A local-first notes app that works offline

Gravity is a local-first notes app. Your notes live in a database on your phone or Mac, and everything the app does, from writing to search to archiving, works without an internet connection. Sync is an optional layer on top, and you can export all your notes whenever you like.

I'm Tristan, and I build Gravity on my own. This page is about how the app behaves when the network is slow or missing, and how you keep hold of your notes over the long run. If you're more interested in accounts and data collection, the private notes app page covers that.

What local-first means here

The phrase comes from a 2019 essay by the research lab Ink & Switch, which argued that software should keep the main copy of your data on your own device, work offline, stay fast, and keep working for years whatever happens to the company that made it.

In Gravity that looks like this:

• The database is on your device. Opening the app, saving a note and scrolling the stream never wait on a server.
• Search runs locally. Results update as you type, match the start of words and parts of longer words, ignore accents, and can include archived notes.
• There's no account, so there's nothing that can expire, lock you out or need renewing.
• If you turn on iCloud sync, it runs in the background and catches up whenever you're online.

A day offline

You're on the Underground with no signal. You open Gravity, the cursor is waiting at the top, and you write idea: shorter onboarding, one screen and press Return twice. It's saved. You search for last week's note about a train booking and it appears as you type. You swipe a to-do right to rescue it and archive another you've finished.

Nothing tells you you're offline, because nothing needs the network. When you come back above ground, if iCloud sync is on, the new note and your changes go up to iCloud and appear on your Mac a moment later. If you edited the same note on two devices while one was offline, Gravity keeps both versions so neither edit is lost.

The Mac app works the same way. On a plane, Option-Space still opens the capture panel from any app and saves straight into the local stream.

Sync, backups and export

On iPhone, iPad and Mac, sync uses iCloud, through a private database in your own iCloud account. It's off until you turn it on. It syncs between Gravity on iPhone, iPad and the Mac app.

On Android, turn on folder backups: Gravity saves a JSON copy of your notes to a folder you choose once a day and keeps the ten most recent. Point it at a folder your cloud storage app syncs and you have an off-device copy.

On every platform you can export your notes at any time:

• JSON includes your active and archived notes with their dates and rescue history. It's the format Gravity imports, so it's also how you move from one device to another, including from Android to iPhone.
• Markdown, on iPhone, iPad and Android, gives you your active notes as one plain text file you can open in any editor.

If you're coming from another app, the import tool on this site converts Markdown and CSV exports into a Gravity file, and it runs entirely in your browser.

How it compares

Obsidian is the strongest local-first option if you want your notes as individual Markdown files in a folder you control. Gravity stores notes in a database and gives you files when you export. If file-level ownership is your main requirement, Obsidian is the better fit.

Apple Notes keeps a local copy and works offline, but its main home is iCloud. You can also keep notes in an "On My iPhone" account that never syncs.

Google Keep and Notion are cloud-first. They cache notes for offline use, but they're built around your account and their servers, which is what makes their web access and sharing work.

Drafts, on Apple devices, is local-first and fast to capture into, with sync through iCloud. It's a good choice if you want to send text on to other apps. Gravity is built around keeping notes and reviewing them later.

Who it's for

Gravity suits people who write in places with bad signal, people who want their notes to open instantly every time, and people who don't want their notes to depend on a company's servers staying up. It suits anyone who likes to write everything down and sort it out later.

Questions

Does Gravity work in airplane mode?

Yes, completely. Writing, editing, search, archive and export all work offline.

Are my notes stored as plain text files?

Not on disk. They're in a database inside the app, and each note is saved as plain Markdown text. Export gives you a JSON file or a Markdown file you can keep anywhere.

What happens if I lose my phone?

If you had iCloud sync on, your notes come back when you install Gravity on a new device with the same Apple account and turn sync on. On Android, restore from your latest folder backup.

Will Gravity keep working if it stops being updated?

It doesn't rely on any server of mine, so there's nothing for me to switch off.

Gravity is on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and Mac, and on Google Play for Android.