Memos is a minimalist, Twitter‑style note‑taking app with open source code, but it requires manual deployment via Docker and is only suitable for very simple notes.
Some solutions are ultra‑complex, offering footnote creation and bibliography management. Others are extremely lightweight, designed for a quick jot‑down. Today I’ll talk about a Twitter‑style notebook for keeping a journal.
What is Memos?
Memos is an open‑source note‑creation service that can be self‑hosted on your own server.
Installation
Memos provides no binaries for any operating system. The whole service is accessed through a web browser, but the real issue is that you have to spin up the server image yourself on your PC or a virtual server.
The easiest way to do this is with Docker:
docker run -d \
--name memos \
--publish 5230:5230 \
--volume ~/.memos/:/var/opt/memos \
neosmemo/memos:stable
You can also try the demo at https://demo.usememos.com/.
What Memos can do
To be honest, it’s not a lot. All of the app’s features are visible in the screenshot below.
The interface is split into two panes.
- Left – a navigation panel with a search bar, calendar, labels, and tags.
- Right – a Twitter‑style feed of notes.
That’s how you’re meant to work with information, so building a complex, hierarchical knowledge base with Memos would be quite troublesome.
In a note you can add:
- Tags
- Attachments
- Links
- Geotags
Formatting is provided via Markdown. A finished note can be pinned, linked to, archived, or deleted.
To get any semblance of structure without folders, you can use labels. That’s not trivial at first: a label requires a name and a search condition that determines which notes appear under it. You’ll need to consult the instructions to figure this out.
You can also:
- Search notes
- Pick a note’s date from the calendar
- Open notes containing links, to‑do lists, or code
- View all notes for a particular tag
- View all attachments from all notes
Conclusions
Honestly, it’s hard to picture who would find Memos useful. If you didn’t have to run your own server, it would be a decent option for a simple journal or quick note‑taking. But with everything requiring manual setup, it’s usually better to use a full‑featured knowledge‑base service.