Zim icon
Zim icon

Zim

Zim brings the concept of a wiki to your desktop. Store information, link pages and edit with WYSISYG markup or directly typing some lightweight markup syntax and see it previewed as-you-type. Creating a new page is easy by either clicking on the "Create new note"...

Zim screenshot 1

Cost / License

  • Free
  • Open Source

Platforms

  • Mac  Require Terminal-based, system-wide changes.
  • Windows  Spell check and UI have some issues still
  • Linux
  • BSD
  • Flathub
  • Flatpak
3.8
Good25 reviews
509likes
37comments
0news articles

Features

Suggest and vote on features

Properties

  1.  Lightweight
  2.  Distraction-free
  3.  Privacy focused
  4.  Educational

Features

  1.  Works Offline
  2.  Plain text file
  3.  Wiki-like interface
  4.  Hierarchical Structure
  5.  Cross-Platform
  6.  Note organization
  7.  Outliner
  8.  WYSIWYG Support
  9.  Text formatting
  10.  Portable
  11.  Ad-free
  12.  Notebook
  13.  Wiki
  14.  LaTeX Editor
  15.  Export to HTML
  16.  Extensible by Plugins/Extensions
  17.  Full-Text Search
  18.  LaTeX Equations
  19.  Dark Mode
  20.  Save as txt
  21.  Calendar Integration
  22.  File Versioning
  23.  Spell Checking
  24.  No registration required
  25.  Outline folding
  26.  Nested Notes
  27.  LaTeX Math
  28. Dropbox icon  Sync with Dropbox
  29.  Export to LaTeX
  30. Git icon  Git integration

 Tags

  • Xfce
  • markdown-export
  • getting-things-done
  • convert-notes-to-html
  • hierarchy
  • hierarchy-notes

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Comments and Reviews

   
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Comment summary: Zim is praised for its flexibility, plugins, and user-friendly note-taking and organizational features. It allows for wiki-style linking and managing notes, with several users appreciating its compatibility with Linux and cross-platform capabilities. However, some users express concerns regarding its lack of markdown support, high memory usage, and issues on Windows. There are positive mentions of using Zim with other software for synchronization and security. Overall, users find Zim useful but note room for development and improvements.
Top Positive Comment
John Fastman
20

If you would like to sync your Zim wiki database between computers, but don't want to have the plain text version synced (e.g. because of Dropbox/GoogleDrive/OneDrive/Box privacy concerns), you can always save your Zim database file in an encrypted Vault using the excellent open source and cross-platform app Cryptomator.

Otherwise, you can sync using Spideroak, Tresorit, or pCloud's encrypted folder. All of these are end-to-end encrypted.

An additional benefit of using Cryptomator is that you can close Zim, lock the vault in Cryptomator and other users on the same computer won't be able to open or access your Zim database contents.

This solution should be included on the Zim FAQ page, which says that you can't have encryption. This is an easy and convenient solution.

lrq3000

Please send a mail to the devs, this is indeed a very good idea! Thank you for the report!

Top Negative Comment
Sushruta
2

The best note-taking app for Linux in terms of features... but it doesn't use markdown. Seriously, I am so used to markdown that I even use it on paper, so any software that does not offer such a basic feature is totally unusable for me. :(

condor
0

I like Zim because of its small size window for note-taking while reading

maxmomot
0

Zim is a really good app to store notes, data, to do, knowledge and more. It is open-source and there are a lot of plugins to extend Zim, there are options for customizing it's look and it is really comfortable to use.

Review by a new / low-activity user.
TBayAreaPat
1

Doesn't bring in webpage hyperlinks like CherryTree and Obsidian does. No text colors. You could use it as a ToDo Manager since it does make checkboxes easy, but it's not really set up like that with drag/drop calendar functionality like Elisi: Digital Bullet Journal icon Elisi: Digital Bullet Journal Installing plug-ins is an effort. To install plugins for Zim on Windows, you should create a plugins folder in %APPDATA%/zim/data/zim/plugins/ etc

Joseph Peni
1

Zim is a good way of organizing and accessing the piles of useful and often referenced information in my life.

Marco Bartoli
3

A trustworthy companion for your notes and to-do lists. Can even serve as your personal knowledge base (read: wiki). Sadly lacking in modern features (like native use of markdown files). Development has slowed down a lot.

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7 of 37 comments

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What is Zim?

Zim brings the concept of a wiki to your desktop. Store information, link pages and edit with WYSISYG markup or directly typing some lightweight markup syntax and see it previewed as-you-type. Creating a new page is easy by either clicking on the "Create new note" button, by linking to a non-existing page or by writing a CamelCase name in any note. Pages are stored in a folder structure, like in an outliner, in plain text format with lightweight markup, and can have attachments (stored along the notes).

This tool can be used to keep track of TODO lists or ideas, to take notes during a meeting, to draft any other kind of text (blog entries, important mails, etc.) or to write long texts like lab research notebooks thank's to the headers structure and the table of content navigation.

Zim handles several types of formatting markup, like headings, bullet lists, checkbox, tables and of course bold, italic and highlighted. This markup is saved as a hybrid wiki/markdown text so you can easily edit it with other editors. Because of the autosave feature you can switch between pages and follow links or even close the software anytime while editing without worries. The interface also provides multi-document tabs, and it remembers the cursor position in all notes for quick resuming in your note taking endeavors.

Zim Videos

Zim information

  • Developed by

    NL flagJaap G Karssenberg
  • Licensing

    Open Source (GPL-2.0) and Free product.
  • Written in

  • Rating

    Average rating of 3.8 (25 ratings)
  • Alternatives

    315 alternatives listed
  • Supported Languages

    • English

AlternativeTo Categories

Education & ReferenceOffice & Productivity

GitHub repository

  •  2,108 Stars
  •  392 Forks
  •  438 Open Issues
  •   Updated  
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Our users have written 37 comments and reviews about Zim, and it has gotten 509 likes

Zim was added to AlternativeTo by Bharadhwaj on and this page was last updated .