A notebook that lives at home.

notepad64 is three apps and a server: an Android app, a web app you can install from the browser, and a native Linux desktop app, all reading and writing the same notes.

Notes are plain text or markdown, kept in folders and pinned where you want them. You can attach photos, recordings and other files. Voice notes can be transcribed, one recording at a time, and search covers titles, bodies and transcripts. You can share a folder with someone as a viewer or an editor, and send a note on to other apps from the same maker: to thingfile as an item, or to muster as a project proposal.

A notebook is where unfinished thoughts go, and voice notes are the most unfinished of all. notepad64 is built on the idea that those belong on a machine you own: the server that stores them is yours, and so is the hardware that turns your voice into text.

The other half is not losing anything. The phone and the desktop keep working without a connection, and when two edits meet, the apps ask you which one to keep rather than quietly choosing for you.

• The server is C++ (Boost.Beast) with SQLite. Its full-text search is SQLite’s FTS5, and the search query is built by the server, so what you type is always searched for as words. Every query is scoped to one user, and someone else’s note looks exactly like one that does not exist.
• Transcription is a separate whisper.cpp worker. It asks the server for jobs and never touches the database, so it can run on another machine: a GPU worker takes jobs at once, and a CPU worker picks up anything left waiting for a minute.
• The web app is React, installable as a PWA. It records with the browser’s own recorder, which is why it needs HTTPS.
• The Android app is React Native (Expo), with its own database of your notes on the phone.
• The Linux app is C++ on SDL2, with the same offline design as the phone, ported rather than reinvented.
• Photos are kept as they were sent; the server makes an upright JPEG preview of each one.

All of it talks over HTTPS. The deploy is Ansible and systemd on an ordinary Linux host.

notepad64 runs today on its maker’s own server, on a private network, with all three apps built and working against it. The newest pieces (shared folders, sending to muster, the Android share sheet and offline on the desktop) are built and covered by automated tests, but have not yet had much use by hand.

Not built yet, said plainly:

• There is no public sign-up and nothing to download yet. notepad64 runs on its maker’s own server.
• There is no iPhone app. The phone app is Android only; an iPhone can use the web app.
• The web app needs a connection. Only the Android and Linux apps work offline.
• Notes are not end-to-end encrypted. They travel over HTTPS, and the server stores them readable, because that is what lets it search them.

notepad64 is made by Spergs, LLC, a Florida software company, and built by notdsk.