As data breaches and privacy violations become more frequent, ensuring the security of your personal notes and sensitive information has never been more crucial. Most note-taking apps skip end-to-end encryption (E2EE) and don’t let you store data locally. If you have been looking for an ideal place to keep your private musings and confidential details safe, you have come to the right place.

While there are dozens of note-taking apps out there, not every tool has our best interests at heart. In this post, I will go over the top tools that have robust security features and are committed to keeping our data out of the wrong hands.

5 Logseq

Although Logseq is the newest productivity tool on the block, it has nailed the basics with privacy and cross-platform availability. It has native apps on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and even Linux. It’s an open-source solution and comes with a robust free plan for personal use.

Logseq offers backlinks and knowledge graphs, Markdown support to ensure better compatibility with other software solutions, PDF annotations, Whiteboard (in beta), task management, and more. You can choose to save your data locally to reduce the risk of unauthorized access.

Like Obsidian, Logseq also has a collection of themes and plugins to level up your setup in no time. The software is completely free to download and use, and the company is planning to launch a paid plan soon with perks like real-time collaboration, Logseq sync, and more.

4 Anytype

Anytype is a local-first productivity tool with on-device encryption. If you want to replace all-in-one tools like Notion, Anytype can be an ideal privacy-focused alternative for your workflow. Aside from taking notes, you can use it for any type of organization, such as managing projects, creating family planners, documents, group calendars, daily journals, habit trackers, and much more.

An outstanding feature of Anytype is its visual appeal. With a block-based editor, built-in widgets, templates, knowledge graphs, and native mobile apps, it feels miles better than Notion’s web-based (and slow) approach. It also works seamlessly offline, ensuring access to your notes even without an internet connection.

Overall, Anytype presents a compelling option for users who prioritize privacy, data ownership, and a flexible knowledge management system. The pricing starts at $99 per year.

3 Standard Notes

Standard Notes prioritizes user privacy and security with E2EE (ChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption), independent audit, privacy-focused analytics installation, and more. Founded back in 2016, Standard Notes boasts a healthy number of features, such as a rich text editor, 2FA, multiple theming options, nested folders, password protection, web clipper, and more.

You can even use Standard Notes as your 2FA authenticator app on other devices. Like other modern tools, it supports slash (/) command to format your text, custom domains to publish your notes, offline access to your files, and even basic spreadsheet functions.

Proton, renowned for its privacy-centric productivity solutions, recently acquired Standard Notes. The Free plan is quite limited, though. The Productivity plan starts at $90 per year.

2 Joplin

If Logseq and Anytype are too complicated, try Joplin. It’s an open-source note-taking app with a familiar interface that won’t confuse you at first glance. Joplin houses a side menu with your notebooks and tags, plus a standard toolbar at the top to format your notes like a pro.

While Joplin doesn’t wow you with dozens of functionalities, it gets the job done as a standard note-taking tool. Joplin also supports E2EE, which you can manually enable on a desktop version (recommended by the company) and sync your notes on other devices. Speaking of which, you can either use Joplin Cloud or third-party apps like Dropbox or OneDrive to store and sync your data.

Other goodies include reminders, Markdown support, tags to organize notes, math expressions, a handy web extension, and the ability to create your own scripts and plugins (slim collection for now) using Extensions API. The Basic plan starts at $2.70 per month.

1 Obsidian

Obsidian topping our list of top private apps shouldn’t surprise anyone. The Markdown-based productivity application eliminates the need for a sign up process. You can just download the app, create a new vault, and begin adding your notes. There's no requirement to ever even provide your email address to the company.

Obsidian follows an offline-first approach where you can store notes locally, on cloud storage of your choice, or on company servers. The latter does come with end-to-end encryption and version history. However, it’s a part of a paid Sync add-on that costs $5 per month or $48 per year.

Other noteworthy features include the ability to link your related notes, a rich theme store to customize every aspect of the app, a robust plugins store to extend Obsidian’s functionalities, a detailed graph view to check the relationship between your notes, support for tags, and more. All these features are available to use with the free version. These handy add-ons make Obsidian an ideal Personal Knowledge Management tool.

Your data, your control

Whether you are jotting down personal reflections, brainstorming business ideas, or storing sensitive information, the apps above offer a safe haven for your thoughts. Let’s recap quickly.

Logseq and Anytype are comprehensive tools that offer more than just note-taking capabilities, Standard Notes and Joplin shine at covering fundamental needs, whereas Obsidian serves as an excellent personal knowledge management (PKM) tool for organizing various types of information. If you are leaning towards the latter, check out our dedicated post to learn the top Obsidian tips and tricks.