📓 My Notebook — Free, Private Notes That Read Your Damn Screenshots

[Aung_Ko_Ko]

My Notebook ➜ free + open-source ➜ no account, no cloud ➜ OCR-reads every screenshot ➜ notes stay yours

No account. No cloud. Finds any word you ever pasted — even the words stuck inside a picture.

Download (.exe · no admin) · Source

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🔒 they keep your notes on their servers — this keeps them in your folder

The popular one	The catch	This instead
Notion / Evernote	Notes on their servers, behind a login, always syncing	No account, no cloud, no telemetry (apps phoning home). Plain files you own.
Obsidian / Notion	Electron (a website in an app costume) → heavy, eats RAM	Native (built for Windows) → boots fast, stays light
OneNote / Apple Notes	Read image text too — but need MS cloud / Apple-only gear	Reads image text fully offline, no account
Most of them	Can’t search Burmese (no spaces between words)	Finds a word mid-Myanmar-sentence + half-typed words in any language

Your data = a Data/ folder next to the app. Copy to USB · sync your own cloud · zip as backup. Files. Yours.

🔎 it reads the text inside your screenshots — and lets you search it

• OCR (pulls text out of images) → every screenshot becomes searchable. Offline. No account.
• Trigram + full-text (chops words into 3-letter bits) → finds buried words, half-words, spaceless Burmese.
• Ranked results · highlighted hits · jump-to-match.

Type	Get
"exact phrase"	Those words, together
-word	Hide notes with that word
title: / tag: / type:	Search by title / tag / note type

✍️ paste anything — screenshot or a whole web article — it just sticks

• Screenshot → drops inline at full-res, clickable, where your cursor is.
• Whole web article → formatting and images come with it; images saved into the note (works offline after).
• Screenshot threads → dump a pile, drag-to-reorder, all searchable.
• Headings · lists · checklists · highlight · color · fonts · auto-title from pasted heading.

🗂️ folders · bulk-move · timeline · [[wiki-links]] · 8 skins

• Two-pane drawer — folders + note list, collapse either side.
• Bulk — Ctrl/Shift-click → move, pin, delete a stack at once. Drag onto folders.
• Timeline — browse by date (Today / Yesterday / month / older), zoom out across periods.
• [[wiki-links]] + backlinks — jump between notes, see which point back.
• 8 color themes + intensity dial + distraction-free focus mode.

🧰 the full dump — everything it does

Workspace	Two-pane drawer, collapsible panels, multi-select bulk move/pin/delete, drag-to-folder, sort
Editor	Inline full-res images, rich web paste (kept offline), auto-titles from pasted heading, fonts, checklists
Screenshot threads	Paste, drag-to-reorder, searchable text, 100% floating viewer, export all
Search	OCR image text + buried/half-words (Myanmar-friendly), operators, highlighted hits
Knowledge	[[wiki-links]] + backlinks, web clipper that keeps the source URL
Themes	Light/dark + 8 colors, intensity slider, custom page colors & rule lines
Export	PDF · Word .docx · self-contained HTML · print
Voice	Read a note aloud · record audio into a note
Safety	Auto version history + restore, soft-delete trash, .zip backup
Polish	Focus mode, pin/tag/move, close-to-tray, global Quick Note hotkey

⌨️ keys

Keys	Action
Ctrl+F / Ctrl+K	Focus search
Ctrl+H	Find & replace
Ctrl+N	New note
Ctrl+T	New screenshot thread
Ctrl+V	Paste image
F11 / Esc	Focus mode
Win+Alt+N	Quick Note (global)

🛠️ the guts — nerds only

C# / .NET 8 · WinUI 3 (self-contained, unpackaged) · SQLite + FTS5 trigram index · WebView2 editor · Windows.Media.Ocr · QuestPDF / PdfSharp (PDF) · OpenXML (.docx). Core logic in MyNotebook.Core, unit-tested.

MyNotebook/
├─ db/migrations/   SQLite schema + migrations
├─ db/seed/         seed-DB builder (sample notes + screenshots)
├─ installer/       Inno Setup (portable, lowest-privilege)
├─ src/
│  ├─ MyNotebook.Core/   net8.0 — models, services, search
│  ├─ MyNotebook.App/    WinUI 3 — UI, editor, OCR, export
│  └─ MyNotebook.Tests/  xUnit
└─ screenshots/

💡 where this quietly saves your ass

One payoff, five places it bites:

• Café wifi password you screenshotted 3 months ago → type wifi, it surfaces. No scrolling your gallery.
• A receipt or bank screenshot → search the amount or shop name later, even though it’s a picture.
• A long tutorial article pasted in → read it on a flight, images and all, internet off.
• That error message at work → find it by the error code the next time it blows up.
• A license key / serial buried in a screenshot → search the product name, it pops out.

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Local, searchable, yours — the cloud never gets a copy, and nothing forgets what you pasted.