an evernote alternative that keeps your notes on your device

shizumu is a private writing app, and a free evernote alternative: the app costs nothing, the writing is a database on your own machine, and sync is end-to-end encrypted and free on two devices. it is open source, and there is nothing to file: you open a page and write.

a page in shizumu: one document holding a flowchart, a recipe, a bash command and a decision, with the trail it belongs to and its pins above a page in shizumu: one document holding a flowchart, a recipe, a bash command and a decision, with the trail it belongs to and its pins above

why people are leaving

evernote is a filing system with an account: notebooks, tags and a web clipper, kept in its cloud. since late 2025 the free plan holds 50 notes and one notebook, and everything past that is a subscription. most people looking for an evernote replacement say the same two things: the price, and wanting their own notes back.

shizumu is a page. nothing to sign up for before you write, and the writing lives on your device. the source is on github, apache-2.0 on the client and agpl-3.0-or-later on the relay, so the app you use is the app anyone can read.

who it fits, and who it doesn't

if you used evernote as a filing cabinet, with a clipper for the web and scanned receipts in a notebook, an archive app suits you better, and you will miss the cabinet here. shizumu is for the other half of evernote: the place you went to put a thought down and work it out. people who used it that way tend not to miss the cabinet.

platforms and sync

shizumu runs on linux (flathub, x86_64 and arm64) and windows. android is a closed test on google play: ask to join. mac is a beta download and iphone is a testflight beta.

sync is optional and end-to-end encrypted. the relay holds what it cannot read, and neither can we. hosted sync is free on two devices, and a relay you run yourself is free on every device: pricing, and the deploy guide. the relay does see sealed blob sizes and timing; what it cannot see is content, titles or filenames. both are written down: how sync is encrypted and what the relay can and cannot see.

moving over

evernote exports its own enex format and html, and there is no enex importer here. what carries across is the text you still use: paste a note onto a page, and if it is markdown its headings, lists, tasks and code come in as blocks. years of notes are the hard part of any migration, and most people move the few threads they return to and leave the archive in its export. on the way out, shizumu writes every page as a markdown file into a folder you choose, plus a full backup of the database. that is what not renting your notes looks like: a copy that is yours, in a format anything can open.

what a page does instead

a new page starts empty. you write to think, and when something turns out to matter, you pin it. a trail is for a project, not a day: a book, a job search, anything you'll come back to tomorrow. choose a trail and the page picks up context: the pins you already kept there, already on the page. everything else lives in memory: search it, or open one trail, one date, pages, or pins.

that is the thing to check in any list of apps like evernote: whether there is a way back to what mattered, or only a pile with search over it. the page still has real tools: / for a table, a checklist, a block of code, and @ to reach a page, a pin or a trail.

try before you move

the whole app runs in your browser with a few weeks of writing already in it: try it. also worth a look: a notion alternative and a joplin alternative.

what holds on every platform

shizumu is free, on linux, android, and windows. your writing stays on your device. sync is optional and end-to-end encrypted: the relay holds what it cannot read, and neither can we. the app and the relay are open source: apache-2.0 on the client, agpl-3.0-or-later on the relay.

it will not write for you, because the writing is the thinking.

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