MyKeep

Your own private notes app for your home network — a self-hosted take on Google Keep. Write notes and checklists, color them, pin and search them, add labels and images. It runs entirely on your own machine and needs no internet once it's set up.

Curious what it's like to use? Take the quick visual tour → Using MyKeep.

Install it

MyKeep runs the same on every system — pick yours for step-by-step setup. Each takes about fifteen minutes, most of it just installing Docker the first time:

• 🪟 Windows
• 🍎 Mac
• 🐧 Linux / home server

The rest of this page covers what's the same once it's running — for all three.

Everyone gets their own notes

Anyone on your network can open MyKeep's address and register their own account. Each account's notes are private to that person — they can't see anyone else's.

Change the port

Prefer a different port? Edit PORT in your .env file (say PORT=9000), then apply it:

docker compose up -d

MyKeep will now answer on that port instead.

Where your notes live

Everything you save — the notes database and any images you upload — lives in the data folder next to docker-compose.yml. To back up MyKeep, copy that folder somewhere safe. To restore, put it back. It survives updates and restarts on its own.

Everyday commands

Run these from the my-keep folder:

docker compose logs -f          # watch what it's doing (Ctrl+C to stop watching)
docker compose restart          # restart it
docker compose down             # stop it (your notes are kept)
git pull && docker compose up -d --build   # update to the latest version

If something's not right

• It says SESSION_SECRET isn't set when starting. You missed the secret step on your install page — generate a secret and put it in .env, then run docker compose up -d again.
• port is already allocated / address already in use. Something else is using port 8065. Pick another port (see Change the port above).
• You can't reach it from another device. Make sure that device is on the same network, you used the host's IP address (not localhost), and the host's firewall allows the port.

Questions you might have

• I forgot my password. There's no password reset yet. The simplest fix is to register a fresh account — every account is separate, so no one else's notes are affected.
• How do I back up my notes? They all live in the data folder (see Where your notes live). Copy that folder somewhere safe and you have a complete backup; put it back to restore.
• Can I export my notes to a file? Not yet — it's on the wish list. For now, the data folder is your portable copy.
• Can I open it from outside my home? On the open internet, no — keep MyKeep on a network you trust (it serves plain http, not the encrypted https that public sites use). But you can reach your notes when you're away with Tailscale, a free tool that privately and securely links your own devices, without exposing MyKeep to the public. Here's how → Reaching MyKeep from anywhere.

Good to know

• Offline by design. After the one-time build, MyKeep makes no calls to the internet — fonts and icons are bundled in. It's meant for a trusted home network (it serves plain http, not https).

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MyKeep is an independent project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Google. "Google Keep" is a trademark of Google LLC, used here only to describe what MyKeep is like.