Mobile Flutter + SQLite 6platforms Local-firstarchitecture

Notes App

Offline-first, privacy-respecting notes app — zero cloud, zero tracking, full ownership. Your notes stay on your device, always.

Business Problem

Every popular notes app — Google Keep, Apple Notes, Notion, Evernote — routes your data through someone else's cloud. Even "free" alternatives depend on proprietary sync servers that could shut down at any time. There was no polished, cross-platform notes app that was genuinely offline-first, zero-telemetry, and designed to treat the user as the sole owner of their data.

Architecture

Flutter app with a local-first architecture: Drift ORM on SQLite as the single source of truth. Feature-organized modules (editor, home, search, settings, trash) over a shared data layer. Zero network requests unless the user explicitly shares or exports. Local backup system with SHA-256 verification, change detection, and automatic rotation.

Personal Contribution

Designed and built the entire app solo: wireframe spec, data model, rich text editor integration, search, export/import pipeline, trash system, local backup with checksum verification, settings, and the dark theme design system. All organized by feature with a reusable core layer.

Technical Challenge

Rich text with Drift — flutter_quill stores documents as Delta JSON, so content is persisted and converted on the fly. Auto-save had to preserve undo/redo history across saves without interrupting typing. Backup ZIP creation needed SHA-256 checksums, rotation, and change detection to avoid redundant backups. Robust import needed to handle malformed frontmatter and color-name-vs-hex mismatches gracefully.

Key Features

Rich text editor with full formatting toolbar. Debounced auto-save with undo/redo preservation. Find-in-note with match counter. Color-as-category system (8 renamable colors). Real-time search with smart snippets. Markdown/plain-text/ZIP export & import. Soft-delete trash. Local backup with checksum verification and rotation. Customizable settings (fonts, text size). Dark theme with gold accent.

Impact

A genuinely private notes app — zero accounts, zero analytics, zero telemetry. Runs on 6 platforms (Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, Linux, Web). Markdown export means the user can leave at any time with everything. Local backup means the user always has a restorable copy of their data, without depending on any third-party service.