Leaf Notes✎
Ink that feels like paper
Five pens (fountain, ballpoint, pencil, calligraphy and marker), a highlighter, a lasso and a stabiliser for steady lines. On touch screens, two fingers scroll while you draw.
PlainRuledGridDotsCornellMusic
Free notebook app
Notes that think on paper.
Write with a pen, typeset maths, record the lecture and turn it all into flashcards, in one notebook. It feels like paper and works on your laptop, desktop and tablet.
LinuxWindowsAndroidOpen source (GPL-3.0)No account needed
What's inside
Everything a page of notes can hold
Text, ink, equations, tables, code, pictures and sound share one page. You can put each note wherever you like.
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Maths, typeset as you type
Write $\frac{a}{b}$ in any note and it renders right on the page. Fractions, sums, integrals, roots, matrices, cases, Greek letters and aligned equations are all supported.
A
Handwriting to text, offline
Select some handwriting and turn it into typed text, or into a LaTeX equation. Two small recognisers built into the app vote on every character, so no internet connection is needed.
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Recordings linked to your notes
Record a lecture while you write. Later, tap any note or stroke and you'll hear what was being said when you wrote it.
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Flashcards that space themselves
Turn a page into a deck. Each card comes back after 1, 3, 7, 16 and 35 days, depending on how well you knew it. Maths works on cards too.
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Write on your PDFs
Bring in lecture slides or a worksheet as a printout and write all over it. Export to PDF and you get the original document back with your ink and notes on top, as real vector text.
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Organised like a binder
Notebooks contain sections and sections contain pages, with subpages and [[page links]]. Tag notes as to-do, important or question, find every open task in one list, and search everything.
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Sync your way
Use any shared folder (Syncthing, Dropbox, OneDrive), your own WebDAV server such as Nextcloud, or Google Drive. Changes merge note by note, and nothing gets deleted because of a conflict.
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AI, only if you want it
Add your own key for Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter or another compatible service, or run a model locally with Ollama. You can then summarise a page, get quizzed on it, fix spelling or have flashcards suggested.
Study mode
Learn from your notes, not just keep them
Every deck you make lands in the Study tab. Leaf Notes keeps track of which cards are due, so a study session only shows what you're about to forget.
- Write cards by hand, or let the AI suggest them from a page
- Leitner boxes with growing gaps between reviews
- Progress belongs to each card, so fixing a typo doesn't reset it
Maths & links
Proper equations, without leaving your notes
Equations are drawn by the app itself, so they look the same offline and in exported PDFs. Click one to edit its LaTeX. You can also describe an equation in words and let the AI write it.
- Matrices, cases, sums, integrals and roots
- Hand-written formulas become LaTeX with Ink to math
[[Page links]]show a "Linked from" trail on the other page
Your notes stay with you
- No account and no sign-up. There are no ads, analytics or tracking.
- Notes, pictures and recordings are saved on your device.
- Nothing is sent over the internet unless you turn on sync or AI, and then it goes straight to the service you choose.
- Google Drive sync can only see the files Leaf Notes created itself.
Download
Get Leaf Notes
Free, with every feature included. Choose your platform.
Downloads come from the project's GitHub releases.
Linux
An AppImage for x86-64 that runs on most distributions. Make it executable (chmod +x), then open it.
Android
An APK for 64-bit ARM phones and tablets running Android 8 or newer. A stylus is recommended for writing.
APKWindows and Android may warn you because the app is new and not from a store. On Android, allow installing apps from your browser when you're asked.
Build from source
git clone https://github.com/NilsBriggen/leaf-notes.git cd leaf-notes cargo build --release # Linux needs libasound2-dev ./target/release/leafnotes