Zettlr
272 likes
Unified writing platform offering note-taking, easy citations with Zotero integration, LaTeX/Word templates, snippets, themes, dark modes, code highlighting, multi-language support, and knowledge management with Zettelkasten for seamless writing from notes to books.
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source (GPL-3.0)
Application typeApplication types
EUPlatforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Flathub
- PortableApps.com
Features
Highlights All activities
Zettlr News & Activities
Recent News
- Paul published news article about Zettlr
- Paul published news article about Zettlr
- Mauricio B. Holguin published news article about Zettlr
Recent activities
- ZPRMNT liked Zettlr
Paul added Zettlr as alternative to Opensidian
fbianco1981 added Zettlr as alternative to gknowledge- Beni-Cherniavsky-Paskin liked Zettlr
VINAY-Chauhan added Zettlr as alternative to HeaderNotes
The Best (and the rest) of Personal Knowledge Management Software [2022] [Updated 2023]
I spend a ridiculous amount of time searching for a PKM tool that fits my organizational needs. Everything falls short. I want to help others on their own quests by compiling this list. Tags on AlternativeTo are helpful, but I wanted a place to keep a curated list with my own findings that others can contribute to.
Where I can, I have tried to answer the following important questions for each app:
- Is it open source?
- Is it offline-capable?
- Can blocks/notes exist in multiple locations?
As well as providing rough overall ratings (Scale of 1 to 5) for the following metrics:
- Organization: How does the app allow you to structure information? Is it flexible? Is it logical?
- User experience (UX): Is it easy to use? Is the interface designed in a way that is not just logical, but natural for the everyday user?
- Privacy: To the best of my (limited) knowledge, does this tool protect your personal data AND is it designed so that you can ensure the safety of your data yourself rather than relying on the app developers (trust, but verify).
Please comment with additions/suggestions, collaboration makes things better.
Europe’s Open-Source Solutions: Your Guide to Transparent, Independent and GDPR-Aligned Software.
This guide is designed for anyone looking to take greater control of their digital life by choosing open-source solutions developed and maintained within Europe. It highlights projects that promote transparency, reduce reliance on non-European tech ecosystems, and align with Europe’s strong commitment to privacy and data protection. The goal is to support digital autonomy in Europe while uplifting the local developers and communities who build trustworthy, user-centric software.
Writing
A vast compilation of great writing apps and word processors, for all your writing needs. From office suites to publishing tools. Now with an emphasis on privacy.
Official Links
Install from the command line
winget install -e --id Zettlr.Zettlrbrew install --cask zettlrflatpak install flathub com.zettlr.Zettlr
Developed by
Hendrik Erz Licensing
Open Source (GPL-3.0) and Free product.Written in
Rating
Average rating of 4.2Alternatives
266 alternatives listedNews
4 news article related to ZettlrBadge
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AlternativeTo Categories
Office & Productivity, File Management, News & Books, DevelopmentGitHub repository
- 13,777 Stars
- 861 Forks
- 558 Open Issues
- Updated
Comments and Reviews
Great for taking and organizing notes (better yet if you use Zettelkasten methods). Excellent (really) for writing academic texts which will be converted (with e.g. Pandoc) to PDF or other formats. With Zettlr (plus Zotero or other reference manager exporting library to CSL JSON), citing is incredibly simple: configure where is your citation library, and then just type '@' and it will show ALL your cites for you to choose. Seriously, I wrote my entire Master's thesis on it last year. Images preview, UI theming, all that simple citing, and a program that keeps out of your way to work. It's great, and, best of all, open source. Suggestion of companion open source apps/programs for academic writing:
Too buggy and too quirky.
(1) The undo command does not work. Never.
(2) It writes some changes to the file without your consent. I accidentally deleted a whole column of a table as soon as I opened a document. There was no undoing it and the change was already written to the file on the disk. In an app that has an Undo and a Save command, this must never happen.
This review is for version 1.8.7 on Windows 10.
The following issue was present in version 1.7.4 but has since been resolved: You may end up spending hours writing something that eventually you can neither save nor export! The problem is that sometimes, you issue a "New" command and your command seems to have been succeeded. But in reality, no new file has been created. The app expects you to create a folder first, before creating a file. But since this feature is not properly implemented, the file is not created.
I can’t confirm this for Zettr 1.8.5 on Ubuntu 20.10. Maybe this version runs fine also on Windows 10 (which I don’t have, so that I can’t tell you).
I've updated my review for version 1.8.7, but unfortunately, two of three issues still exist on Zettlr for Windows.
While I am very happy for the 1.57% of the world users who have Ubuntu, I am afraid I don't belong to that group.
Excellent, feature-rich, lightweight, easy. I love it.
Electron app that is quite buggy and slow compared to similar apps, such as Obsidian or ZimWiki.
I like the idea, just not the implementation yet. It would also be better if you could hide the bold asteriks like other markdown apps, so your page isn't filled with **bold** ## heading, etc.
Based on the rankings and likes of Zettlr across the different note-taking apps, it appears that Zettlr is artificially boosting their scores by listing it and liking it as alternatives to everything else.
Also, the creator/manager makes his politics clear (Marxist) inside the app. I really don't care about the politics of people, I don't want it in my face.
OK, you must not have used Zettlr for more than five minutes. If you had, you would have discovered that you can set the display parameters.
Also interesting, is that Zettlr is at the very top of all recommendations for markdown apps. Its popularity is not really high on the web in general.
Obviously the people behind it are trying to scam this system.
Take the person who just replied "Olyce," who joined 2 months ago, and only ever liked Zettlr and nothing else. There are many such fake accounts.
Basically how every other product here on this site works. What's worse, is that the owners/people who run this site couldn't care less. To them, any traffic is good, whether positive or negative (kinda like me IRL, former orange POTUS), so they fail to act on numerous reports on fake reviews, repeatedly, even including the most obvious offenders, ones where both the account and review were created on the same day.
If you know of any better 'alternatives', lmk. G2 is shit and their legitimacy is questionable, IMO. Same as alternative.me, slant.co, etc. ProductHunt is the 'best' replacement so far but even that has it's own faults due to being predominantly for product launches, resulting in issues such as being momentum based, recency bias, hype, as well as fake reviews/support, esp so when the devs offer an incentive, not to mention the fact that people seem to support damn near anything, including products they've never tried or launches that literally aren't ready or even available to the public yet.
Well, Alternativeto is still a good site. Even without that bias, the apps are still there (just not based on natural reviews). Like most techies, the mods here will lean left, as you will see certain apps (i.e. Gab) will have content warnings, even though bad content can be found on most apps. Ideally, this site and the admins in their roles would be politically neutral. But at least they aren't censoring comments they disagree with (to my knowledge). If you search Alternativeto here, you can find similar sites even.
There's nothing political displayed inside Zettlr. You're the only one displaying your political beliefs here...
It's an electron app. If that doesn't bother you, you'll find a pretty good markdown editor in Zettlr. Writing and saving your notes (to-do-lists, personal wiki articles) in markdown means you can access them with any third party text editor if need be. Combine this with Nextcloud's "Notes" and you have your very own OneNote / Google Keep on all your devices.
Best markdown editor I've used
The Vim editing mode has some issues...