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EnglishWhat Is Trilium Notes and What Is It Used For?
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Trilium Notes is an open-source note-taking and personal knowledge base application. You can run it locally on your desktop, or sync it with a self-hosted server to keep your notes available across devices. It is designed for people who want to organize thoughts, build a structured personal knowledge base, and keep control of their data. No account is needed, and it works offline. It is also sometimes searched for as "Trillium Notes."
Who It Is For
Trilium Notes fits people who want more structure than a flat list of notes but do not want to be locked into a proprietary cloud service. Because it is open-source and can run locally, it suits users who value data ownership and offline access. If you need to access notes from multiple devices, you can set up a self-hosted or cloud instance for synchronization.
How Notes Are Organized
Trilium uses a hierarchical note structure rather than folders. Each note can contain sub-notes, and a single note can appear in multiple places in the hierarchy. This means the same note can belong to more than one context without duplication.
Beyond hierarchy, you can:
- Use labels and relations to categorize notes and connect them to each other.
- Use promoted attributes to enter structured information that can feed into tables and boards.
- Group notes into workspaces to separate personal and work notes, focusing the note tree on a specific set of notes.
- Hoist notes to focus on a particular subtree.
Everyday Features
Trilium includes features for day-to-day note work:
| Feature | What it does |
|---|---|
| Synchronization | Sync notes across devices via a self-hosted or cloud instance; access from mobile using a PWA |
| Search & quick navigation | Jump to notes or commands by title with fuzzy matching; full-text search including text inside images and PDFs via OCR |
| Note revisions | Notes are periodically saved in the background; revisions can be reviewed or used to undo changes, and can also be created on demand |
| Protected notes | Encrypt sensitive notes and lock them behind a password-protected session |
| Templates | Define reusable note templates with preset structure, attributes, and content |
| Web clipper | Grab web pages or screenshots into Trilium via a browser extension |
| Web sharing | Publish any subtree as a public, read-only website if you have a server |
| Secure sign-in | Protect server login with multi-factor authentication (TOTP) or OpenID Connect |
| REST API | Read, create, and update notes programmatically over HTTP for automations and integrations |
Note Types and Content
Not everything fits into a paragraph, so Trilium offers a range of note types for different kinds of content. The site lists "a note type for every kind of content" as a core capability, alongside import and export, collections, and scripting. This makes it usable for mixed content—text notes, structured data, and more—within one knowledge base.
Data Ownership and Portability
The site states that "your notes are never locked in," and Trilium is AGPL-3.0 licensed. Combined with local operation and self-hosted sync, this means you are not dependent on a vendor account to access your notes. You can also import and export content, which helps if you want to move data in or out.
When to Choose Trilium Notes
Choose Trilium if you want:
- A hierarchical, flexible note structure without rigid folders.
- Offline-first use with optional self-hosted sync.
- Open-source software with no required account.
- Features like scripting, a REST API, and web publishing for deeper customization.
If you only need a simple cloud-synced notes app and do not want to manage a server, the self-hosted sync path may be more setup than you need. But for users who want a personal knowledge base they control, Trilium is built around that goal.