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Local-first software (2019)

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863 points gasull | 2 comments | 05 Jul 25 14:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.416s | source
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DataDaoDe ◴[05 Jul 25 17:02 UTC] No.44474024[source]▶
Yes a thousand percent! I'm working on this too. I'm sick of everyone trying to come up with a use case to get all my data in everyone's cloud so I have to pay a subscription fee to just make things work. I'm working on a fitness tracking app right now that will use the sublime model - just buy it, get updates for X years, sync with all your devices and use it forever. If you want updates after X years buy the newest version again. If its good enough as is - and that's the goal - just keep using it forever.

This is the model I want from 90% of the software out there, just give me a reasonable price to buy it, make the product good, and don't marry it to the cloud so much that its unusable w/out it.

There are also a lot of added benefits to this model in general beyond the data privacy (most are mentioned in the article), but not all the problems are solved here. This is a big space that still needs a lot of tooling to make things really easy going but the tech to do it is there.

Finally, the best part (IMHO) about local-first software is it brings back a much healthier incentive structure - you're not monetizing via ads or tracking users or maxing "engagement" - you're just building a product and getting paid for how good it is. To me it feels like its software that actually serves the user.

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patmorgan23 ◴[05 Jul 25 22:03 UTC] No.44475944[source]▶
Obsidian the note taking app is a great model to follow as well. The client is completely free and they sell an optional syncing service. The notes are all on markdown files so the client is completely optional.
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crossroadsguy ◴[06 Jul 25 07:49 UTC] No.44478683[source]▶
This is the reason I have always refused to use Bear note taking app irrespective of how good and snappy that app is. Because they keep their notes in a SQLite db now and even though that file can be backed up and handled locally my notes are not easily accessible to me. I can't easily edit my notes in other editors (which I often like to do on my mac), I can't version controlled backup and sync those files the way I want outside of iCloud (which is what Bear uses).

What is sad is that they used to be local files first note app and then they moved to sqlite citing some sync and performance issues.

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1. canadiantim ◴[06 Jul 25 12:19 UTC] No.44480121[source]▶
Sqlite is still local first. Couldn’t they just also provide you with notes via obsidian-like file folder structure while using sqlite for in-app performance?
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2. crossroadsguy ◴[06 Jul 25 14:21 UTC] No.44481048[source]▶
That was exactly my thought. But no I guess they won't. Because they had good old plain text files but they changed to sqlite db and apparently the reason they gave is sync related challenges. Since it's not a FOSS app I don't know the challenges and I feel all other text based notes/editor apps that work on plain text files on disk must be doing something right/different. I don't know.

And as for sqlite being local first - it's not the same. It's the nature of the data a plain text note taking app deals with that neuters that very idea of those plain text notes by storing in a local sqlite db.