I've been looking for a better way to store private notes and really most of the time, just note designs, architectures and computer programming progress in markdown files.

When I was travelling in Puerto Escodido in November 2023, I used this method and have returned to it. I'm using GoCryptFS, which takes a little fiddling to install but once it is. You can simply run these commands and I'm able to have a folder encrypted and backed up across iCloud and TimeMachine.

gocryptfs -init ./data for a new folder to be setup as an encrypted data store.

Then to mount it to another folder I simply run gocryptfs data notes where notes is a folder in the same directory. Then to unmount it umount notes.

I have a concept that I'm working on called KonSafe, which is to use the private System Keychain accessed via the Secure Enclave via TouchID, such that you wouldn't reuquire a password and always be able to de-crypt your notes. I've parked this for now in the ever growing list of designs and concepts for the apple eco-system.