Anytype Desktop

Local‑first, peer‑to‑peer & end‑to‑end‑encrypted knowledge OS for macOS, Windows & Linux.

Anytype is a personal knowledge base—your digital brain—that lets you gather, connect and remix all kinds of information. Create pages, tasks, wikis, journals—even entire apps—and define your own data model while your data stays offline‑first, private and encrypted across devices.

✨ Key Features

• Offline‑first, local storage with optional peer‑to‑peer sync.
• Zero‑knowledge encryption powered by any‑sync.
• Composable blocks: text, databases, kanban, calendar & custom Types.
• Cross‑platform desktop client built with Electron + TypeScript.
• Extensible through a gRPC API and AI "Agents" (see AGENTS.md).
• Open code under the Any Source Available License 1.0.

📚 Table of Contents

• Quick Start
• Prerequisites
• Building from Source
• Development Workflow
  • Updating Middleware
  • Updating Protobuf Bindings
• Localisation
• Contributing
• Community & Support
• License

🚀 Quick Start

Just want to try it? Grab the latest installer from the releases page or head to download.anytype.io and log in with your Any‑ID.

🏗 Building from Source

On ARM systems, node package keytar needs to be rebuilt during installation, so make sure that your system has a C++ compiler, Python3 and Python package setuptools. E.g. on Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install python3-setuptools. Alternatively, on any system, create a Python virtual environment (venv) and inside the venv: pip install setuptools. Then build from source inside the venv.

# 1 – Clone & open this repository
git clone https://github.com/anyproto/anytype-ts.git && cd anytype-ts

# 2 - Install JavaScript dependencies
bun install

# 3 – Fetch / build middleware & protobuf bindings
./update.sh <macos-latest|ubuntu-latest|windows-latest> <arm|amd>

# 4 – Build the core engine
cd .. && git clone https://github.com/anyproto/anytype-heart.git && cd anytype-heart
make install-dev-js CLIENT_DESKTOP_PATH=../anytype-ts && cd ../anytype-ts

# 5 - Update locale
bun run update:locale

# 6 – Build the Electron desktop app (see package.json for more options)
bun run dist:<linux|win|mac>

Environment flags

Variable	Effect
ELECTRON_SKIP_NOTARIZE	Skip macOS / Windows signing & notarizing
ELECTRON_SKIP_SENTRY	Don’t upload sourcemaps to Sentry

🧑‍💻 Development Workflow

You can use nix to install all the required dependencies at once.

# open a shell with all the required dependencies
nix develop --command $SHELL

Start the dev server with hot‑reload (builds Electron bundle, starts Vite, then launches Electron):

bun run start:dev     # Windows: bun run start:dev-win
# add --user-data-dir=./my_dir to electron(-win) script in package.json if you want to use custom user data directory

When you close Electron, the Vite dev server is automatically stopped.

For browser-based development without Electron:

bun run start:web

See Web Mode for details.

Useful commands

bun run build         # Production build (Vite)
bun run build:dev     # Development build (Vite)
bun run typecheck     # TypeScript type checking
bun run lint          # Run linters (Biome + ESLint)

Environment variables

Name	Purpose
SERVER_PORT	Vite dev server port (default: 8080)
ANYPROF	Expose Go pprof on localhost:<port>

Web Clipper Extension

Build and switch manifest for different browsers:

bun run build:ext
bun run ext:manifest:firefox
bun run ext:manifest:chromium

Updating Middleware

The middleware version is pinned in middleware.version. To fetch a pre-built middleware binary and its protobuf/JSON assets:

./update.sh <macos-latest|ubuntu-latest|windows-latest> <arm|amd>

This downloads the anytype-heart release matching the version in middleware.version, extracts the anytypeHelper binary into dist/, and copies protobuf definitions and generated JSON into dist/lib/.

For CI environments (requires GitHub credentials):

./update-ci.sh --user=<GITHUB_USER> --token=<GITHUB_TOKEN> --os=<OS> --arch=<ARCH> --middleware-version=<VERSION>

Updating Protobuf Bindings

To regenerate TypeScript protobuf bindings from a local anytype-heart checkout (expected at ../anytype-heart):

bun run generate:protos

Prerequisites: protoc (protobuf compiler) must be installed, and bun install must have been run (for ts-proto).

This reads .proto files from ../anytype-heart, generates TypeScript bindings into middleware/, and creates a service registry.

🌍 Localisation

Translations live on Crowdin. Pull the latest locale files with:

bun run update:locale

🤝 Contributing

We ♥ contributors! Please read our Contributing Guide and follow the Code of Conduct.

Security issues? Don’t open public issues—email security@anytype.io and see our Security Guide.

💬 Community & Support

• Forum – https://community.anytype.io
• Docs – https://doc.anytype.io
• Blog – https://blog.anytype.io

📝 License

Made by Any — a Swiss association 🇨🇭

Licensed under the Any Source Available License 1.0.