The early alpha

Make yourself at home.

Download the desktop alpha to get started. Wattle Notes saves ordinary Markdown files on your computer; local notes do not need an account. This project is mostly vibe coded with AI assistance.

1. Get the Mac build

The current download is for Apple Silicon Macs. Extract the ZIP and open Wattle Notes.app. This developer build is unsigned and not notarized; macOS may block it. Prefer building from source if you want to inspect and compile it yourself. Signed downloads are still release work.

The GitHub alpha release provides SHA-256 checksums and the matching source archive. Checksums help detect corruption; they are not a code signature or a guarantee of trust.

2. Open a notes folder

Choose an empty test folder to start, or back up an existing Markdown folder before opening it. Wattle Notes adds stable note identifiers and stores its local index and retained history in a .notes directory. Back up that directory along with your notes to preserve local history.

Create a note with Cmd+N, find one with Cmd+P, or save with Cmd+S. Local autosave waits briefly after typing. Use Write, Split or Read for the view you prefer. Read supports direct Markdown editing with a formatting toolbar; complex blocks remain Markdown. Appearance in the sidebar offers five themes.

3. Connect ideas

Use [[A useful note]] for a wiki link, add tags to group related notes, and open the links panel for backlinks. Attach files from the note toolbar or paste a copied image with Cmd+V (Ctrl+V on other platforms). Pasted images are saved as local attachments, with a 10 MiB limit per image. History & trash keeps saved versions and deleted notes available for recovery.

4. Choose whether to connect cloud storage

Local notes work without Google or Nextcloud. Public Google sign-in is still being prepared; the developer alpha exposes client setup for contributors. Use the same Desktop OAuth client on every device when testing Drive restoration. The Google Drive setup guide is on GitHub.

Nextcloud / WebDAV is an optional manual encrypted backup provider, separate from automatic Drive sync. Neither provider has completed live service acceptance testing for this release. Set up encryption, retain the recovery key, and verify a restore before relying on a cloud copy.

Build from source

The GitHub repository and matching release source archive include the GPL-3.0-or-later license, third-party notices and build documentation. Install Node.js 22.12 or later, Rust 1.90 or later, and the platform prerequisites linked in the README.

npm ci
npm run desktop:dev

Windows and Linux are source-build targets. Their packaged installers and runtime behavior still need testing on those platforms.

Share useful feedback

When reporting a problem, include your operating system, app version, the steps you took, what you expected, and what happened. Use a small synthetic note to reproduce the issue. Do not publish personal notes, tokens, app passwords, passphrases or recovery keys.

Wattle Notes is free and open source. Contributions follow CONTRIBUTING.md on GitHub. No subscription is needed to use this alpha.