Behind Moe Memos
There are hundreds of decent note-taking apps today. When something comes to my mind, I want to write down a memo as soon as possible. When learning new things, I tend to take quick notes before write down in other second brain knowledge bases.
I discovered flomo and became its pro member in 2021. It has a curated feature set, a powerful community and it’s the perfect tool for quick capture.
In the meantime, I’m transforming into a more niche digital life. I built a Homelab with a network-attached storage, an always-on mini PC and a Raspberry Pi for study and fun. I want to self host the services I rely on and store all my data at home.
Later I discovered ✍️memos from Awesome-Selfhosted. It’s a satisfying alternative for capturing ideas and it’s very easy to set up. After a month’s usage, I decided to build a mobile app for it.
So here it is Moe Memos. It’s an mobile app to capture thoughts and ideas. It has a minimal and delightful design and feels native to your device.
It’s open source and available for free on App Store, F-Droid and Google Play.
Moe (萌え) refers to cute, adorable and inspiring.
Why self-hosting?
Self-hosting means the user has complete control over their data. Through self-hosting, the user can learn more about how software and computer infrastructure work. I became proficient in Docker, Kubernetes, Flux CD and many tools via practicing myself.
For computer nerds like me, privacy advocates and whoever already have an open source router, a NAS, an used PC at home, or a cloud server thousands miles away, self-hosting is well suited and I wish you try ✍️memos and Moe Memos. For average users who need to capture ideas without the complexity of self-hosting, flomo is recommended.
Supported Memos server versions
please refer to Memos Support Matrix for detail.
Uploading images failed with “413 Entity Too Large” message
If you put your Memos server behind a proxy, please increase the maximum allowed size of the client request body. Here’s the nginx configruation for example:
client_max_body_size 128m;
I can’t log into my Memos server
The App Transport Security policy of iOS requires HTTPS for your security. It’s recommended to use acme.sh to enable HTTPS on your server.
Is there an Mac/Windows/Linux version?
While you can install Moe Memos on Apple Silicon Macs, for the best desktop experience the web version of ✍️memos is recommended, which can be installed as a Progressive Web App. You can also put Memos on the menu bar with MenubarX.
Can I create memos from other apps?
You can save texts, images or webpages from the share sheet of other apps to Moe Memos. You can also use this shortcut from Memos community.
Can I create memos from messaging apps like WeChat or Telegram?
There are projects that integrate WeChat Official Accounts, WeChat Mini Program and Telegram bot from Memos community. You can also build bots with Memos API.
Can I use Moe Memos offline?
Offline support is planned in future versions.