Marginalia

The private reading notebook.

Read, highlight, and actually think about what you read — no account, no tracking, your data stays on your device. PDF and EPUB, completely free.

try it — click a sentence

The best readers annotate as they go. A highlight nobody revisits might as well not exist. Marginalia turns a highlight into something you actually use again.

Saved to your notebook

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No account needed Works offline Nothing uploaded without your say Self-hostable (Docker)
Read

PDF and EPUB, both first-class.

Real highlighting in four colours and styles, chapters and outline navigation, typography controls, and a reading position that's remembered per book — not bolted on after the fact for one format and half-working on the other.

Save

Read it later, for real this time.

Save any page from the browser extension with one click, sort it into collections and tags, and it's waiting in your Saved tab — clean, readable, and still there next week.

Why we stopped reading longform
theatlantic.com
techto-read
Saved to Marginalia — Collection: Reading list
Follow

A real feed reader, not a one-off import.

Subscribe to any RSS or Atom feed, organise them into folders, and read in a proper three-pane view — with full-text fetch for feeds that only publish summaries.

The case for slow reading
2h ago
What we lost with tabs
5h ago
A quieter internet
1d ago
Write

A journal that actually feels like one.

Notebooks with real covers and paper types, rich text and handwriting fonts, mood and weather, streaks without the guilt — and a highlight you liked, dragged straight into today's entry as a linked quote.

Tuesday, September 24
Connect

See how your reading connects.

Drag highlights, articles, and books onto an infinite canvas and draw the lines between them yourself — or let a per-book map surface the connections for you.

"the map is not the territory"
Chapter 4 — Systems
Journal, Sep 12
Own it

Your data starts local. It stays your choice.

Everything lives in this browser by default — no account, nothing sent anywhere. Turn on sync only if you want your library on another device or in the extension; self-host the whole thing with Docker if you'd rather not trust anyone's server, including ours.

This device
⇄
optional sync
Nothing leaves this device unless you turn sync on.

Coming from somewhere else?

Kindle highlights (My Clippings.txt) Pocket export Omnivore export Raindrop.io export Feedly (OPML) Any RSS/Atom feed Any bookmark export (.html)

How it compares

MarginaliaReadwiseRaindrop.ioDay OneLiquidText
PriceFreeSubscriptionFree / paid tiersSubscriptionFree / paid tiers
Account requiredNoYesYesYesYes
PDF + EPUB reader✓Import only——✓
Read-later + browser extension✓—✓——
RSS reader✓—✓——
Journal & open loops✓——✓—
Self-hostable✓————
Kindle / Pocket import✓✓✓——