One person, one small app, no catch.
Minimalist Notes is built and maintained by an independent developer in Japan. Here's who's behind it and why it works the way it does.
Who builds it
Minimalist Notes is made by a solo developer who writes on the internet as @PGHQdev. Not a startup, not a team, not a company with a growth deck. One person who wanted a notes app that opened instantly, stayed out of the way, and never asked for a login. When that app didn't exist in a form simple enough, this one got built.
Why it exists
Most notes apps grow until they're heavy — accounts, sync servers, subscriptions, feeds, AI upsells. Every feature is one more thing between you and the blank page. Minimalist Notes is a deliberate step in the other direction: a fast text box that remembers your notes and does the few things you actually asked for. If a feature doesn't earn its place, it doesn't ship.
Where your notes live
Your notes stay on your device, in your browser's local storage, following a local-first approach. There is no account, so there is nothing to log into and nothing to leak. Nothing is uploaded to a server by default. When you share a note, you choose to — and shared links expire after 30 days. We can't read your notes because they never reach us. That's not a promise about our good behavior; it's just how the app is built.
Built in Japan 🇯🇵
Minimalist Notes is made in Japan, independently, on the maker's own time. Being small is the point — it keeps the app answerable to the people who use it instead of to investors or an ad market.
Free, and how that stays honest
Minimalist Notes is free, with no account and no ads. It's free because it's cheap to run: your notes live on your device, so there's no per-user server cost to recoup. There's no premium tier holding features hostage and no plan to sell your data — selling data would mean collecting it, and the app is built not to. If that ever has to change, this page will say so first, plainly.
Get in touch
Questions, bugs, or ideas? Email hello@minimalistnotes.com or reach out on X at @PGHQdev. Real replies, from the person who built it.
Open the app