Memos

Memos is built around a single idea: capture the thought now, sort it out later. It presents notes as a private timeline rather than a hierarchy of folders, notebooks, or workspaces. You open it, write in Markdown, and move on. No title required, no template to fill out, no folder decision standing between you and saving something.

The timeline format makes it feel closer to a personal feed than a traditional note app. Each memo can carry tags, inline tasks, and links. Tags accumulate naturally as you write, and search works across everything when you need to find something later. The interaction stays light on purpose.

Markdown is the native format throughout. Notes stay readable outside the app, portable to other tools, and easy to back up as plain files. There's no proprietary format holding your content in place — unlike heavier knowledge base tools that lock structure into their own schemas.

Self-hosting is the core premise. Memos runs on your own server, stores notes in your own database, and keeps the full data path under your control. It's lightweight enough to run on a Raspberry Pi or a small VPS. No seat pricing, no paid feature tiers, no account required with a third-party service.

The MIT license means the source is fully inspectable and modifiable. Development happens publicly on GitHub, shaped in part by contributors who run Memos themselves.

Memos fits people who want a private place for operational notes, daily logs, saved links, and fleeting thoughts that don't belong in a project management tool or a shared chat thread. If you want something with end-to-end encryption baked in, or are worth a look. If you want outlining and backlinks, goes much deeper. Memos doesn't try to be any of those things. It's a small, fast place to put things before they disappear.