Thought Desk
Write, plan and study in one quiet place.
A free, local-first notes app for students: pages, assignments, a calendar,
flashcards and databases, all linked together. Bring a friend onto a page when you want one.
Download for Windows · Mac · Linux · thoughtdesk.org
Thought Desk is free and open source. ❤️ Sponsor it to help bring it to your phone, with sync.
Everything in one place
- Tabs and split view
- Search everything with Ctrl K
- Quick Capture from anywhere
- Course pages, grades and lecture notes in one click
- Reminders before things are due
- Light, dark and color themes
- Export to Word and Markdown (and PDF on Windows)
- Every shortcut can be changed
See every feature →
Yours, on your computer
- Your notes stay on your computer. Everything lives in one file on your disk and works offline. Nothing leaves it unless you write a page together with a friend, and the relay that carries that writing keeps none of it.
- No account needed. Signing in is optional, and only for friends and writing together. Even then, only your profile, your friends and your invites are online.
- Take it with you. Export every page to Markdown (it opens as an Obsidian vault) and every database to CSV, whenever you like.
- Open source. Every line is here to read, under the AGPL-3.0.
Small and fast
| Thought Desk | A typical Electron notes app |
|---|
| Download | about 4 MB | 80–200 MB |
| Memory while open | about 115 MB | 300–600 MB |
Built with Rust, Tauri and Svelte on the web view your system already has, instead of shipping its own copy of Chrome. It's tested against workspaces of 7,500 pages and databases of 50,000 rows. How it stays fast →
Download
| System | Get it |
|---|
| Windows 10 and 11 | Installer, about 4 MB. It isn't code-signed yet, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": click More info, then Run anyway. Signing through SignPath is on its way, and so is a Microsoft Store version. |
| macOS | Disk image for Apple silicon and Intel, signed and notarized by Apple. |
| Linux | AppImage, or the .deb for Ubuntu and Debian. |
Thought Desk updates itself: it checks for a new version when it starts, and installs it in one click. Every version is on the releases page.
Build from source
You need Node 20+ and stable Rust (on Windows, the MSVC toolchain).
git clone https://github.com/kusule1351-hue/thought-desk.git
cd thought-desk
npm install
npm run app # the desktop app, with hot reload
Tests, where your notes are stored and how the code is laid out: docs/DEVELOPMENT.md.
Support Thought Desk
Thought Desk is free, and made by one person with help from the contributors below. The first goal is $1,000, for two things:
- Thought Desk on your phone: the tools and app store fees to build and release the iPhone, iPad and Android versions.
- Sync: upgrading the backend so your notes stay in step between your computer and your phone.
One-time donations of any size help, and every dollar goes into the app.
Sponsor on GitHub →
Contributors
Thank you to everyone who has contributed.
Contributing
Fixes, measurements and ideas are welcome. Start with CONTRIBUTING.md; contributors sign a short Contributor License Agreement once, on their first pull request. Questions, or just want to talk? Join the Discord.
Want Thought Desk in your language? Translations are JSON files, one per area of the app, and can be done a bit at a time: docs/TRANSLATING.md shows how.
License
Copyright (C) 2026 Kusule. Thought Desk is free software under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 or later: if you distribute a modified version, or let people use one over a network, you must share its source under the same license.
The license covers the code, not the Thought Desk name or logo: forks and redistributed versions need their own name and logo. The interface uses Inter by Rasmus Andersson, under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.
