Can I self-host Standard Notes?
✨ NEW: Introducing the Standard Notes Home Server
The Home Server is the quickest and easiest way to deploy a Standard Notes server in your own home without any technical know-how.
To get started:
- Open the Standard Notes Desktop app
- Open Preferences, then select Home Server
- Switch on the server
- You're done!
Your server is now accessible from devices on your local network as long as the Standard Notes app is running in the background and your computer is on. You'll also find instructions in Preferences for how to access your Home Server while on the go.
If you'd prefer to self-host the server the traditional way, especially on environments that can't run desktop applications, read below.
Traditional Self Hosting
Self-hosting both the app and server is possible and relatively simple. There are two components to the self-hosted infrastructure:
Standard Notes Backend Infrastructure
The first is the backend infrastructure. The backend is zero-knowledge, which means it does not understand the contents of what it is storing. Any user content received by the server is always encrypted by the client beforehand.
The server is responsible for authentication and syncing. When you self-host your own server, the end result will be an endpoint that you expose via HTTPS. You enter this endpoint in the Standard Notes client applications in the Custom sync server field (found under Advanced options when signing in or registering).
Note that you can connect to your server from the desktop and mobile applications, but not using our production web app at app.standardnotes.com.
Get started with self-hosting your own Standard Notes server:
Self-hosting Standard Notes client applications
Because the client applications (desktop and mobile) allow the option of specifying which server to connect to, self-hosting the client applications is not as common as self-hosting the server. If you were to go down this route, the paths you might take are:
- Self hosting the Standard Notes web app (app.standardnotes.com) on your own server so that you do not rely on our own instance for portable usage.
- Compiling the desktop and mobile apps from source to achieve maximum configurability or peace of mind.
To get started with self-hosting our client applications, visit our app code repository.
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