Memos: Self-Hosted Lightweight Note-Taking

Memos is a privacy-first, lightweight note-taking service designed for capturing quick thoughts. With over 56,000 GitHub stars, it has struck a chord with self-hosters who want something simpler than full-featured note apps. Think of it as a private Twitter timeline for your thoughts — open the app, type a note, and it appears in a chronological feed. Memos supports Markdown, tags, images, and links, but deliberately keeps things minimal.

Self-hosting Memos gives you a fast, private micro-journal that lives on your own server with no account requirements or cloud dependencies.

Key Features

• Twitter-like timeline interface for quick note capture and browsing
• Full Markdown support with preview for rich text formatting
• Tag system with #hashtags for organizing and filtering notes
• Image and file attachments directly in memos
• Search across all memos by content, tags, or date ranges
• Daily review feature for revisiting past notes
• RESTful API for integrating with other tools and automations
• Multiple user support with visibility settings (public, protected, private)

Why Self-Host Memos?

Private micro-journaling. Quick notes, fleeting thoughts, and daily reflections are deeply personal data. Self-hosting Memos keeps your stream of consciousness on your own server, not in some company's cloud. No analytics, no data mining, no ads.

Frictionless capture. The best note system is the one you actually use. Memos removes every barrier — open it, type, hit enter. No folders to organize, no notebooks to create, no hierarchy to maintain. Just a chronological stream of your thoughts.

Lightweight and fast. Memos is a single Go binary with an embedded SQLite database. It starts instantly, uses minimal resources, and never slows down. Perfect for running alongside other services on a shared VPS.

Self-contained deployment. No external databases, no Redis, no complex dependencies. Memos runs as a single container or binary with everything built in. Deploy in minutes and forget about it.

System Requirements

Resource	Minimum	Recommended
CPU	1 vCPU	1 vCPU
RAM	256 MB	512 MB
Storage	2 GB SSD	10 GB SSD
OS	Ubuntu 22.04+	Ubuntu 24.04

Memos is one of the lightest self-hosted applications available. The Go binary with embedded SQLite uses minimal CPU and RAM. Storage depends on how many images and attachments you upload.

Getting Started

Deploy Memos on your VPS using Docker Compose through Dokploy. Our guide covers persistent data storage, SSL configuration, and optional multi-user setup.

Deploy Memos with Dokploy →

Alternatives

• Joplin — Full-featured note-taking with notebooks, encryption, and sync
• Trilium Notes — Hierarchical note-taking for building a personal knowledge base
• Standard Notes — End-to-end encrypted note-taking focused on longevity
• HedgeDoc — Collaborative Markdown editor for team documentation

FAQ

How is Memos different from other note-taking apps? Memos takes a timeline approach rather than a document approach. Instead of creating pages in notebooks, you post short notes to a chronological feed. This makes it ideal for quick captures, daily logs, and fleeting thoughts — not long-form documents. Think microblogging for yourself.

Can I use Memos for team note-taking? Yes. Memos supports multiple users with visibility controls. You can make memos public (visible to all users), protected (visible to logged-in users), or private (only visible to you). However, it's primarily designed as a personal tool rather than a collaborative platform.

Does Memos support Markdown? Yes. Full Markdown support including headings, lists, code blocks, links, and inline formatting. Memos renders Markdown in real time as you type.

Can I export my data from Memos? Yes. Memos stores data in SQLite, which you can back up or export directly. The API also allows programmatic access to all your memos for migration or integration purposes.

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App data sourced from selfh.st open-source directory.