor is exactly what's on disk.

What you get

• Keyboard-first, vim optional. Real vim modes and motions, or the conventional ⌘-shortcuts you already know — both first-class, both always on.
• Files as truth. Plain Markdown in a folder you pick — keep several notebooks and switch between them — autosaved, written atomically, and reloaded live when something edits them from outside.
• Offline & local-first. No account, no telemetry, no network.
• Inline live-preview and fast search — Markdown renders in place (tables, code blocks, task lists, and more), over a warm, literary reading surface with 33 bundled themes (Catppuccin, Gruvbox, Nord, Rosé Pine, …) and a live ~/.notesiderc.

Start here