Basalt

Vishnu V

About this app

Basalt puts the markdown notes you keep in a GitHub repository on your phone — fully offline, and writable.

Point it at a repo, sync once, and the whole vault is on the device: readable, searchable and editable with the network off. Write on the bus, and the edit lands in your repo as a real commit the moment you have a connection again.

Your notes stay plain markdown files in a repository you own. There is no Basalt account, no proprietary format, and no server holding a copy of your writing.

WORKS WITH OBSIDIAN VAULTS

Basalt reads real Obsidian markdown, so the vault you already have needs no conversion: wikilinks, callouts, transclusion, footnotes, ==highlights==, tags, frontmatter, Mermaid diagrams, tables and code blocks.

OFFLINE FIRST

- The vault lives on disk and is indexed into SQLite. Nothing needs the network after the first sync.
- Full-text search across every note, plus a fuzzy quick switcher for jumping by name.
- Wikilinks, backlinks and linked mentions: [[note]] resolves the way you expect, and every note shows what points at it.
- A note connection graph with filters, search and a minimap, plus a local graph for any single note.
- Outline and heading jump for moving inside long notes.
EDITING THAT COMMITS ITSELF

- Edits queue on the device and push as real commits when you are back online.
- A pending-changes screen shows exactly what will be committed, with conflict resolution when the repo has moved on.
- Tappable task lists: tick a checkbox straight from the page.
- Highlights you can export, which survive re-syncing when the text moves.
- Background sync tells you when the repository has moved ahead.

BUILT FOR PRIVATE NOTES

- Optional biometric app lock and a screen-capture guard.
- Your GitHub token is held in hardware-backed secure storage and is sent only to GitHub.
- No analytics, no telemetry, no advertising, no tracking of any kind.
- Multiple vaults side by side. Public repositories work without signing in at all.
TRY IT WITHOUT A REPO

Basalt ships with a sample vault. On the connect screen, tap "Look around a sample vault" — no GitHub account, no network, nothing to connect. Every feature above works on it.
Four deliberate choices:

- Never the word "reader." Basalt writes, and your own conventions forbid shipping copy that calls it one. The editing section sits above the privacy section for the same reason — it's half the product, not a footnote.
- "Works with Obsidian vaults," not "Obsidian app." Obsidian is someone else's trademark, and Play's metadata policy treats implied affiliation as a rejection reason. Naming it once as a compatibility fact, plus the closing disclaimer, is the safe form. Don't add Obsidian to the app name.
- No keyword stuffing. Repeating "notes app markdown Obsidian sync" is the single most common metadata rejection. The description reads as prose because that's also what converts.
- The "TRY IT WITHOUT A REPO" section does double duty — it lowers the barrier for users and quietly tells the reviewer how to reach the whole app without credentials, backing up your sign-in declaration.