Your own "message yourself" chat, minus the cloud.
Capture on your phone. It's on your laptop by the time you're home.
No server. No account. Nothing leaves your Wi-Fi.
Download for Windows or Android · Website · No iPhone or Mac app needed: open it in a browser on the same Wi-Fi
OmniVault is a free, open-source, local-first notes app that syncs notes, links, screenshots and files between your Android phone and your Windows PC over Wi-Fi. It works peer to peer: no cloud, no server and no account. Every device keeps a complete copy, and devices on the same network find each other and sync on their own.
Capturing something on your phone and getting it onto your laptop usually means messaging yourself: a browser tab for the web client, a QR scan, and a single chronological stream where trades, links, receipts and ideas all pile up together.
OmniVault is that round trip without the detour. Capture on the phone, straight into the folder it belongs in. When both devices are next on the same network, it is already on the laptop. Copy it out in one tap.
The trade-off is deliberate: sync happens when your devices share a network, not over the internet.
| OmniVault | Message yourself (WhatsApp, Telegram) |
LocalSend | Syncthing | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No account, no internet needed | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Nothing stored on someone else's server | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Other device can be off when you capture | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Organised into folders | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Built for quick notes, links and screenshots | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Syncs while you're away from home | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
Folders for everything. Notes, screenshots, links and tickers, nested as deep as you like.
Save on your phone, open it on your laptop. A note captured on the phone shows up in the laptop's inbox a moment later, over the same Wi-Fi.
A Markdown editor with a formatting toolbar, live preview and autosave. Tickers become one-tap links to TradingView and Yahoo Finance.
Pairing takes one tap. Devices on the same network find each other. Tap Connect on one and Allow on the other.
- Nested folders with drag and drop, plus a Quick Inbox for things you file later.
- Capture anything — notes, links, stock or crypto tickers, images and documents (PDF, spreadsheets, anything up to 25 MB).
- Markdown editor with a formatting toolbar, live preview and autosave. Tickers and URLs in your text become one-tap links.
- Images pasted with
Ctrl+Vor shared into the app on Android, stored as WebP and viewable in a zoomable lightbox. - Automatic sync between paired devices on the same network, including networks that block device discovery.
- One-tap pairing — tap Connect on one device and Allow on the other.
- Backup and restore to a single zip of plain Markdown, media and the database.
- One-tap updates from inside the app: Windows updates and restarts itself; Android hands the new version to the system installer.
Get the latest build from the releases page.
- Windows — extract the zip and run
omnivault.exe. There is no installer. - Android — open the APK on the device and allow installs from your browser or file manager. One APK covers phones and tablets.
- iPhone, iPad, Mac or any other device — no app to install. On your Windows or Android device, open Connect, turn on Allow browser access and scan the QR code. It opens in any browser on the same network. There is no native iOS or macOS build.
Neither binary is signed by a commercial certificate authority, so Windows SmartScreen and Android will both ask for confirmation. The build steps below produce the same binaries from source.
Requirements: Node.js 18+, Rust 1.80+, and on Windows the WebView2 runtime. For Android: the Android SDK, NDK 26+ and JDK 17+.
npm install
npm run tauri dev # desktop app with hot reload
npm run dev # frontend only, in a browser
npm test # full verification suitenpm test builds the frontend, runs the Rust unit and integration tests
(including headless two-device sync), runs the frontend regression checks, and
packages both platforms with checksum and signing-key verification.
Release builds and publishing are described in docs/RELEASING.md.
A Rust core owns the SQLite database, the media store, an embedded HTTP server
on port 42420, and the peer-to-peer sync engine. A single React frontend runs
in the desktop and Android WebViews and, over the LAN, in any browser.
See docs/ARCHITECTURE.md for the data model, discovery, pairing and the sync protocol.
Every route under /api/ requires a pairing token except the ones marked
public.
| Method | Endpoint | Description |
|---|---|---|
GET |
/api/health |
Liveness and version. Public |
GET |
/api/lan-info |
LAN address and port. Public |
POST |
/api/pair |
Exchange a PIN for a device token. Public |
POST GET |
/api/pair/request |
Pair by approval on the other device. Public |
GET |
/api/folders |
All folders |
GET |
/api/items |
Items, optionally ?folder_id=<uuid> |
GET |
/api/media/<hash>.<ext> |
An image or document |
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
Ctrl + Enter |
Save the note or capture |
Ctrl + B / Ctrl + I |
Bold / italic in the editor |
Ctrl + K |
Insert a link in the editor |
Ctrl + V |
Paste a screenshot outside the editor |
+ - 0 |
Zoom in, out and reset in the image viewer |
Esc |
Close the open dialog |
Nothing leaves your network, but sync traffic is not encrypted: it is built for a home network or your own hotspot, not public Wi-Fi. Read docs/SECURITY.md before using it anywhere else.
Back up in the sidebar writes the whole vault to one zip in your downloads folder: every note as plain Markdown in its folder, the media files, and the SQLite database for an exact restore. The Markdown needs no app to read.
Back up before updating. If an Android build were ever signed with a different key, it could not be installed over the existing one, and uninstalling deletes the vault.
How do I get notes from my Android phone to my Windows PC without the cloud? Install OmniVault on both, put them on the same Wi-Fi (or the phone's hotspot) and tap Connect. Anything you save on one appears on the other, directly over your network.
Is it an alternative to messaging myself on WhatsApp or Telegram? That is exactly why it exists: the same quick capture, but organised into folders and kept on your own devices instead of a chat server.
How is it different from LocalSend or KDE Connect? Those send a file from one device to another while both are open. OmniVault keeps a synced, organised vault: the other device can be off when you save something, and it catches up the next time both are on the same network.
Does it work without internet? Yes. It only needs the devices to share a local network. Your notes never go to the internet; the only request that does is the update check, and it runs only when you press Check for updates.
Can I use it on an iPhone or a Mac? There is no native app for them, but they can open OmniVault in a browser on the same network: turn on Allow browser access under Connect on the Windows or Android device and scan the QR code.
Where is my data stored? In a SQLite database and a media folder on each device. Back up exports everything as plain Markdown files, so your notes stay readable without the app.