FSNotes is an open-source, Markdown-first note manager for macOS that stores every note as a real plain-text file in a folder you control — no proprietary database, no lock-in, and nothing standing between you and your own writing.
What is FSNotes?
FSNotes is a keyboard-driven note manager whose entire philosophy is captured in its name: FS stands for filesystem. Notes are stored as ordinary .md and .txt files on disk, which means your library works natively with iCloud Drive, Dropbox, or a Git repository — today, and long after any particular app goes dark. Open the storage folder in Finder and every note is already there, human-readable, editable in any text editor on any platform.
I've used it as my daily driver for weeks alongside Bear and Obsidian, and what keeps me coming back is the absence of anxiety: nothing I've written is hostage to a subscription or a format migration.
What does FSNotes do best?
FSNotes is at its strongest when you want serious writing muscle without the overhead of a full knowledge-graph app. The three-pane layout — sidebar, note list, editor — is entirely keyboard-navigable, and after a brief habituation period it becomes genuinely invisible.
- Instant full-text search — results appear before you finish typing, even in libraries with hundreds of notes.
- Syntax-highlighted code blocks — the language label renders with colour immediately in edit mode, making FSNotes a practical snippet archive for developers as well as a prose tool.
- Per-note encryption — individual notes can be password-locked without a separate secure vault, so your private journal and your work notes share the same sidebar safely.
- Multiple storage locations — an iCloud Drive folder, a local Dropbox path, and a Git-backed directory can all coexist in the same sidebar simultaneously.
- WikiLinks — double-bracket internal links let you build a lightweight personal wiki without migrating to a heavier tool.
Pinning surfaces your most-reached notes without manual sorting. The Markdown renderer follows CommonMark closely, and a single keystroke toggles between raw source and rendered preview. It is, in short, the kind of app that quietly disappears once you learn its shortcuts.
Is FSNotes free?
Yes — FSNotes is free to download directly from the developer's website, and the full source code is publicly available on GitHub under an open-source licence. A paid version on the Mac App Store funds continued development; the two are closely matched on features. The iOS companion app is a separate purchase if you want the same plain-file library on your iPhone or iPad.
Who should use FSNotes?
FSNotes is built for writers, developers, and researchers who think in plain text and distrust closed ecosystems. If you have ever opened a years-old note export only to find the format has silently shifted, FSNotes is the antidote — your notes are just files, and files outlast every startup. Developers will particularly value the Git-friendliness (a folder of Markdown is trivially version-controlled) and the code-block highlighting that makes snippet libraries genuinely navigable.
It is not the right fit if you need rich media embedding, real-time collaboration, or database-style views. Notion or Craft will serve those needs better. And if you simply want the lowest-friction sync across Apple devices and never write Markdown, Apple Notes has matured enough to be a real option — though it offers neither plain-file portability nor Git compatibility.
What are the best FSNotes alternatives?
Obsidian is the most direct rival: it also stores Markdown files on disk, but leans hard into a graph-based knowledge map and a plugin ecosystem that can itself become a productivity project. Bear delivers more polished Apple-native design and excellent tagging, though its proprietary backing means trusting Bear's export pipeline for the long term. iA Writer strips note management away entirely and offers an exceptional distraction-free writing environment when organisation matters less than flow. Craft is compelling for daily capture with a beautiful interface, but it makes your notes its own again.
FSNotes occupies a principled middle ground: more structured than a bare text editor, more open than Bear, less overwhelming than Obsidian. I reach for it whenever I want to think on the keyboard without wondering where my notes will live in five years.
