Open Source Note-Taking Apps

Skim is a PDF reader and note-taker for OS X. It is designed to help you read and annotate scientific papers in PDF, but is also great for viewing any PDF file. Skim requires OS X 10.10 or higher.

A simple notepad-like text editor with many features. It is designed to be a small and fast.

GloboNote is a free and easy to use desktop note taking application. It lets you create sticky notes, to-do lists, journals, reminders and other notes in one place. There are no limits to the number of sticky notes you can create. Notes can be organize by groups and search using the search tool. GloboNote can be run in any OS that has Java 8 installed.

Makagiga is an open-source, easy-to-use, portable application for doing a variety of tasks, such as todo listing, text editing, or RSS reading. Plugins are used to implement its various capabilities.

Lifeograph is a diary program to take personal notes on life. It has all essential functionality expected in a diary program and strives to have a clean and streamlined user interface.

Freeplane is a widely used mind mapping tool. GTD is a time management methodology by David Allen. Freeplane GTD is an addon, that can collect tasks specified in a mindmap, thus allowing the users of Freeplane to use the concepts of GTD in their mind

Notepad X is an alternative open source text editor for Microsoft Windows, with a lot of customization options created to help users managing text documents featuring tab navigation.

An note taking program with WebDAV sync capabilities. It works on a local (and WebDAV) directory and shows the items (text/image/binary) in a tree view. Any changes are reflected in the file system directly. Features: - group notes and images in a tree structure (using folders) - can work on any directory on your machine - technically works like a file browser with inline text editing - synchronizes with any WebDAV server (optionally using SSL/TLS) - allows one-way and two-way synchronization - allows to encrypt your files locally and remote using AES256 - multi language support You can obtain the full source code at: https://crispy-cow.de/git/CrispySyncNote.git Latest changes: 2.1.0: Updated for Java 9 and up 2.0.2: Added more UI translation, updated greek language (thanks to geogeo) 2.0.1: Bugfix: Sync state is now copied when duplicating workspace due to change in encryption settings

Docear (pronounced dog-ear) is what we call an “academic literature suite”. It integrates everything you need to search, organize and create academic literature in a single application: a digital library, reference manager, PDF and file manager, note taking and mind mapping. And the best: Docear works seemlessly with many existing tools like Mendeley, Microsoft Word, and Foxit Reader. Docear is free and open source, based on Freeplane, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Technology and developed by scientists from around the world, among others from OvGU, and the University of California, Berkeley.

BasKet Note Pads is an all purpose note taking application that let you take every kond of notes while remaining unobtrusive.

Jarnal is a plattform-indepenent programm written in Java for notetaking, sketching and PDF-/picture-annotating. It works like a normal notepad with the difference of being digital. It is thought to be used with a stylus on tablet-pcs.

uberNote is a note taking application - to help you organize your thoughts, your memory, and maybe even your life.