One searchable, encrypted notepad instead of 80 Notepad tabs - rich text, inline images, real tables, and every note always saved, shareable as tear-off .knote files.
Fully featured
- Full-text search as you type (SQLite FTS5)
- Rich text with inline images, real tables, colors, highlights, and rules
- Optional whole-database AES-256 encryption (SQLCipher)
- Share single notes as .knote files or whole databases as .kndb - with optional share passwords
- Open .txt, .md, .html, .rtf and images as notes; export notes back out
Built from scratch
KillerNotes is written in C# and WPF on .NET Framework 4.8. Notes live in a local SQLite database with an FTS5 full-text index, encrypted at rest with SQLCipher when you set a password. Rich content round-trips through the database intact - images and tables included.
The Technical page has the full breakdown of the storage, search, and encryption design.
By a field tech, for field techs
KillerNotes is built by a working field tech and used on real client benches every day. Notes save themselves on every pause, every note switch, and every close - nothing is ever lost to a reboot again.
It answers to nobody but you: everything stays on your machine, and the whole thing is GPLv3 open source with the issues page open to anyone.
Read the story behind it on the About page.
Free, open source.
No agent, no account, no subscription.
No telemetry is sent and no ads... ever.
What it does
One notepad, not 80 tabs
Every note lives in a single local database and saves itself - on every pause in typing, on note switch, on alt-tab, and on close. Nothing is ever lost to a reboot or a crashed session again.
Instant search
Full-text search across every note as you type, powered by a SQLite FTS5 index. Sort by creation time or title, in either direction, with one click.
Rich text that keeps up
Paste screenshots straight into a note, insert real tables with an Office-style size picker, and format with bold, italic, colors, highlights, lists, monospace, and horizontal rules - all with hotkeys.
Encrypted at rest
Set a password and the whole database is encrypted with SQLCipher (AES-256) - notes, images, index, everything. Set, change, or remove it from the title-bar lock at any time.
Tear-off sharing
Right-click a note to share it as a .knote file, optionally protected with its own password - or just drag it out of the sidebar straight into Teams, Outlook, or a folder. Whole databases travel as .kndb.
Multiple databases
Keep separate notepads per client or per job. The Manage databases dialog creates, renames, switches, exports, and copies them - and a received .kndb opens with a double-click.
Opens your files
Ctrl+O or drop files in: .txt, .log, and .md become text notes, .rtf keeps its formatting, .html carries its source with a rendered preview, and images land inline. Each file becomes its own note.
Export
Any note exports back out as plain text, rich text (.rtf) with images intact, or a standalone theme-styled web page with images embedded.
Markdown & HTML preview
Notes that look like markdown or HTML get a preview toggle that opens a rendered split pane - handy for README drafts and pasted documentation.
Hotkeys & keyboard map
Everything has a key. F1 opens the shortcuts overlay, including a full visual keyboard map with color-coded layers - hold Ctrl or Shift to preview what each key does.
Themes & accents
Six themes (Dark, Light, Black, Blood, Greed and Cyanotic) with per-theme accent colors, all switchable live - the same set as every KillerTools app.
Private by design
Everything runs on your machine. Notes never leave your disk, no account is required, no cloud sync happens behind your back, and no telemetry is sent anywhere.