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Local-first software (2019)

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863 points gasull | 7 comments | 05 Jul 25 14:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.946s | source | bottom
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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. throw10920 ◴[06 Jul 25 16:04 UTC] No.44481885[source]▶
> 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.

They're still a local-first note application. It's just slightly harder for you to edit your notes externally, and not even by that much - it's very easy to directly query (read and write) SQLite databases, and if you really cared you could have made a script to grab a note, export it to a temporary text file, allow you to edit it, then update the SQLite database.

> I can't version controlled backup and sync those files

You absolutely can - you can dump SQLite databases to text files that contain SQL queries that will restore the database that you can then backup and sync: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/75675/how-to-dump-the-da...

> then they moved to sqlite citing some sync and performance issues

Yes, that's because "plain text" files are bad for performance and harder to sync correctly. For people who (1) have over a hundred thousand notes they want to keep (like me) and (2) want maximum confidence that they're not going to lose years worth of work, that's incredibly important.

The devs made the right choice. You can always write scripts to interface with a SQLite database with an external editor. You can't take plain text files and magically make them as fast and durable as a database.

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2. crossroadsguy ◴[06 Jul 25 17:28 UTC] No.44482515[source]▶
Goodness! Are you a bear dev by any chance or a dedicated member of its particularly toxic subreddit? Because the tone fits right in.

> It's just slightly harder for you to edit your notes externally

Yup, just slightly harder! Very slightly. A difference of 3.75 picoseconds. Couldn't agree more.

> it's very easy to directly query

Right!

> and if you really cared..have made a script

And designed a nuclear reactor while I was at it, isn't it?

> The devs made the right choice

Yessss!! Finally.

Ffs!!!

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3. throw10920 ◴[06 Jul 25 17:39 UTC] No.44482605[source]▶
This comment does not contribute to the discussion and badly breaks the HN guidelines. Please review them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Also interesting to note that you couldn't actually muster a coherent response to any of my points and just had to make ad hominem attacks and emotional outbursts.

4. tyre ◴[06 Jul 25 17:43 UTC] No.44482641[source]▶
> And designed a nuclear reactor while I was at it, isn't it?

Claude can one shot this.

5. fauigerzigerk ◴[06 Jul 25 18:10 UTC] No.44482805[source]▶
>and if you really cared you could have made a script to grab a note, export it to a temporary text file, allow you to edit it, then update the SQLite database.

Bear devs advise against doing that: "Generally speaking, it is safe to access the database for reading only"

https://bear.app/faq/where-are-bears-notes-located/

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6. throw10920 ◴[06 Jul 25 22:53 UTC] No.44484872[source]▶
Thank you for the correction! I was not aware of this.

It's still worth pointing out that this design decision is orthogonal to the decision to use SQLite, though. The Bear devs could have designed it such that you could write to the database directly, or they could have kept the text-file-based design, but still told the user that they can't modify the files directly (as one of my personal projects does). The assignment of blame to SQLite specifically is misguided.

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7. fauigerzigerk ◴[07 Jul 25 07:10 UTC] No.44487512{3}[source]▶
You are right that storing notes as individual text files in the file system doesn't guarantee safe read-write access. But I don't agree that these design decisions are orthogonal.

How would you design a system that uses SQLite as primary storage for notes (rather than just as a search index or metadata store) while still letting people edit those notes in any text editor, sync via any cloud and make them accessible to any AI or other third party software that knows how to use a file system?

Exporting and re-importing every single time you want to edit a note is impractical for tech folks and impossible for regular users.

I can imagine a partial solution using FUSE, FileProvider and whatever the respective file system abstractions are on other platforms. But that would be a huge amount of work.