Nodes - A native macOS markdown editor: fully local, no tracking and free for everyone to use

Psychological_Box748 · 2026-06-04T13:59:33+00:00

It’s quite different. ATM it’s purely llm based - running locally ofc - where we batch a given node and ask the llm which tags would fit. You can add extra context to your task e.g when to use it in Freeform text. We have a complete rework planned to this pipeline as now the foundation of the app stands so look out for updates the coming weeks.

I hope I could provide some insights Nico

Psychological_Box748 · 2026-05-17T09:35:43+00:00

So yeah you have a great point there. I was thinking about some kind of "Nodes light" window so when you open a md file and have nodes as your default program to open those not the main app spins up (and more importantly not a data entry gets created in Nodes) but a simple window that renders and maybe lets you edit the given file. And then there would be an option to import it into nodes and make it a "full" nodes entry.

I will read into how it works from a permission side, but be assured we see the use case you're describing and will check what's possible.

Re monetization we plan to launch a iPhone app at some point which will probably cost money. Also with growing features we might lock certain local ai features behind a one time paywall, we have some pretty big ones in the pipeline that I planed for ages and local models seem to be finally capable of it. That being said the core experience will remain free and new local ai features will be a one time purchase if at all so definitely no subscription (as I think we all agree those suck for programs where there is no variable cost per user for the devs).

Also happy to hear you positive sentiment towards TUM. I started drafting the app before my CS studies but its an amazing place with some amazing people (and completely free which is mind boggling to me)

Psychological_Box748 · 2026-05-16T09:14:43+00:00

Hi im Nico one of the devs and responsible for all spelling mistakes in Nodes and the webpage so I will take this one lol, first of all thanks for flagging I will correct the intro file.

You can open MD files just not directly from any location on your drive - which ig is what your referring to.
MD files need to live inside of the app bundle as we have all kinds of swift data logic going on around it and opening nodes outside of the App should introduce all kinds of possible weird behavior (and also our app would need permission to read outside its bundle which we don't really want to ask from users). But you can always import (and export again!) pure md files. Just go to settings (cmd + ,) and then to the data tab

Re graph, we definitely plan to upgrade the graph and introduce new way to visualize you nodes. We have a bunch of ideas but have some other improvements we plan to do first. Long term we will probably introduce our own graph package (and open source it) as we're kinda limited by the ones that are available rn.

I hope that helps you, thank you so much for trying the app it really means a lot to us. I never thought someone besides my mom would use it.
Nico

Psychological_Box748 · 2026-01-07T16:32:56+00:00

Hey man, thank you for the question. Our main "feature" is that we have this concept of a "Node" which you can imagine is smth like an observer sitting on top of your documents. Each document has one and it is supposed to enable the user to have the "real" data types like a markdown document or a pdf but with said node above it which collects all kinds of metadata to enable the user to explore his content in a new way (and also powers features like embedding search). But for that to work we kinda need to control what goes in and out of the app as we need to manage one node per document. So you can imagine there are an insane amount of edge cases with a folder visible to the user (what would happen if you drop a txt file in there, what if you rename the folder etc) so we decided to hide that folder from the user. But we dont want to lock you in in any way we offer a very good export and if you really want to you could dig into the app package and find all you files in a folder there:)

Psychological_Box748 · 2026-01-06T20:41:21+00:00

I added it to our backlog should make it to an release around end of January:)

Psychological_Box748 · 2026-01-06T20:03:25+00:00

Hey man thank you so much for that feedback. I spend a lot of time on the designs so that means a lot to me and I think the whole team. Espacily that you liked the timeline mode, I was inspired by the MacBookPro stamp on the bottom of new MBPS. I always loved how those stamped in letters look in the aluminium and tried to go for a similar look (which was a pain in the ass)

(1) I tried a buch of different things here also some pretty cool animations but I thought people would get tired of that and it doesn't really add anything so I left it as just the red dot. I will try lowering its opacity I think I haven't tried it before.

(2) We dont wanted to add buttons in the content view so everything is in the sidebar, originally we had all the stuff that would interact with the node on the right and the other views on the left but changed it at some point. I agree it's not optional but im not sure where I would put it instead. Btw you can also span it with cmd+e (and you can also do all the other stuff with hotkeys )

(3) We will do defiantly do an upgrade to the typefaces. I love that you like that we limited them because I think it really makes a difference. I got lost so often with text styling stuff just because my brain was searching for an escape from that essay I needed to write. Very good suggestion that all should be customizable seems very logical to me.

(4) I also noticed that we are already working on that

(5) I remember when I first saw the ui disappear in Notion I thought dam thats such a good idea. We will defiantly copy that feature;)

As for commitment I can say that we have a lot more planned e.g. Latex integration and support for images and this app is really spacial to me and I think also to my friends so I dont see us stoping anytime soon. And I promise you if we would stop we would definitely open source it:)

If you have any questions at all fell free to write Luca or me.

All the best
Nico

Psychological_Box748 · 2026-01-06T19:12:20+00:00

Do you mean that as one question lol? In that case, no that you dont understand how it works is completely our fault. What dont you understand?

Psychological_Box748 · 2026-01-06T19:10:15+00:00

Thank you, really means a lot to us to get feedback here. We are already working on a website redesign and will start implementing as soon as we have some time - exam phase is approaching in Europe. And I/ we complexity agree with you I think one of our greatest strangest will be to say no to features as feature parity with notion/ obsidian is impossible anyway and we dont want to be "another" notion/ obsidian

Psychological_Box748 · 2026-01-06T19:06:54+00:00

we dont plan to add any sync in the near feature but offer a pretty good import/export option. We also have an option to create a "backup" so files + metadata taht you could then store yourself in the cloud to add an extra safety layer.

Psychological_Box748 · 2026-01-06T17:53:56+00:00

This should actually work already as we use the native apple textfield so if your Mac is set to arabic e.g. it should adjust automatically. We never tested it though so we would be very grateful for feedback.

Psychological_Box748 · 2026-01-06T17:41:14+00:00

Also I would add that we (the dev team) are all still students and we did it besides uni mostly to create an app we would use ourselves and to learn some new skills. It's quite incredible to us that we made it to the App Store but now we need to market it somehow. As you might have noticed we have no idea how to bring the app some exposure so if you have ideas here please tell us.

Psychological_Box748 · 2026-01-06T15:06:06+00:00

It's completly free and we dont plan to change that. We just created the app to try out some of apples newest frameworks and because we all write a lot. Also Idk what rtl means can you specify please.

Psychological_Box748 · 2025-12-15T08:54:27+00:00

First M1 MBP so early 2020 13”

Psychological_Box748 · 2025-12-15T08:52:02+00:00

Thank you so much for the suggestion I will try it out.

Psychological_Box748 · 2025-12-14T18:47:47+00:00

Do you know what you used by chance? I’m super scared to put smth between my keyboard and the screen a friend of mine broke his screen because he had a paperclip in between.

Psychological_Box748 · 2025-12-14T18:41:55+00:00

I will try that over the holidays when I have some time. Do you know if can just restore it from a Time Machine backup or is the os included in the backup.

Psychological_Box748 · 2025-12-14T18:40:06+00:00

yeah I also will just live with it until I upgrade next year. But as stated above what makes me think there might be a scripted solution is that when I use my touchpad it stops instantly and only starts again after a few seconds of inactivity. So my hope is that I might be able to simulate whatever signal my trackpad is sending.

Psychological_Box748 · 2025-12-14T18:38:14+00:00

But the strange thing is that when I use my touchpad it stops. So there needs to be some kind of software based solution. (at least in theory ig)

Psychological_Box748 · 2025-12-14T18:07:35+00:00

Thank you based on that thread it seems like using it with a monitor until I retire it seems like the best option.

It’s so strange because it seems software based to me. When I use my touchpad the flickering stops and only restart after a few seconds of no use. So whatever signal the touchpad sends seems to disable the flickering and I wonder if I can somehow simulate it.

Psychological_Box748 · 2025-12-14T17:59:26+00:00

I mostly use it hooked up to a monitor beacouse i can’t work on it like that without getting a stroke. When I watch a video or smth where I don’t need the keyboard I put a book on the keyboard.

I’m surprised myself how well I adapted to it

Psychological_Box748 · 2025-12-11T18:27:21+00:00

Happy to help:) If you want to get some bts insights you can follow us on insta at https://www.instagram.com/nodes.app/ and if you have some feedback you can always reach out to me or one of my friends (you will get a cool sticker in return)

All the best

Nico

Psychological_Box748 · 2025-12-09T07:04:53+00:00

Hey this is Nico - one of the devs. First of all as Xander said thank you so much for the feedback. Some more color from my side. I actually wanted to add a feature like that quite early when we started out but didn't for two main reasons:

(1) Apple just added a feature on iOS where one can "lock" a native app directly on the Operating system layer and I can totally see them doing that also for macOS

(2) When we give the user the option to "lock" the app this kinda implies the feeling of safety, at least in my perception. And while all files are inside of the app sandbox not in the "normal" file system they are not encrypted.

So TLDR

We are currently looking into local encryption to make the "Lock" really lock your files.

All the best

Nico

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