silverbullet/website/SilverBullet.md

SilverBullet is an extensible, open source, personal knowledge management system. Indeed, that’s fancy talk for “a note-taking app with links.” However, SilverBullet goes a bit beyond just that.

You’ve been told there is no such thing as a silver bullet. You were told wrong.

Before we get to the nitty gritty, some quick links for the impatient reader: Download, Sync, CHANGELOG, Roadmap, Issues, Discussions, Mastodon, Mattermost chat, Docker Hub.

To start, let’s have a look at some of SilverBullet’s features.

Features

• Runs in any modern browser (including on mobile) when run as a Server, but can also be run ask a Desktop (and soon) Mobile app.
• Provides an enjoyable Markdown writing experience with a clean UI, rendering text using Live Preview further reducing visual noise, while still providing direct access to the underlying markdown syntax.
• Supports wiki-style page linking using the [[page link]] syntax, even keeping links up-to-date when pages are renamed.
• Optimized for keyboard-based operation:
  • Quickly navigate between pages using the page switcher (triggered with Cmd-k on Mac or Ctrl-k on Linux and Windows).
  • Run commands via their keyboard shortcuts, or the command palette (triggered with Cmd-/ or Ctrl-/ on Linux and Windows).
  • Use 🔌 Core/Slash Commands to perform common text editing operations.
• Provides a platform for end-user programming through its support for annotating pages with Frontmatter and 🔌 Directive (such as 🔌 Directive/Query), making parts of pages dynamic.
• Experimental 🔌 Collab.
• Robust extension mechanism using 🔌 Plugs.
• Self-hosted: you own your data. All content is stored as plain files in a folder on disk. Back up, sync, edit, publish, script with any additional tools you like.
• SilverBullet is open source, MIT licensed software.

To get a good feel of what SilverBullet is capable of, have a look at this introduction video.

Try it

Here’s the kicker:

==You are looking at a (more or less) operational copy of SilverBullet right now==.

That’s right, this very website is powered by SilverBullet itself. 🤯

On this site, everything is editable just none of it persists (the back-end is read-only). So, edit away, reload the page and everything resets.

Don’t just sit there, try it!

• Click on the page picker (book icon) icon at the top right, or hit Cmd-k (Mac) or Ctrl-k (Linux and Windows) to open the page switcher. Type the name of a non-existent page to create it (although it won’t save in this environment).
• Click on the terminal button (top right) or hit Cmd-/ (Mac) or Ctrl-/ (Linux and Windows) to open the command palette (note that not all commands will work in this mode).
• Select some text and hit Alt-m to ==highlight== it, or Cmd-b (Mac) or Ctrl-b (Windows/Linux) to make it bold, or Cmd-i (Mac) or Ctrl-i (Windows/Linux) to make it italic.
• Click a link somewhere on this page to navigate there.
• Start typing [[ somewhere to insert a page link (with completion).
• Tap this box 👈 to mark this task as done.
• Start typing :party to trigger the emoji picker 🎉
• Type / somewhere in the text to invoke a slash command.
• Hit Cmd-p (Mac) or Ctrl-p (Windows, Linux) to show a live preview for the current page on the side, if your brain doesn’t speak native Markdown yet.
• Click this button {[Editor: Toggle Vim Mode]} to toggle Vim mode
• Open this site on your phone or tablet and... it just works!
• Are you using a browser with PWA support (e.g. any Chromium-based browser)? Click on that little icon to the right of your location bar that says “Install SilverBullet” to give SB its own window frame and desktop icon, like it is a stand-alone app (not particularly useful on silverbullet.md, but definitely do this once you install it yourself).

Oh yeah, and you can use fancy things like tables:

Page	Comment
SilverBullet	Main product page
CHANGELOG	The latest updates

or code snippets, like JavaScript:

function helloWorld() {
   return "Hello there!"
}

or YAML:

name: SilverBullet
rating: 5

There are a few features you don’t get to fully experience in this environment, because they rely on a working back-end, such as:

• Any edits you make and pages you add aren’t saved (kind of useful).
• 🔌 Directive are disabled, although you will see them being used across this site (look for sections with subtle curved lines around them, if you move your cursor inside you’ll see where their content is generated from), they just don’t update their content dynamically.
• Full-text search.
• Extending and updating SB’s functionality by installing additional 🔌 Plugs (SB parlance for plug-ins) and writing your own.

Download SilverBullet

Has your mind been sufficiently blown to commit to an install? Took you long enough, alright then.

You have three options to install and use SilverBullet. Pick your poison, as they say. Have a look at all three to decide what’s best for you:

1. Server — install SilverBullet as a web server on your local machine or network, and access it via any web browser. This is the best choice for nerds 🤓.
2. Desktop — install SilverBullet as a desktop application, editing a local folder of files. This is the best option for casual users.
3. Mobile — install SilverBullet as a “native” mobile application (native: as in — distributed via the app store, and with an icon on your home screen). This is the best option for people with phones. More specifically, people with phones that don’t want to access the Server via their mobile browser, or have anxiety around Internet connectivity.

Where to go from here

Click on the links below to explore various aspects of SilverBullet more in-depth:

• CHANGELOG: What’s new?
• 🔌 Plugs: extensions available for, and as part of SilverBullet
• 💡 Inspiration: some of the projects that inspired SilverBullet
• 🔨 Development: how to start hacking on SilverBullet itself

Support

If you (hypothetically) find bugs or have feature requests, post them in our issue tracker. Want to contribute? Check out the code.

Want to chat with us? We have a Mattermost instance, join us!