KeyNote NF vs Zim

KeyNote NF

• Windows users who want a free, open-source tree notebook
• Long-time KeyNote users who need Unicode and newer features
• Keeping selected notes encrypted inside an otherwise open file

Zim

• A personal wiki or scratch book kept as files on your own disk
• Daily or weekly journals and meeting or lecture notes
• People who want their notes under Git or another version control system

KeyNote NF

• Windows only: the project's SourceForge page lists Windows as its platform, and no other build is offered.
• The built-in backup keeps at most 9 recent copies made on saving, so the author advises keeping separate backups of .knt files.
• Its .knt format extends the old one: saving such a file in the original KeyNote 1.6.5 loses alarms and checked-node information.

Zim

• Notebooks have no built-in encryption or password protection; the FAQ points to an outside tool such as encfs.
• Zim is written as a single-user program, so shared notebooks rely on a version control system to merge changes.
• The download page covers Linux, BSD, Windows and macOS only, and syncing means copying the notebook folder with a service such as Dropbox.
• The Windows installer supports 64-bit systems only, and the macOS app supports macOS Big Sur through Sequoia.

KeyNote NF

Tabbed notes with trees

A file holds tabbed notes with a rich text editor and multi-level trees of nodes, and linked nodes can share the content of the same note.

Encryption

A file can be encrypted as a whole, or stay unencrypted while selected notes and images are encrypted, with a lock-on-opening option.

Find All and tree filtering

Find All shows excerpts with the matched words highlighted, can be limited to a node and its subtree or to node names, and combines with tree filtering.

Tags and text folding

Tags apply to notes and to fragments of text for filtering, searching and exporting, and blocks of text can be folded down to a short excerpt.

Image management

Handles GIF, PNG, JPG, TIF, BMP, WMF, EMF and ICO images, stored inside the file or externally in a zip or folder, with a built-in viewer.

Checkboxes, alarms and export

Tree nodes can show checkboxes, carry alarms and be hidden once checked, and notes export to a printer or PDF with a table of contents.

Zim

Plain-text wiki pages

Every page is a text file with wiki markup and images are ordinary linked files, so the content stays readable in other editors and file managers.

Links in both directions

Linking to a page that does not exist creates it. Zim tracks all links and shows, for each page, which other pages link to it.

Hierarchical notebooks

Pages nest as sub-pages in a folder structure, much like an outliner, and each page can carry attachments.

Plugins

Plugins add a task list dialog, an equation editor, calendar pages for daily or weekly journals, spell checking and a tray icon.

Version control

A Version Control plugin works with Git, Mercurial or Bazaar, which also lets several people merge changes to one notebook.

HTML export

Notes can be exported to HTML for publishing; the project's own website is written in Zim.

KeyNote NF

• KeyNote NF$0

  The full Windows program, downloaded from the project's GitHub releases with a setup program.

Zim

• Zim$0

  The full desktop wiki for Linux, Windows and macOS, with its plugins.