📓 My Notebook

A fast, private, local-first notebook for Windows 11.
Rich notes, screenshot threads with OCR-searchable images, math equations, a Myanmar-aware search that actually works, color themes, and export anywhere, all in a portable folder. No account. No cloud. Your notes stay yours.

⬇️ Download  ·  📖 User Guide

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⬇️ Download

Head to the Releases page and run the latest MyNotebook_Setup_vX.Y.Z.exe. It installs without admin rights, runs portable, and never touches your data on upgrade. First launch even comes with a few sample notes.

📖 New here, or not sure how a feature works? Read the User Guide — a plain-language, task-by-task walkthrough of everything the app does.

🤔 Why another note app?

Because the popular ones each ask you to give something up:

• Notion / Evernote keep your notes on their servers, behind an account, syncing whether you like it or not. My Notebook has no account, no cloud, no telemetry. Your notes are plain files in a folder you control.
• Obsidian / Notion are Electron apps that feel heavy on Windows. This is a native WinUI 3 app that starts fast and stays light.
• OneNote and Apple Notes can search text in images too, but OneNote leans on the Microsoft cloud and account, and Apple's Live Text is locked to the Apple ecosystem. My Notebook OCR-indexes every screenshot fully offline, no account, in a screenshot-thread workflow built for Windows.
• Almost none of them search Myanmar properly. Myanmar text has no spaces between words, so normal full-text search misses it. My Notebook pairs a trigram index with full-text search so it finds a word in the middle of a Myanmar sentence, and partial words in any language.

If you want a notebook that is fast, private, genuinely yours, and actually finds what you wrote, including in Burmese and inside screenshots, that gap is the reason this exists.

🖼️ Screenshots

✨ Why you'll like it

• It's yours. Everything lives in a portable Data/ folder next to the app. Copy it to a USB stick, sync it with your own cloud folder, or back it up as a .zip. No sign-in, no telemetry.
• Search that finds things. A hybrid full-text plus trigram index finds a word in the middle of spaceless Myanmar text, partial words, and even text inside your screenshots (OCR). Ranked results, highlighted snippets, jump-to-match, and operators like "phrase", -exclude, title:, tag:, type:.
• A real editor. Headings, bold, italic, underline, colors, highlight, lists and checklists, tables, links, quotes, code blocks, alignment, and markdown shortcuts. Find and replace highlights every match with a live counter, and a word count sits in the corner.
• Math that just works. Paste an equation from Copilot, ChatGPT, or Claude and it renders as real math, not raw text. Write your own with a live preview. Powered by KaTeX, fully offline.
• Images done right. Paste a screenshot and it lands inline at full resolution. Resize it from any corner (with snapping), wrap text around it, or drag it to a new spot. Transparent PNGs stay clean.
• A workspace, not a list. A two-pane drawer (folders rail plus note list) you can collapse either side of, multi-select notes to move, pin, or delete in bulk, drag notes onto folders, and a Timeline to browse everything by date.
• Made beautiful, in your language. Light and dark plus eight color themes that recolor the whole UI, with an intensity dial. The interface speaks English or Portuguese (more to come), and there is a distraction-free focus mode when you need it.

🧰 Everything it does

🗂️ Workspace	Two-pane drawer (folders plus note list), collapsible panels, multi-select with bulk move/pin/delete, drag-to-folder, duplicate, sort
✍️ Rich editor	Undo/redo, headings and styles, bold/italic/underline/strike, super and subscript, text color, highlight, fonts, alignment, indent, clear formatting, bullet/numbered/checklists, quote, code block, divider, markdown shortcuts, and Word-style keyboard shortcuts
🔢 Tables & links	Insert and edit tables (add or remove rows and columns, header row), hyperlinks, [[wiki-links]], and backlinks
🧮 Math (KaTeX)	Paste equations from AI chats and they render (LaTeX or MathML, including fractions, integrals, sums, and matrices); insert and edit your own with a live preview; fully offline
🖼️ Images	Paste full-resolution inline, insert from a file, or drag and drop from Explorer; resize from corners with snapping, wrap text (inline / left / right / own line), drag to reposition, transparent-PNG friendly, 100% floating viewer
🖼️ Screenshot threads	Paste (Ctrl+V) into a connected timeline rail of numbered nodes, drag-to-reorder, OCR-indexed, export all
🔎 Search	Hybrid FTS5 plus trigram (Myanmar, substring, and OCR text), operators, highlighted results, jump-to-match
🔗 Web clipper	OneNote-style paste that keeps the source URL, with the article's formatting and images kept offline
🎨 Themes & paper	Light/dark plus 8 color themes, intensity slider, custom page colors, and paper styles (ruled, grid, dotted, notebook)
🌐 Language	English and Portuguese, switchable in Settings
📤 Export	PDF, Word .docx, self-contained HTML ("publish as a web page"), Markdown, and print
🔊 Voice	Read a note aloud (TTS) and record audio into a note
🛟 Backup & restore	Back up to a .zip, restore from a backup, automatic rolling snapshots, version history with restore, and a soft-delete trash
🕓 Timeline	Browse every note by date, grouped into Today / Yesterday / this month / older
⚡ Polish	Focus mode, pin/tag/move, close-to-tray, global Quick Note hotkey, and a settings window that fits its content

🔒 Where your notes live (and why they're safe)

My Notebook is fully portable and offline. Every note, screenshot, tag, and setting is stored in a plain Data/ folder right next to the app. No cloud, no account, no database server. That means:

• Uninstalling or re-downloading the app does not delete your notes. The uninstaller removes the program but leaves your Data/ folder intact. Reinstall to the same folder and everything is exactly where you left it.
• Moving to a new PC? Copy the app folder (or just its Data/ folder) across, and notes, images, and folders all come with it. You can even run it straight off a USB stick.
• Back up anytime from Settings → Back up to .zip, and restore just as easily from Settings → Restore from backup (a .zip or an automatic snapshot). You can also copy the Data/ folder to a USB drive or a cloud-synced folder.

⚠️ Because your notes live only on your machine, they are as safe as your machine. If your drive fails and you have no copy, they are gone, so keep the app (or its Data/ folder) somewhere that gets backed up, or take a .zip backup now and then. Your notes are yours, which also means their safety is in your hands, not a company's servers.

🔄 Updates are manual (on purpose)

My Notebook doesn't update itself, and that's a deliberate choice, not a missing feature.

Auto-updaters work by silently downloading and running a new executable in the background. That is exactly the behaviour antivirus engines and VirusTotal treat as suspicious, so self-updating apps routinely get false-positive malware flags and scary SmartScreen warnings. To keep My Notebook clean, transparent, and trustworthy, there is simply no auto-update machinery to flag.

Instead, updating is a 30-second manual step:

1. Open About → Check for updates (or the Releases page).
2. Download the latest MyNotebook_Setup_vX.Y.Z.exe and run it over your current install.
3. Your Data/ folder is never touched, so all your notes carry straight over.

The app shows a clear in-app reminder of this, and keeps rolling local backups of your notes (Data/Backups/) just in case.

🛠️ Tech

C# / .NET 8 · WinUI 3 (Windows App SDK, self-contained and unpackaged) · SQLite + FTS5 with a trigram index · WebView2 editor · KaTeX (offline math) · Windows.Media.Ocr · QuestPDF / PdfSharp (PDF) and OpenXML (.docx). Core logic lives in MyNotebook.Core (no WinUI dependency) and is covered by xUnit tests.

MyNotebook/
├─ db/migrations/     SQLite schema + migrations (embedded at build)
├─ db/seed/           self-verifying seed-DB builder (sample notes + screenshots)
├─ installer/         Inno Setup script (portable, lowest-privilege)
├─ src/
│  ├─ MyNotebook.Core/   net8.0: models, services, SQLite, search (unit-tested)
│  ├─ MyNotebook.App/    WinUI 3: UI, editor, OCR, export
│  └─ MyNotebook.Tests/  xUnit: services, search, versioning, backup/restore
└─ screenshots/

🏗️ Build from source

Requires Windows 11 x64 and the .NET 8 SDK. Build the WinUI app with Visual Studio MSBuild, not dotnet build, because the .NET CLI MSBuild lacks the WinUI PRI-packaging task (MSB4062).

# Run the Core tests (works anywhere with .NET 8)
dotnet test src/MyNotebook.Tests/MyNotebook.Tests.csproj

# Build & publish the portable, self-contained app (Windows)
& "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\18\Community\MSBuild\Current\Bin\MSBuild.exe" `
  src/MyNotebook.App/MyNotebook.App.csproj -t:Publish `
  -p:Configuration=Release -p:Platform=x64 -p:RuntimeIdentifier=win-x64 `
  -p:SelfContained=true -p:WindowsAppSDKSelfContained=true -p:WindowsPackageType=None `
  -p:PublishDir=bin/publish/win-x64/

# Build the installer (optional, needs Inno Setup 6)
& "C:\Program Files (x86)\Inno Setup 6\ISCC.exe" installer/MyNotebook.iss

The published folder is portable, so copy it anywhere. On first run the app writes to .\Data\ next to the exe, falling back to %LOCALAPPDATA%\MyNotebook if that is read-only.

⌨️ Shortcuts

Keys	Action
Ctrl+F / Ctrl+K	Focus search
Ctrl+H	Find and replace in the note
Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y	Undo / redo
Ctrl+B / Ctrl+I / Ctrl+U	Bold / italic / underline
Ctrl+L / Ctrl+E / Ctrl+R / Ctrl+J	Align left / center / right / justify
Ctrl+M / Ctrl+Shift+M	Increase / decrease indent
Ctrl+Alt+1 / Ctrl+Alt+2 / Ctrl+Alt+0	Title / heading / body
Ctrl+N	New note
Ctrl+T	New screenshot thread
Ctrl+V	Paste an image (inline in a note, or a card in a thread)
Ctrl+Shift+V	Paste as plain text
F11 / Esc	Toggle / leave focus mode
Win+Alt+N	Quick Note (global, optional)

📄 License

Released under the MIT License.

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_{Built for Windows 11 · local-first · made for notes that stay yours.}