Why TiddlyWiki Stands Out: Local-First Note-Taking Revolution

On September 20, 2024, the venerable note-taking and personal knowledge management (PKM) tool TiddlyWiki marked its 20th anniversary. This tool, which originated in 2004 and crafted by Jeremy Ruston from the UK, has now evolved into its fifth iteration, TiddlyWiki5 (5.3, hereafter referred to as TW5). This product is entirely free and open-source, boasting numerous community plugins and support, even spawning several derivative products.

From September 20 to 22, founder Jeremy Ruston held several live streams on YouTube, recounting the two-decade journey of TiddlyWiki, its community contributions, future plans, and some technical discussions, while reiterating his philosophy to the public.

Considering that TiddlyWiki was born in the early 2000s, many subsequent products have borrowed from its concepts, such as RoamResearch and Obsidian which gained popularity in the 2020s, and LogSeq which initially incorporated a browser interface with local file storage.

By today’s standards, the interface of TiddlyWiki might be described as less visually appealing, but given its unique philosophy and practice, it’s certainly worth discussing.

The Priority of Local Storage

TiddlyWiki belongs to the same generation of digital note-taking products as Evernote and OneNote.

However, the key difference between TiddlyWiki and these highly commercialized products is its emphasis on local-first, file-first storage. This philosophy has naturally limited its appeal to capital investors. In reality, TiddlyWiki embodies the ‘Personal’ in PKM, meaning individuals can fully control their data.

Imagine a tool completely under the user’s control, how could it efficiently make money back then? In that era, the ‘cloud notes plus subscription’ model was the commercial standard. Once a user’s data is locked into an app’s cloud, the only choice is to keep paying the monthly subscription. This is why I’ve always encouraged everyone to maintain control over their note data and advised against tools that don’t allow data exports.

TiddlyWiki incorporates a ‘save’ concept, reminiscent of early software like Microsoft Word which required manual saving, similar to some video games needing manual save points, whereas most modern tools and games save automatically. Each ‘save’ in TiddlyWiki packages all information into a file for the user to download—a necessity, given its browser-based nature.

This packaging includes not just the user’s notes but also the operational code of TiddlyWiki itself. Once downloaded, the webpage can run locally without the internet, allowing users to record and search information offline. If users choose not to keep historical copies, they can adjust their browser settings to overwrite the file upon each save, though this can be cumbersome.

Today, these are not issues thanks to vastly expanded storage capacities and reduced costs per unit of storage. Computer performance has also greatly improved, making it nearly instantaneous to open and process these packed files. With the advent of HTML5, the distinction between webpages and applications has blurred, allowing Web Apps to become mainstream tools.

The Evolution of Note-Taking: From ‘Atomic Notes’ to ‘Open-Source’

The concept of ‘atomic notes’—small, semantically meaningful components called tiddlers—has been part of TiddlyWiki from the beginning. Each tiddler is stored within a section of the webpage, allowing for easy reference across different narratives and contexts, much like Wikipedia’s approach which later underpinned the double-linked notes model.

TiddlyWiki is open-source, with its source code hosted on GitHub, where the latest version TW5 remains highly active and frequently updated. It boasts a strong community and a variety of third-party contributions. To address the limitations of single-file storage, numerous solutions have been developed, including hosted online versions and enterprise adaptations, making TiddlyWiki a versatile tool for individual and corporate knowledge management.

In Conclusion

I have great admiration for products like TiddlyWiki, which have not only become a culture in themselves but have also inspired countless successors. Although the product hasn’t made its creator wealthy or led to an IPO due to its local-first and open-source nature, its steadfast adherence to its original philosophy over 20 years deserves respect. TiddlyWiki has always prioritized user data control, setting it leagues apart from many ‘user-lockin’ tools and maintaining a near-mythical reverence in the tech community.

Here’s to many more years for TiddlyWiki, a flag-bearer of user empowerment and data privacy. Personally, while I use Obsidian—a tool that shares many of TiddlyWiki’s principles—it feels like a spiritual continuation of what TiddlyWiki started.