Free, private Markdown notes — with code and math — synced by your own browser account. No server, no account, no subscription. A lightweight alternative to Evernote.
I built OWL‑Note from a simple belief: people have the right to take notes for free.
Writing down thoughts is natural; it shouldn’t be over‑engineered or locked behind subscriptions.
So I set one constraint: use only infrastructure people already have and make the simplest, most private note app possible. That constraint shaped every design choice:
- Notes live as browser bookmarks — private, portable, and synced automatically by the Chrome or Edge account you already use.
- When a note exceeds bookmark limits, an optional Google Drive layer stores the overflow.
- AI features run entirely on the browser’s on‑device model — no servers, no API keys, no per‑question billing.
Every constraint made OWL‑Note lighter and more personal. It isn’t a cloud platform — it’s a notebook you actually own.
OWL‑Note is a local‑first Markdown notebook. Notes are stored in your browser bookmarks and sync across devices via Chrome or Edge. It supports photos, attachments, semantic search, on‑device AI, and full LLM chat reconstruction.
Rebuild LLM Chats as Markdown
Right‑click → Rebuild LLM chat to OWL‑Note
Convert ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and similar conversations into clean, editable Markdown (not screenshots). Preserves:
- User and assistant messages
- Headings, paragraphs, lists, links
- Tables
- Syntax‑highlighted code blocks
- KaTeX math
- Supported images as attachments
- Original source URL
Deterministic. Local‑only. No API key, no tokens, no cloud conversion.
Capture Entire Page
Right‑click → Capture entire page to OWL‑Note
Scrolls and stitches the full page (including below the fold) into a single long image. Ideal for long articles, docs, receipts, dashboards, and complex layouts. All processing happens locally.
Live Transcription save to OWL‑Note
Right-click → Live Transcription save to OWL‑Note
Turn a playing tab's speech into a Markdown note with a draggable live-caption overlay. Right-click Live Transcription save to OWL‑Note to start — one right-click, first session included. Chrome 139+ uses its native on-device speech engine; the first session in a language pauses for a one-click confirmation while Chrome downloads that language's local model, then resumes on its own. Audio is never uploaded or stored, and OWL‑Note never falls back to cloud transcription.
Smart Selection Capture
Right‑click → Save selection to OWL‑Note
Save a selected region as structured Markdown while preserving headings, emphasis, lists, links, code blocks, tables, and supported visuals. The new note opens immediately for editing.
Markdown Notebook
- Live Markdown preview
- Automatic saving
- Code syntax highlighting
- KaTeX math
- Photos and file attachments
- Draggable image preview
- Nested notebooks and multi‑select organization
- Trash and permanent deletion
- Search (including from the browser address bar)
- Import: Word / Evernote / Markdown
- Export: Markdown / PDF / portable .owl‑note package
Ask Owl Local Retrieval and AI
Ask natural‑language questions and get answers grounded in your notes, with citations.
- Conversational Q&A and follow‑ups
- Keyword and optional semantic search
- One‑click summarization
- Deterministic Markdown tidying (no rewriting)
- AI title suggestions
- Chinese / Japanese / Korean support
Uses the browser’s built‑in on‑device model where available; retrieval still works without a local model.
- Notes stored in browser bookmarks for privacy and portability.
- Synced across devices via your Chrome or Edge account — no new account required.
- No OWL‑Note account, no backend, no telemetry, no ads.
- All AI, capture, and semantic search operations run locally.
- Manifest V3 extension.
- Optional Google Drive support (off by default) for large notes and attachments.
- Open source under GPL‑3.0.
Installation
Works with Chrome, Edge, and other Chromium‑based browsers. See Releases or the extension store listing for installation.
Import
- Markdown
- Markdown ZIP
- JSON backups
- Evernote ENEX
- Word DOCX
- .owl‑note packages
Export
- Plain Markdown
- Markdown ZIP
- JSON backups
- .owl‑note portable packages
GPL‑3.0
Source code: https://github.com/hinagate/owl-note
The phonetic reading tables are generated at build time from third‑party dictionaries and shipped as data files. They are not part of the program's source code, and each keeps its own licence:
| Table | Source | Licence |
|---|---|---|
ipa-en.tsv.gz — English IPA |
CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (Carnegie Mellon University) | ISC |
kana-ja.tsv.gz — Japanese kanji readings |
yomi-dict | Apache‑2.0 |
pinyin-zh.tsv.gz — Mandarin pinyin |
CC‑CEDICT, via cedict-json | CC BY‑SA 4.0 |
pinyin-zh.tsv.gz is a derivative of CC‑CEDICT and is therefore itself distributed under
CC BY‑SA 4.0.