Glyph, a local-first Markdown notes app for macOS built with Rust
Details
- External ID
- 47245617
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- Glyph, a local-first Markdown notes app for macOS built with Rust
- Website domain
- glyphformac.com
- Launched
- March 4, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 8
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.491389913899139
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Description
Glyph is an open-source, local-first Markdown notes app for macOS built with Rust (Tauri)It stores notes as plain files, supports fast search, wikilinks/backlinks, and includes optional AI chat, including implementation of Codex so you can use your chatgpt sub, all without requiring a cloud-first workflow.https://glyphformac.com/
Enrichment
- Theme
- markdown editors and writing tools
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Dev tools
- Audience
- Prosumer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- local-first markdown notes app for macos
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Partial Building a basic desktop markdown viewer in Tauri is accessible, but building a production-grade local-first editor with graph indexing, backlinks, and offline-first sync requires solid systems programming.
What it would actually take: A production-grade app like Glyph requires a Tauri (Rust) backend with a high-performance local SQLite database or inverted index (e.g., Tantivy) for instant full-text search across thousands of files. It necessitates custom AST parsers for Markdown/wikilinks to maintain a bi-directional graph in memory, alongside robust file-system watcher debouncing and conflict-free sync mechanisms. This requires proficiency in Rust concurrency, memory management, and desktop OS integration.
Discussion
4 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Obsidian
Concerns raised: unclear differentiation from other note-taking apps, needs stronger value proposition to justify switching costs, misleading marketing about Rust/Tauri implementation
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 85 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #45 of 86 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 92 days after the earliest competitor.
- Markly · ph · 2026-09-25 · 62 upvotes · similarity 0.57
- inkwell - Write without distraction. · ph · 2026-09-14 · 3 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- MinkNote · ph · 2026-07-24 · 157 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- Flotnote · ph · 2026-09-29 · 74 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- GLYPH Immersive · ph · 2026-09-11 · 84 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- Vireo - Simple Markdown Editor for MacOS · ph · 2026-09-22 · 9 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- MindDock · ph · 2026-09-15 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- HelixNotes · hn · 2026-02-10 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.42
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a dev tools tool for Sales yet.