Zim
A desktop personal wiki with inline preview as-you-type and lots of plugins
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 Screenshots
Zim Features
Zim information
- Developed byJaap G Karssenberg
- LicensingOpen Source (GPL-2.0) and Free product.
- Written in
- RatingAverage rating of 3.9
- Alternatives294 alternatives listed
Supported Languages
- English
GitHub repository
- 1,604 Stars
- 332 Forks
- 321 Open Issues
- Updated
Comments and Reviews
Tags
- Note-taking
- hierarchy-notes
- Xfce
- getting-things-done
- hierarchy
- convert-notes-to-html
- Educational
- markdown-export
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.
Please send a mail to the devs, this is indeed a very good idea! Thank you for the report!
Reply written ago
Speaking of more or less notable feature differences. So, Wikidpad has got anchors, and can also make insertions (you insert content of one page into other, and it updates dynamically when you make changes to the page you inserted content from). Zim hasn't got this; anchors are planned, but the works for them haven't even started yet.
On the other hand, Zim doesn't have HTML and preview modes, you work in one unified mode; no distorting of downscaled images; somewhat easier and faster work as you don't have to write code.
My personal verdict: if you don't yet have your wikis\notes, then Zim will be easier and faster start. But if you use WikidPad for a long time already and have lots of experience with it - no sense in switching to Zim, as WikidPad has slighly more capabilities.
not working win 32 bit!!!
Efficient, simple, fast, and bloat-free. What's not to like?
Windows 10 Defender tags the installer as unsafe and won't allow it to be run.
Native interface in Gnome (rather than, for example, an electron app). The application provides the most useful personal knowledge management features and is much more mature than many similar applications (which shows in a good way). It's free and open source, which gives it an advantage.
I used markdown format and build wiki for my projects with MkDocs before, but Zim is much simpler solution (if you no need exactly online-wiki).
[Edited by luarocks, April 22]