dol

dol is a small Markdown notes app for Windows, macOS, iOS and Android. Notes are plain .md files on your machine, with live preview, wikilinks and full-text search, and when you want them on more than one device you point dol at a CouchDB database that you run or rent yourself. Nothing passes through the developer's servers. It's built for people who like the plain-text vault way of working but don't want to pay for a vendor's sync service or trust one with their notes.

Sync is where local-first apps usually get complicated. Either you buy the vendor's sync, or you drop a folder into a cloud drive and hope two devices never edit the same file at once. dol's answer is CouchDB, a database designed around replication. You stand one up, or use a hosted instance, enter the address and credentials once, and edits replicate between machines automatically. The credentials go into the operating system's keychain rather than a config file, and the site says the setup guide takes about five minutes.

The editor is deliberately plain. You write Markdown, and live preview renders headings, lists and checkboxes inline while you type rather than in a separate pane. Double square brackets make a wikilink to another note, and the App Store listing adds backlinks to the feature list, so connections run both ways. Full-text search covers everything, notes sit in a folder tree with collapsible sections that remembers its state, image attachments are supported, and there are light and dark themes. Bringing an existing vault in means importing a zip of .md files, and taking everything out again is the same operation in reverse.

Getting started on a desktop means downloading the installer, 6.5 MB on Windows, or the macOS build for Intel or Apple Silicon, and starting to write. Sync can wait until you want a second device. When you do, the guide on the site walks through creating a CouchDB database, and the same credentials go into the phone apps so everything replicates through the one database. Because notes are plain files, you can also skip sync entirely and treat dol as a fast local editor with search and links, then export the zip whenever you want to move on. Compared with the big vault-style note apps, dol is smaller in every sense. Fewer features, a fraction of the download size, and the site lists no plugin system. What it keeps is the part that matters to the people it's for, plain text, links between notes, search, and sync that goes through infrastructure you control. Compared with syncing a folder through a cloud drive, CouchDB replication is built for exactly this job, and the credentials never sit in a plain config file waiting to be copied.

The support page is candid about what goes wrong. The most common sync problem is a database name mismatch between devices, or accidentally creating a new database instead of connecting to the existing one. Cloudant instances configured for IAM-only authentication need legacy credentials enabled. Sync conflicts shouldn't be fixed by hand, deleted notes go to the Trash first, and missing data is usually sitting on another device. Bugs go to the GitHub releases repository or to email, and the developer answers directly, with no ticket queue and no bot, typically within two or three days.

It fits developers and self-hosters who already run a server, privacy-minded writers who want their notes to stay theirs, and anyone with a mixed fleet of devices, a Windows PC at work and an iPhone in a pocket, or a Mac and an Android phone. Being on Android as well as the Apple platforms widens that considerably, since a lot of polished note apps stop at the Apple ecosystem. What makes it different is what it refuses to do. There's no account with dol, no cloud of its own and no subscription. The Windows installer is 6.5 MB. Notes stay local unless you switch sync on, and then they sync only with the CouchDB you specified. The price of that independence is that you own the database, with everything that implies about backups and uptime. The Windows installer isn't code-signed, so SmartScreen shows a warning on first run and you click through More info and Run anyway. And while releases and bug reports live on GitHub, the site doesn't describe the source as open.

Access is free. The Windows and macOS builds download directly from the site, the iOS version is free on the App Store with no in-app purchases listed, and there's a Google Play release for Android. The current version is 1.4.0, with older releases on GitHub. It's made by Praxo Studio, and support is at admin@praxostudio.com.