NoteBerg: Handwriting Notes

Samoht

About this app

NoteBerg is a handwriting notes app for your stylus: write by hand, annotate PDFs and type rich text in one notebook - offline first, with optional Nextcloud sync to a server you control. Open source, no account, no ads.

HANDWRITTEN NOTES WITH YOUR STYLUS
- Write naturally with an active stylus or S Pen - pressure sensitivity supported
- Pen and marker/highlighter tools with customizable colors
- Lasso selection - move, resize, rotate and copy handwriting
- Once a stylus is detected, your fingers pan and zoom instead of drawing
- Ruled and grid page backgrounds
- Unlimited undo/redo

PDF ANNOTATION
- Import PDFs and annotate them with pen, highlighter and text
- Export any note as a PDF with A4 pagination

NEXTCLOUD SYNC - SELF-HOSTED, OPTIONAL
- Sync your notebooks with your own Nextcloud server via WebDAV
- Secure Nextcloud login (Login Flow v2) - your main password is never entered in the app
- Offline-first - all notes live on your device and work without internet
- Conflict resolution for edits made on several devices
- Use the same notes on Android, on Windows and in the NoteBerg Nextcloud app

RICH TEXT NOTE TAKING
- Text editor with formatting, tables, colors and font sizes
- Task checkboxes inline with your notes
- Mark handwritten notes as tasks and see all open tasks across notebooks

SCAN DOCUMENTS & ADD PHOTOS
- Insert photos from your camera or gallery
- Document mode outlines the page live, straightens it and flattens shadows so it looks scanned
- Perspective crop finds the page corners by itself

AUDIO RECORDING
- Record audio straight into a note, with the same recording level on every device

ORGANIZE AND SEARCH
- Notebooks with thumbnail previews of every note
- Full-text search across typed text and recognized handwriting
- Recycle bin with soft delete

HANDWRITING RECOGNITION (OPTIONAL)
- Turn handwriting into searchable text with an AI vision model you configure yourself - a local one (LM Studio, Ollama) or a cloud API (OpenAI-compatible, Replicate)
- Off by default and always started manually - nothing is sent anywhere until you pick a backend and agree to the destination
- No built-in service and no API key ships with the app - you bring your own

PRIVACY & SECURITY
- Your notes stay on your device; we have no servers and no accounts
- Optional master password with PBKDF2 + AES-256-GCM encryption
- Nextcloud credentials stored in the Android Keystore, never in plaintext

BACKUP & RESTORE
- Back up every notebook, note, image, PDF and recording into one .zip file, optionally password-protected (AES-256)
- Restoring never overwrites a note silently - replaced copies go to the recycle bin

MORE
- Dark mode
- 9 languages: English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Chinese

OPEN SOURCE
NoteBerg is open source (MIT license): https://github.com/thomasleuthold/NoteBerg

NoteBerg is in beta and has not had a formal security audit - please avoid storing highly sensitive data. Feedback and bug reports are welcome via GitHub Issues.

What’s new

- New: backup and restore. Save all notebooks, notes, images, PDFs and recordings to one password-protected .zip file.
- New: camera Document mode outlines the page, straightens it and evens out lighting. Crop finds corners automatically.
- New: recording gain boost for quiet speech, and the same recording level on every device.
- Recordings are saved when you close the note or leave the app.
- Fixed spikes on fast strokes, transparent PNGs turning black, and two-finger pan turning into a zoom.