I built a note-taking app because the one I wanted didn’t exist. Clean UI, local .md files, no cloud, no account.
Built with Rust + Tauri 2.0 + SvelteKit. Full-text search powered by Tantivy. Graph view, AI writing tools (bring your own key), Obsidian import, version history.
Available for Linux (AppImage, APT, AUR), Windows, and macOS. Source: https://codeberg.org/ArkHost/HelixNotes
The name comes from the double helix. Structured but flexible, like how notes should be. Trilium is a solid project, but it stores notes in an SQLite database and runs on Electron. HelixNotes keeps everything as plain .md files and uses Tauri, so much lighter on resources.
Is Tauri like Electron, or SQLite, but faster and FOSS? Are either of those what I’m getting at?
Tauri is an alternative to Electron. Both are frameworks for building desktop apps with web technologies, but Electron bundles a full Chromium browser (which is why Electron apps use so much RAM). Tauri uses your OS’s native webview instead, much smaller, much lighter. Both are open source. The difference is resource usage.
Since my producer and I are using the Odin Project to potentially learn full-stack JS after the foundations course completion on our end (Rails is another option for full-stack development), we could certainly look into Tauri (even if we’re not done with that yet). I wonder, however, why many apps don’t use Tauri, and instead, Electron.
Electron came first and has a massive ecosystem. Most apps were built before Tauri was mature enough. Switching frameworks is expensive, so existing apps stay on Electron. New projects are increasingly picking Tauri though.