Alien Notes

about

description

Alien Notes is a local, encrypted app for notes, checklists and sketches. It runs fully offline — no cloud, no server, no account, no telemetry. The app requests no INTERNET permission — only the two normal permissions for the fingerprint sensor (USE_BIOMETRIC, USE_FINGERPRINT up to Android 8.1). The app itself never sends anything and only hands out plaintext when you trigger it, for example by copying or by saving a note as a file. Sister app of Alien Pass and Sachwert-Tresor. Features: - Notes (free text, up to 100,000 characters) and checklists (up to 200 entries with boxes, "done to the bottom", "clear ticks"; since 1.9 long entries wrap, Enter splits an entry at the cursor and pasted text with several lines becomes several entries); switch a note between the two — lines become entries and back, with a warning whenever something would be shortened - Sketches (since 1.14): draw with a finger (with the mouse on the Linux desktop) on a portrait canvas — freehand, line, arrow, rectangle, ellipse, triangle and hexagon; three stroke widths, solid or dashed, four colours (cyan, yellow, red, white); a stroke eraser, ↶/↷ per stroke, "clear all" with a confirmation, an optional grid with snapping. A second finger cancels the current stroke. Stored as lines (numbers, vector data) in the same encrypted file, not as images; up to 1000 strokes per sketch. Copy and "As file" are not available for sketches - No save button: the app saves as you type (after 1.5 s) and when you leave the note — encrypted, the whole file every time; the title may stay empty, the first line then serves as the title - Undo and redo while editing (since 1.10): ↶ and ↷ at the top of the editor take back up to 50 steps of the open note (fewer for very long notes) and bring them back, including a checklist entry removed with ✕; the history lives only in memory, closing the note, opening another one and locking clear it; with a keyboard (desktop, or attached to the phone) Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Shift+Z and Ctrl+Y use the same history - Markdown preview per note (off by default): headings, bold, italic, lists, boxes, code, rules — a small own subset, no third-party renderer, no HTML, links stay plain text; a cheat sheet in the editor shows "type this → looks like this" - Categories like folders (filter chips, suggestions, rename a category with all its notes), favourites, pinned notes, search across title, text, checklist entries and category, "insert date", an "Open" chip for checklists with unfinished entries - Moving from Standard Notes (since 1.1): reads a decrypted Standard Notes backup — the downloaded ZIP directly or the text file inside — and turns plain, Markdown, code, rich-text and Super notes into notes, checklists into checklists, the first tag into the category; 2FA (Authenticator) entries, spreadsheets and files are never imported; a second import creates no duplicates - Select several notes at once (since 1.1): trash (with one "Undo" for all, at most 200 at once), set a category (since 1.9 the existing ones are offered right away as a list) or the favourite mark - "Undo" after deleting (six seconds), "no preview" per note (the list shows only the title), three font sizes, and every confirmation is an in-app dialog — the Android system dialog does not inherit the screenshot protection - Copy puts the whole note into the clipboard; auto-clear after 15/30/60 s (default 30 s, can be switched off) and on lock; copied content is flagged sensitive so the Android 13+ system preview hides it. With "Lock in background: immediately" the copied note stays until the chosen time runs out so it can still be pasted into another app (since 1.3); since 1.13 all of this also applies to text copied or cut via Android's selection bar - Asks the keyboard app not to learn from what you type (since 1.13; Gboard then shows its incognito icon — only a request, not every keyboard honours it) - As file (since 1.12): saves the open note as a Markdown file (.md, the same text as Copy) through the share sheet; the file is not encrypted, so the app asks first; the file name only carries date and time, never the title; the backup always stays encrypted - Locking, more relaxed than a password manager: by default no lock after inactivity and in the background only after 30 minutes (both adjustable up to "never" / "immediately"); "Lock now" clears the key and everything on screen at once; the file is always encrypted. With "immediately" the Android app also locks while the file picker is open — unlock within five minutes and the import continues with the chosen file (since 1.2) - Trash: deleted notes stay restorable for 30 days, up to 200 at a time; shows only title, type and date, never the content; device-local — a deletion travels to your other devices when merging, the content does not - Encrypted .notes backup and merge between devices (newer change wins, deletions carried for a year), also between phone and Linux desktop. Since 1.14 the file carries format version 2: older app versions reject it with "newer app version" instead of silently dropping sketches when merging — update phone and desktop together; older backups still import - Optional Aegis hurdle: an extra TOTP code on unlock (key or otpauth link to copy, no QR; honestly documented as a hurdle, not a second factor) - Optional fingerprint unlock (Android keystore, passphrase required after every restart unless "also after a restart" is ticked, off by default) and optional quick unlock by PIN on the Linux desktop — both taken over from Alien Pass and documented there - Screenshots and app-switcher preview blocked by default (FLAG_SECURE), can be switched off in Settings — notes are not always secret; locked and during setup the protection is always on - Argon2id key derivation (32/64/128 MiB, self-benchmarked at setup) + AES-256-GCM via WebCrypto; own file format AINV1 with its own keys — Alien Pass rejects a notes file and vice versa - Notes file in the private app folder, written atomically (temp file, fsync, rename) — never a half-written file; 20 MB file limit enforced on save as well, an oversized file still opens so you can tidy up - Linux desktop edition (Flatpak without network permission and without file access, GPG-signed checksum) — on the download page and in the GitHub release - No INTERNET permission; only USE_BIOMETRIC and USE_FINGERPRINT (up to Android 8.1) for the fingerprint sensor (plus the AndroidX-generated signature permission that grants nothing), allowBackup=false + data extraction rules (no cloud, adb or D2D backup), WebView excluded from the Android autofill framework (a third-party autofill service never sees the passphrase fields, since 1.4) - Strict CSP: connect-src 'none', no inline script; Markdown rendered only via createElement/textContent; bundled Argon2 (hash-wasm) hash-checked in the build; internal security audit of the new surface before release (no independent audit) - German / English, offline in-app manual, open source (MIT) Signing certificate SHA-256 (verify with AppVerifier), identical for every version: F3:68:F9:0B:F8:DF:8C:55:BB:6C:28:6D:32:25:BA:8A:F4:45:22:7B:A6:9B:36:00:DF:BB:F6:A1:44:09:BA:7C apksigner (no separators): f368f90bf8df8c55bb6c286d3225ba8af445227ba69b3600dfbbf6a14409ba7c

publisher

c4fe4db774908f9e909871277166b050ae59bc8faf578c9fb737e804d82b0fff

first seen

2026-09-24T21:48:00.390774+00:00

last event

2026-10-16 21:23 UTC

website

https://alien-investor.org/alien-notes.html

install

zapstore.dev or any Zapstore-compatible client

topics

#notes #privacy #security #tools

source & build

repository

https://github.com/Alien-Investor/alien-notes

arch flags

android-arm64-v8a android-armeabi-v7a android-x86 android-x86_64

manifest

zapstore.yaml ok checked 2026-10-05T15:10:15.699610+00:00

{
  "icon": "./assets/icon-only.png",
  "images": [
    "./screenshots/1-list.png",
    "./screenshots/2-editor.png",
    "./screenshots/3-markdown.png"
  ],
  "license": "MIT",
  "match": ".*\\.apk$",
  "name": "Alien Notes",
  "release_notes": "./CHANGELOG.md",
  "repository": "https://github.com/Alien-Investor/alien-notes",
  "summary": "Offline notes \u0026 checklists \u2014 Argon2id + AES-256-GCM, no internet permission, no cloud, Markdown preview, encrypted backup \u0026 merge.",
  "tags": [
    "notes",
    "privacy",
    "security",
    "tools"
  ],
  "website": "https://alien-investor.org/alien-notes.html"
}

releases (kind 30063)

15 releases indexed; latest 1.14.

assets & verification

Every app, release and asset event is schnorr-verified (NIP-01 id + signature) before it enters the catalog, and assets are content-addressed by sha256. We subscribe read-only to the catalog relay — never write to it.

1.14 — alien-notes-1.14.apk

sha256

f486fe0c974f71109ceadccd7ece425ab0fc437a3d6e2f97b07c97cfcd1b4559

size

3.2 MB

archs

android-arm64-v8a, android-armeabi-v7a, android-x86, android-x86_64

version code

15

apk cert sha256

f368f90bf8df8c55bb6c286d3225ba8af445227ba69b3600dfbbf6a14409ba7c

download

alien-notes-1.14.apk

1.13 — alien-notes-1.13.apk

sha256

185381e86cafbe338251cb8ec65006dce2064b1f5d280d3ec8ef566fc4d61b29

size

3.2 MB

archs

android-arm64-v8a, android-armeabi-v7a, android-x86, android-x86_64

version code

14

apk cert sha256

f368f90bf8df8c55bb6c286d3225ba8af445227ba69b3600dfbbf6a14409ba7c

download

alien-notes-1.13.apk

1.12 — alien-notes-1.12.apk

sha256

c9f09cb6f93792c9d813ab4cfdcf47f03454756fe01f8d068f21550e6e205ce7

size

3.2 MB

archs

android-arm64-v8a, android-armeabi-v7a, android-x86, android-x86_64

version code

13

apk cert sha256

f368f90bf8df8c55bb6c286d3225ba8af445227ba69b3600dfbbf6a14409ba7c

download

alien-notes-1.12.apk

1.11 — alien-notes-1.11.apk

sha256

2432bffa8210e2daa3a3a34d2a6ed6b83f392ea5410daa402717ee14bd1e9505

size

3.2 MB

archs

android-arm64-v8a, android-armeabi-v7a, android-x86, android-x86_64

version code

12

apk cert sha256

f368f90bf8df8c55bb6c286d3225ba8af445227ba69b3600dfbbf6a14409ba7c

download

alien-notes-1.11.apk

1.10 — alien-notes-1.10.apk

sha256

e85e73f82289789c6ede23e138552302f7177cc8a5b64407a4373af8498dd0de

size

3.2 MB

archs

android-arm64-v8a, android-armeabi-v7a, android-x86, android-x86_64

version code

11

apk cert sha256

f368f90bf8df8c55bb6c286d3225ba8af445227ba69b3600dfbbf6a14409ba7c

download

alien-notes-1.10.apk

1.9 — alien-notes-1.9.apk

sha256

c21819736e168b376c900ba6ed70d318ad16e5b9c48bf0e00ec839fc27e8f5c4

size

3.2 MB

archs

android-arm64-v8a, android-armeabi-v7a, android-x86, android-x86_64

version code

10

apk cert sha256

f368f90bf8df8c55bb6c286d3225ba8af445227ba69b3600dfbbf6a14409ba7c

download

alien-notes-1.9.apk

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