A native macOS browser fused with an Obsidian-style notes vault. Browse the web on the left, keep linked markdown notes on the right — and see them as a graph. Built with SwiftUI + WebKit. No Electron, zero external dependencies.
⚠️ Personal / early-stage project. It works day to day, but storage formats and APIs may still change. Not signed for distribution (see Gatekeeper).
| Notes graph | Customize |
|---|---|
 |
 |
Other tools pick a side: Zen and Orion are browsers; Obsidian is notes. Somnia is both, in one native app — a browser whose second half is a real linked‑notes vault with a connection graph. If you research on the web and think in notes, the two live together instead of in separate windows.
Browser
- Spaces — group tabs into color‑coded workspaces
- Light on memory — tabs load lazily and sleep on an LRU budget; sleeping tabs release their web process, and Somnia frees more under system memory pressure
- Find on page (⌘F), history, address‑bar autocomplete, favicons, downloads manager with progress, configurable search engine
- Reader Mode (⌘⇧R) — a clean, themed reading view
- Vertical, resizable sidebar; Cmd‑click for background tabs; two‑finger back/forward
Notes (Obsidian‑style)
- Plain‑markdown vault with
[[wiki‑links]]and automatic backlinks - Force‑directed graph of your notes (and a mini‑graph on the Home screen)
- Connect an external Obsidian vault (read‑only)
Privacy
- Tracker / ad blocking via a native content blocker (toggle in Customize)
- Private tabs (⌘⇧N) — no history, no disk cache, excluded from the session
- Local‑first: your notes and history stay on your machine
| Action | Shortcut | Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|---|---|
| New tab | ⌘T | Quick open | ⌘K |
| New private tab | ⌘⇧N | Find on page | ⌘F |
| Close tab | ⌘W | Reader Mode | ⌘⇧R |
| Open file | ⌘O | Open location | ⌘L |
| Reload | ⌘R | Customize | ⌘, |
| Jump to tab | ⌘1–9 | Back / Forward | ⌘[ / ⌘] |
Requirements: macOS 14+ and Xcode Command Line Tools (full Xcode not
required — Somnia builds via swiftc directly).
git clone https://github.com/Tequila-sunset671/somnia.git
cd somnia
./build.sh # builds Somnia.app with swiftc
open Somnia.app
./test.sh # pure-logic unit tests (URL resolution, wiki-links, markdown…)The build is ad‑hoc signed, so macOS will warn about an unidentified developer on
first launch. Either right‑click the app → Open once, or just build it
yourself with ./build.sh (recommended).
Everything is stored under ~/Library/Application Support/Somnia/:
Vault/— your notes (markdown + YAML frontmatter)session.json— tabs, spaces, bookmarkssettings.json— theme, search engine, tracker‑blocking togglehistory.json,favicons/— browsing history and cached favicons
The Vault/ folder in this repo contains a few demo notes that seed a new vault
on first build.
Swift · SwiftUI · AppKit · WebKit. Single ~2.6 MB binary, no third‑party
dependencies. Architecture and dev notes: docs/DEV_NOTES.md.
MIT © Andriy Bezditko