A free, local OneNote alternative for Windows, Linux and Mac

If you want a OneNote alternative that runs on Linux as well as Windows and Mac, keeps your notes on your own computer instead of OneDrive, and gathers your to-dos into one list, Barside is built for that. Barside is a free desktop app with notes that read like documents, colored workspaces, linked notes with backlinks, a task board built from your checklists, and AI that uses your own account. There is no account for personal notes, and every change is saved on your computer as you type.

OneNote is a different kind of app: a free-form notebook where you type, draw and handwrite anywhere on the page, with apps on almost every device. This page compares the two honestly, including where OneNote is still the better choice, and shows how to bring your pages across as Word files.

The short answer

OneNote is free and flexible. Notebooks, sections and pages feel like a paper binder, and you can click anywhere on a page to type, draw with a pen, paste a picture or record audio. It runs on Windows, Mac, the web, iPhone, iPad and Android, shared notebooks let several people add to the same pages, and with Microsoft 365, Copilot works inside it.

People look for a OneNote alternative for a few common reasons: there is no Linux version, notebooks live in OneDrive with a small free allowance, the Windows 10 app reached the end of its support, AI needs a Microsoft 365 subscription, and some people want notes that read like documents. Barside answers them this way:

• Windows, Linux and Mac. The same app on both.
• Local-first. Your library lives in Barside's data folder, with no Microsoft account or cloud drive needed.
• Tasks in one place. Every checklist item from every note lands on one board, sorted by due date.
• Notes that connect. Type [[ to link notes, see backlinks under each note, and explore the note map.
• Your own AI, or none. Connect Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or OpenRouter, or leave AI off.

If you write with a pen, or need your notes on a phone, stay with OneNote. If you type your notes at a Windows or Linux computer, or a Mac, read on.

Why people look for a OneNote alternative

These are the reasons that come up most, stated fairly. The facts about OneNote come from Microsoft's own support and plan pages, as of September 2026.

• No Linux app. OneNote comes for Windows, Mac, the web, iPhone, iPad and Android. On Linux, the web version in a browser is what is left.
• OneDrive storage. Notebooks sync through OneDrive. A free Microsoft account has 5 GB of cloud storage, shared with OneDrive files and photos, Outlook.com attachments and Microsoft 365 apps. Only OneNote for Windows can also keep a notebook on your own drive.
• A move is due anyway. OneNote for Windows 10 reached end of support in October 2025, and Microsoft points its users to OneNote for Windows. If you have to change apps, it is a good moment to compare.
• AI needs a subscription. Copilot in OneNote comes with Microsoft 365 Personal, Family or Premium. Personal costs US$9.99 a month or US$99.99 a year.
• To-dos in many places. To Do tags put a checkbox on any line, and Find Tags on the Home tab gathers them. Some people want every to-do from every note on one board, sorted by due date.
• Pages that sprawl. A page where anything can go anywhere is great for sketching and harder to keep tidy over years. Some people prefer notes that read top to bottom, with headings and tables that stay in place.

Barside at a glance

A Barside note is a document, not a canvas. The toolbar has headings, fonts and sizes, text and highlight colors, bold, italic, underline and strikethrough, lists, checklists, quotes, code blocks, links and tables. The media button adds images, video and audio. On Windows, copy a screenshot with Win+Shift+S, click in the note and press Ctrl+V, or use the Paste screenshot button. See the local-first note-taking app.

Here is what takes the place of the OneNote features you use most:

• Workspaces instead of notebooks and sections. Each workspace has its own color, shared by its notes, cards and pinned tabs, with its own bookmark bar above its notes. Workspaces are one level deep, and there is no limit on how many you make. See workspaces for projects.
• A task board instead of To Do tags. Every checklist item in every note appears on the Tasks board, grouped as Overdue, Today, Tomorrow, Next 7 days, Later and No due date. Hover an item and choose + date to give it a due date right in the note, and tick it on the board or in the note. See the task board built from your checklists.
• Links with backlinks. Type [[ to link another note or create one. Linked from under each note lists the notes that point to it, with the sentence around each link, and the Note map draws them all. See linked notes and backlinks.
• Copy text from anything. Alt+Shift+S captures part of any screen and reads its text on your computer. Text in images inside your notes becomes searchable too. On Linux, install Tesseract first, and on a desktop that uses Wayland, set the hotkey once in the desktop's keyboard settings. See copy text from the screen.
• Audio, video and calls. The video icon in a note records a screen, a window or audio into the note, with a webcam bubble if you like. Transcribe a call writes what people say into a note, labeled You and Others, with speech-to-text that runs on your computer. See screen recording into a note and call transcription.
• Drawings in the note. Insert a drawing opens the full Excalidraw editor for shapes, arrows, freehand lines and text, and the drawing saves into the note. See Excalidraw drawings in notes.
• Your calendar beside your notes. Connect Outlook or Google Calendar with its private iCal address and make one meeting note per event. See the calendar next to your notes.

Barside also lives at the edge of your screen. Pin any note to the desktop in its own window, or dock it to the edge of a monitor as a slim tab that opens with a double-click. Alt+Shift+Space opens a search bar over any app, with the same one-time shortcut setup on Wayland; Hotkeys and aliases in Settings gives you the command to paste. See the native desktop app.

OneNote vs Barside: feature comparison

Every OneNote cell comes from Microsoft's support and plan pages. Many OneNote features depend on the version you use, so check the one you have.

Pricing compared

Prices are as Microsoft's own plan page shows them, as of September 2026.

Both apps are free, so the cost is in what surrounds them. OneNote keeps your notebooks in OneDrive, where 5 GB is free and more space comes with Microsoft 365, which also brings Copilot. Barside keeps your notes on your own drive at no cost, asks for Barside Plus only when you want sync between computers or cloud backup, and uses an AI account that bills you directly, if you want AI at all. AI in Barside uses an API account, or your Claude or ChatGPT plan through Claude Code or Codex on your computer (My plan).

Where OneNote is better

OneNote does several things Barside does not try to do. If any of these matter to you, stay with OneNote.

• Pens and handwriting. OneNote is built for pen input as well as typing: draw and write on the page, and turn handwriting into typed text with Ink to Text on Windows. Premium features such as Ink Replay come with Microsoft 365. Barside is made for typing.
• Free-form pages. Put text, pictures and drawings anywhere on a page, like on paper. Barside notes flow from top to bottom.
• Every device. OneNote runs on Mac, the web, iPhone, iPad and Android as well as Windows. Barside runs on Windows, Linux computers and Mac.
• Shared notebooks. Several people can work in the same notebook, and their changes update through OneDrive. In Barside, sharing a note to a Space posts a copy that members can read and save. A Space suits a class or a club in other ways: its description shows on invitations, owners and moderators pin key messages, the owner can hide the member count, and the owner's own connected AI can check new messages for spam and harassment, with a note that tells every member it is on.
• Locked sections. OneNote can protect a section with a password. Barside notes rely on your computer's own sign-in, and only logins go in its encrypted password vault.
• Microsoft 365. OneNote sits next to Word, Outlook and OneDrive, and Copilot works with no key to set up.
• More ways out. OneNote exports pages and sections as Word, PDF, XPS or web page files. Barside exports your whole library as one ZIP backup that Barside can restore.

How to move from OneNote to Barside

OneNote for Windows can save pages and sections as Word documents, and Barside imports Word files. OneNote for Mac and OneNote on the web cannot save Word files, so do the export on a Windows computer. The import itself works on Windows, Linux and Mac.

1. Open OneNote for Windows and go to the page or section you want.
2. Choose File, then Export. Pick Page or Section, then Word Document (*.docx), and save the file. Word export works on the current page or section, one at a time.
3. Repeat for the rest of the pages or sections you want to bring.
4. In Barside, open Settings & backups, find Notes from other apps and choose Import next to Import notes. You can also type import in the search bar.
5. Choose OneNote, then Choose .docx files, and select all the files at once.
6. Read the preview under Ready to import, then under Import into choose A new workspace. Barside suggests From Word or OneNote; type the notebook's name instead if you like. Choose Import, then Open workspace.

What comes across, and what changes:

• One Word file becomes one note, with its headings, lists, tables, links and pictures. A section saved as one file arrives as one note, so export pages one by one when you want one note per page.
• Titles and dates. The note takes its title from the document's title property, its first heading or the file name, and its created and modified dates from the document's properties.
• Layout. A free-form page becomes a note that reads from top to bottom.
• Structure. Each import goes into one workspace. Import a section's files together to give that section its own workspace.
• Limits. Each .docx file can be up to 200 MB, and one import reads up to 1 GB of files and up to 5,000 notes.

Exporting page by page takes time for a big notebook. Start with the sections you open every week, and keep OneNote as the archive for the rest. The full walkthrough is in the guide to import notes from Notion, Evernote and Obsidian.

Who should switch, and who should stay

Barside is a good fit if you:

• use Linux, or both Windows, Linux and Mac;
• want your notes on your own drive, with no Microsoft account or OneDrive;
• type your notes more than you write them by hand;
• want tasks, links, recording, reading and your own AI in one app.

Stay with OneNote if you:

• take notes with a pen on a tablet or touch screen;
• like free-form pages you can fill like paper;
• need your notes on a phone or in a browser, or on a Mac;
• share notebooks with a class or a team, or use Copilot across Microsoft 365.

Privacy: where your notes live

Barside keeps notes, pictures, recordings and settings in its data folder on your computer and needs no account for personal notes. It counts which features are used, by name only, and you can turn that off. Importing reads your Word files on your computer and uploads nothing, and screen text is read by your computer's own text recognition. None of your content leaves your computer unless you use an online feature on purpose, such as sharing a note to a Space, a share link, or cloud backup and sync with Barside Plus. Spaces travel over HTTPS and cloud sync is encrypted in transit and at rest, but neither is end-to-end encrypted. AI features send only what a request needs to the AI company you connected. See the privacy guide and local-first storage with private backups.

Other OneNote alternatives worth a look

• Evernote. Notes, web clips and scanned documents, with apps for iOS, Android, the web, Windows and Mac. Read the Evernote alternative guide.
• Joplin. A free, open-source notes app with Rich Text and Markdown editors, encrypted sync and apps for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS.
• Obsidian, if you want your notes as plain Markdown files, with apps that include Linux. See the Obsidian alternative guide.
• Notion, if you want a shared online workspace with databases. See the Notion alternative guide.

For the wider field, see the best note-taking apps.

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