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# Treedome: A Hierarchical Local-First Note-Taking App Inspired by CherryTree
- URL: https://itsfoss.com/news/treedome/
- Published: 2024-09-14T06:02:55.000Z
- Updated: 2024-09-14T06:02:55.000Z
- Description: An interesting open-source app to securely take notes.
- Author: Sourav Rudra
- Tags: App of the Week, News, #Import 2025-11-08 21:15

If you are into taking notes on your computer, having a solution that doesn't mine your data to serve you with obnoxious ads is an important requirement, one that cannot be compromised on.

In my case, I have used many note-taking apps on Linux, with some of the [best ones](https://itsfoss.com/note-taking-apps-linux/) being Joplin, Standard Notes, and Notesnook. Of course, I always keep an eye out for new ones that do something different from the rest.

This time for *App Of The Week*, we have Treedome, a **new secure note-taking app that focuses on being local-first and organizes notes in tree-like structures**.

🚧

Treedome is still under development; some features are yet to be implemented.

## Treedome: Secure Note-Taking Made Simple

![a screenshot of treedome with the included welcome note open](https://itsfoss.com/content/images/2024/09/Treedome_a.png)

Powered by a robust TypeScript and Rust base, Treedome is a note-taking application that has just a single developer, [Tengku Izdihar](https://codeberg.org/tengkuizdihar?ref=itsfoss.com), working on it, delivering essential fixes and upgrades.

Treedome is distributed as libre software, or “[libreware](https://www.libreware.org/?ref=itsfoss.com)”, which is a very permissive way of distributing software. It got its name from the tree-like structure it uses to store notes, with the dome bit being the encryption that secures the notes.

### ⭐ Key Features

One of the main highlights of Treedome is the [XChaCha20-Poly1305](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChaCha20-Poly1305?ref=itsfoss.com#:~:text=%5Bedit%5D-,XChaCha20%2DPoly1305,-%E2%80%93%20extended%20nonce%20variant) encryption it employs for securing notes, which has not been professionally audited yet, but the developer is open to that.

More on encryption can be found in the [documentation](https://codeberg.org/solver-orgz/treedome/src/branch/master/docs/development/encryption.md?ref=itsfoss.com). As for the other key highlights of Treedome:

- **Uses SQLite**
- **Cross-Platform**
- **Rich Text Editor**

### 💻 User Experience

I installed the latest .deb for Treedome on an Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS [virtual machine](https://itsfoss.com/virtual-machine/), and it started right up without any issues.

On the first launch, Treedome asked me to open an existing document, but I didn't have one.

![a screenshot of treedome open document screen](https://itsfoss.com/content/images/2024/09/Treedome_b.png)

So, I went into the “Create” tab and created a new folder with a file named “test.note”, I had to manually name it with that suffix; otherwise, document creation wouldn't proceed.

I then put in a password for the document and proceeded to create and open it.

![a screenshot of treedome create document screen](https://itsfoss.com/content/images/2024/09/Treedome_c.png)

I populated the Treedome document with some funky cat-themed notes, during which I felt that the interface was quite easy to use. If you have used [rich-text](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich%5FText%5FFormat?ref=itsfoss.com) editors in the past, then you will feel right at home.

![a screenshot of treedome with a note open](https://itsfoss.com/content/images/2024/09/Treedome_d.png)

You can add various types of formatting to text, like making it bold or italic, adding a strike-through, highlighting specific parts, turning it into a heading, and more.

You can also add blockquotes, lists, horizontal lines, align text, make use of subscript/superscript, and add emojis.

When you are done changing the note, you can either click on the big save button on the top-right of the editor or use the *Ctrl + S* keyboard shortcut.

If you click on the downward arrow on the new note button, you will find that **you can create three types of notes**: a sibling note, a child note, and a diary note. The last one automatically creates a new parent note with the relevant year, with child notes being the month and date.

![a screenshot of treedome with the rich text editing tools in action](https://itsfoss.com/content/images/2024/09/Treedome_e.png)

To delete any note, you can click on the big delete button after selecting it. Do keep in mind that **deleting parent notes will result in child notes being gone too**, unless you drag and drop them under another note.

As you can see below, I dragged a note called “*How Cats Can Be Mean and Well-Mannered*” under the “*What Did The Cat Say?*” note, making it the child note for the latter.

![a screenshot of treedome parent and child note functionality with emojis added to the title of a note](https://itsfoss.com/content/images/2024/09/Treedome_f.png)

Of course, the “*What Did The Cat Say?*” note is still a sibling note of the existing “*Welcome to Treedome!*” note, which appeared after I created a new document. If you notice, I could also add emojis to the title of a note by using the handy emoji button.

I could further arrange my notes by adding tags to them. It was quite easy to do from the editor, I just added a “*cat*” tag to test things out, and the “*welcome*” tag came with the welcome note.

Another thing I noticed was that **if I left a note open for too long, the document would get closed due to inactivity**, which is a nice thing to have. 

But, the default timeout time was too short.

![a screenshot of treedome after a document was closed due to inactivity ](https://itsfoss.com/content/images/2024/09/Treedome_g.png)

Luckily, that can be changed by going into the three-ribbon menu (*when a document is open*) and going into “*Configure*”. The same menu also features options to change the password of a document, show the sizes of notes, and a few other things.

![a screenshot of treedome settings](https://itsfoss.com/content/images/2024/09/Treedome_h.png)

At the end of my testing, I was pretty impressed with Treedome; it did what it was meant to do and never crashed. What more do I need from a note-taking app?

## ⚙️ Installing Treedome on Linux

You can grab the *.deb* file for use on Debian-based Linux distributions from the Codeberg [releases page](https://codeberg.org/solver-orgz/treedome/releases?ref=itsfoss.com) for Treedome. For other Linux distributions and users on Windows/macOS, they will have to refer to the official [installation guide](https://codeberg.org/solver-orgz/treedome/src/branch/master/docs/user/installation.md?ref=itsfoss.com).

Oddly enough, it doesn't list steps for Windows; maybe they forgot to add them?

[Treedome (Codeberg)](https://codeberg.org/solver-orgz/treedome/releases?ref=itsfoss.com)

On the other hand, if you want to contribute to the development of Treedome, you should give its [Codeberg repo](https://codeberg.org/solver-orgz/treedome?ref=itsfoss.com) a visit.

*💬 Have you used encrypted note-taking apps such as this? How has your experience been with those?*

**Suggested Read** 📖

[Top 17 Best Note Taking Apps For Linux \[2024\]Plenty of amazing note-taking apps for Linux. Here’s what we recommend you to check out.![](https://itsfoss.com/content/images/size/w256h256/2022/12/android-chrome-192x192.png)It's FOSSAnkush Das![](https://itsfoss.com/content/images/2023/07/note-takings-apps-for-linux.png)](https://itsfoss.com/note-taking-apps-linux/)