Morrow

Morrow is a free, open source, local first workspace for your notes, databases and ideas. Every page is a plain Markdown file in a folder you choose. No account, no subscription, no cloud and no AI. Just a calm place to write and think, on your own computer.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/a279710f-1a50-4f1a-82ff-17714cfe7641

Why Morrow

• Yours. Your notes are a folder of Markdown files. Open them in any app, sync them with Syncthing, iCloud, Dropbox or git, and keep them forever. Edits made elsewhere show up in Morrow straight away. Nothing is sent anywhere: no accounts, no telemetry, no ads. It works with the network cable unplugged.
• Calm. A focused writing surface with careful typography, and only the features that earn their place.
• Trustworthy. Morrow only rewrites a file you changed in Morrow. Every change is saved as you type, failed writes are retried, earlier versions of every page are kept, a file changed elsewhere while you were editing is kept in page history, and deleted pages go to the system trash.
• Compatible. Wiki links, callouts, tags, properties, maths and canvases use the same formats as Obsidian, so an existing vault opens as it is. Notion exports, databases included, import in one step.
• Everything built in. Databases, canvases, graph, sync, encryption and flashcards come with Morrow, with nothing to install or configure.
• AI free, by design. Morrow does not have AI features and will not add them.

Features

• Pages in a sidebar tree with icons, drag and drop, favourites and a trash
• A rich editor: headings, lists, checklists, quotes, callouts with titles and folding, toggles, tables, columns, a table of contents, highlights, maths, syntax highlighted code, Mermaid diagrams, images, and audio, video and PDF files that play right on the page
• Date mentions: type @ for @today, @friday or any day, linked to that day's note
• Links: [[ to link pages, with aliases and headings, live titles, backlinks, links to pages that do not exist yet, and links that follow renames
• Databases: table, board, calendar, list and gallery views of pages, with text, number, select, multi-select, date, checkbox, link, relation and formula properties, filters, sorts and grouping, checklist progress on cards, and inline databases shown inside any page. Row values are readable frontmatter, relations are [[links]].
• Canvases: an infinite whiteboard of cards, pages, images and groups joined by arrows, with a pen, highlighter and eraser for freehand drawing, saved as open JSON Canvas files
• Graph: every page and link as a network, or the neighbourhood of one page
• Tags from properties or #tags in text, with nested tags and a tag index
• Templates with {{date}}, {{time}} and {{title}}, and a daily note template
• Daily notes, and a Tasks view that gathers every checklist item
• Search across every page, with #tag filters, and a command palette
• Vaults: open any folder, switch between folders, keep work and home apart
• Sync between your computers on the same network: pair once with a code, no server, no account, every transfer encrypted, both versions kept when a page changed on both
• Encrypted pages: lock any page with a password, AES-256 on disk, never a plain copy in history or backups
• Flashcards: write question :: answer anywhere and review with spaced repetition
• Embedded pages with ![[Page]], kept live as the other page changes
• Quick capture from any app with Ctrl/Cmd + Alt + M, straight into today's note
• Colour: eight accent themes, coloured text and highlights, page covers, coloured tags and icons, and a home page with your writing streak, "On this day" and a page to rediscover
• Publish a page or the whole vault as a static website, free
• Page history with a view of what changed since each version
• Tabs: Ctrl/Cmd + T, Ctrl/Cmd + W, Ctrl + Tab, and Ctrl/Cmd + click to open any page in a new tab
• Export as PDF, and edit as Markdown to work on a page's source directly
• Custom CSS kept in the vault as .morrow/style.css
• A full emoji picker for page icons, drawn the same on every system
• Find and replace, Markdown shortcuts, Markdown paste, an outline of each page, focus mode
• Import from Notion (pages and databases) or any folder of Markdown files, export to Markdown, full backups
• Light and dark themes, a choice of sans, serif or mono writing fonts
• A detailed guide on first run that shows every feature working
• Keyboard first: press Ctrl/Cmd + / to see every shortcut

Status

Version 1.0.0. Pages are files in a folder you choose. Earlier builds kept them inside the app; the first time this version opens it offers to copy those pages into the folder and leaves the original copy untouched. The macOS and Linux builds are produced by the release workflow but have not yet been tried on real machines, and builds are not code signed yet.

Coming from Obsidian

Choose Open a folder and pick your vault. Morrow reads it as it is: folders, wiki links, embeds, callouts, tags, properties, aliases, maths and canvases. Nothing in .obsidian is touched, and files you do not edit in Morrow are never rewritten.

Coming from Notion

In Notion, open Settings, Export, choose Markdown & CSV and include subpages. In Morrow, choose Import in the sidebar and pick the zip file. Pages keep their nesting, links between pages and images, databases become Morrow databases with their properties, and Notion's callouts become Morrow callouts.

Build and run

You need Node.js 20.19 or newer.

git clone https://github.com/Aarav2709/Morrow.git
cd Morrow
npm install
npm run dev        # opens the desktop app with live reload

On Windows npm run dist produces Morrow-Setup-<version>.exe and a portable .exe. Morrow never checks for updates on its own; new versions are downloaded from the releases page. Builds are signed automatically once the signing secrets (CSC_LINK and CSC_KEY_PASSWORD, plus APPLE_ID, APPLE_APP_SPECIFIC_PASSWORD and APPLE_TEAM_ID for macOS) are added to the repository. Until then Windows SmartScreen and macOS Gatekeeper warn the first time Morrow is opened.

Where your data lives

In the folder you chose, as Markdown files: one file per page, subpages in a folder named after their page, canvases as .canvas files, images and files in attachments/, trashed pages in .trash/. Metadata lives in frontmatter, and database rows keep their values as readable properties. Morrow's own small .morrow folder in the vault remembers page order, favourites and page history; deleting it never touches a page. Morrow's settings and automatic backups live in %APPDATA%\Morrow on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/Morrow on macOS and ~/.config/Morrow on Linux.

How Morrow was made

Morrow is built with the help of AI coding tools. I laid the foundation and did most of the frontend, while AI helped research features, wrote most of the backend and the code connecting it to the interface, built larger features such as databases, canvas drawing and the welcome guide, and handled most debugging and optimisation. I decide what goes into Morrow and test every change myself. "Morrow does not have AI features" refers to the app itself: nothing in it uses AI or sends your notes anywhere.

Licence

Morrow is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. The licences of the open source packages it bundles are written to THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.txt in every build.