My Never-Ending Search for the Perfect Notes App — and the One That Finally Stuck

Hey everyone! Mark from THE.Hosting here!

Testing new note-taking apps is my weird little hobby — the kind I usually don’t bring up in small talk. I love moving all my notes into a new app, poking around for a couple of days, and then inevitably switching back. But recently, I came across a self-hosted tool that might actually keep me hooked for longer than usual.

So, here’s the full story on what I found.

The eternal struggle to find the perfect notes app

Over the years, I’ve tried a bunch of different tools:

→ Simplenote — not bad, but didn’t click with me. It always felt a little janky.
→ Notion — way too bloated. Using it for simple notes feels like hammering nails with a microscope.
→ Anytype — an interesting app that wants to be the open-source version of Notion. Last time I tried it, it was still pretty raw. I might come back to it later, but for now, it's not the one.
→ Beaver Notes — a fun little app. It’s fast, looks nice, and even lets you lock notes with a password. But the lack of a proper mobile release (currently it’s just an APK on GitHub) was a dealbreaker for me.
→ And probably a dozen other apps I can’t even remember.

Eventually, I settled on Google Keep as the most practical choice. I use a Windows PC and an Android phone, so Keep syncs smoothly between my devices. From what I hear, Apple users tend to stick with the default Notes app for similar reasons.

By the way — let me know in the comments what your note-taking journey has been like. What did you end up using?

Still, I never gave up on finding a good alternative — ideally something self-hosted.

Then one day, while casually browsing Reddit (strictly for work, of course), I stumbled on a post praising Memos as a powerful and user-friendly notes app. Some even said it beats the big names in certain areas.

Naturally, I had to give it a try — and now I want to share what I found.

My bare-minimum checklist for a good notes app

Before diving in, I made a quick list of what I actually need from a notes app. If you try to get everything at once, you’ll end up with another Notion — powerful, but a bit much for daily use.

So here’s my baseline:

• Clear data storage. I want to know exactly where my notes live.

• Basic formatting support. I don’t need a fancy WYSIWYG editor — plain old Markdown will do.

• Simple sharing via link. For example, Google Keep makes this annoying — you have to export to Google Docs first.

Memos ticks all these boxes — and in some ways, goes well beyond them. But first, let’s get it up and running.

Spoiler: it’s super easy — just a couple of clicks.

Installing Memos

Memos is installed using Docker. I’ve covered Docker installation in a previous post, but here’s a quick refresher using the official script:

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh

sudo sh get-docker.sh

If you want to see what the script does before running it, you can add the --dry-run option.

Once Docker is ready, just run this to start Memos:

docker run -d \

--init \

--name memos \

--publish 5230:5230 \

--volume ~/.memos/:/var/opt/memos \

neosmemo/memos:stable

This launches Memos in the background and makes it accessible on port 5230. Your notes will be stored in the ~/.memos/ folder.

That’s it — Memos is now installed on your server. Time to set it up.

First setup and exploring Memos

1. Go to http://your-server-IP:5230. If everything’s working, you’ll see the welcome screen.
2. Register an account. Heads up: Memos doesn’t like underscores in usernames — so save your hacker-style names for another app.

Once you're in, you’ll see a clean, minimalist interface that’s ready to go. No complicated setup needed — you can start writing straight away.

Let’s say I want to jot something down. You can format your notes using Markdown — a simple, lightweight tool that supports headers, lists, text styling, links, and more. Google Keep can’t do that!

Just like in Keep, you can add tags to your notes. But Memos goes further — it also lets you attach files and embed code blocks. That opens the door to using it as a lightweight documentation tool. Maybe not for full-on enterprise projects, but for personal ones? Definitely.

One feature I really like is the Resources tab, where all your attachments are stored in one place. Super handy if you’re trying to find a file without digging through your notes.

And yes — you can share your notes too. Just set a note’s visibility to Public, copy the link, and send it like you would a Google Doc.

This is what the note looks like to someone who doesn’t have an account. They’ll be able to view it — but not edit it.

Another nice touch: checklists! You can create them using Markdown or via the built-in WYSIWYG editor — whichever you prefer.

One thing that surprised me was the always-visible calendar on the right-hand side.

You can filter notes by date, or by type — for instance, whether they include code blocks or task lists. The calendar makes Memos a great option for regular journaling or task planning.

So, what do you think?

Would you give Memos a try? Or do you already have a favorite app that beats it? Let me know in the comments!